Hello all,

A few months ago I posted a request for advice on how to prevent random mistakes on repetoire pieces and in fact any piece I am learning. I had lots of helpful advice, however the problem seems to still be rearing its ugly head much to my dismay!

Even though I know my notes in both clef pretty well, my old ailling brain cannot read them fast enough to track a piece I have learnt.

So to begin with when I am reading the notes and playing the piece, it may not be totally fluent and up to speed. Then once it is all up to speed and fluent, my finger memory takes over and I seem to no longer be able to track the music on the page.

Almost every time I experience the same situation.

Learn piece by reading music.
Piece is fluent with a couple of wrong notes.
No longer bother reading music as I realise I am not really looking at it anyway.
Then continue to play to keep up piece to same level.
Then it starts going downhill, all different mistakes all over the place.
Get the music out again and go over in fine detail parts that I make mistakes.
Other mistakes then occur and the process is never ending!

It would be really good to see how Skylark, SandyGarrity, DavidMackay learn (sorry if I have got the user names incorrect as its plucked from memory) as you are all around the same level as me. Do any of you have the same issues?

Thanks

Actually I would just like to add that one thing I really struggle with is playing through my mistakes. When I do make a mistake it really throws me and I cannot continue. If I could I guess it wouldnt be so bad.

One thing you can make yourself do once reasonably secure is start reading from random bars in the piece, play a few bars then stop and randomly move elsewhere.

My teacher made me do this for quite a difficult piece and it seems to have paid dividends. I ended up memorising the lot, but felt sure that I knew the music much better afterwards.

YMMV.

Please bear in mind the phrase "the blind leading the blind" when reading my reply and hopefully somebody much more experienced will have better advice to offer!



When you say "reading the notes", can I check that you're reading the chord or the pattern rather than the actual notes? I think it's impossible to read all the notes - I think the idea is that you recognise a pattern (a scale, an arpeggio, an inverted chord....) and your eyes skip along from one pattern to the next. So rather than reading 30 notes or whatever, you only read 5 patterns, say. I'm sure you are doing this but I thought I'd better check.




I've posted something similar in the past, and apparently this is just muscle memory which is unreliable. If you haven't already done so, I would suggest that you study the music and work out the structure. I take a photocopy of my music and use a highlighter pen to mark repeat sections, for instance. I've also recently started studying the structure of individual chords... so in a sequence of chords, the top note may remain the same and only the bottom two notes change. Seeing this pattern has really helped with some of the pieces I'm working on.

Try and force yourself to keep looking at the music, even if you're just skimming it, so that at least you absorb/retain familiarity with it. To really get to know a piece well, you need to start at different points in the music. This is quite time-consuming, and it may depend on how well you need to know the piece and the reason you're learning it. If you're learning it for a concert or an exam, I would think you need to do it, but if you're just learning the piece as a means to learning a new technique, rhythm etc, then I personally wouldn't spend time learning the piece to that standard.



I think this is just practice. I'm getting slightly better at it, I think, but I agree it's not easy. I think it's easier if you've studied the music and started at different points, ie as mentioned in my other paragraphs above.


I've posted on something similar to this in the past and I tried to find it earlier but couldn't. What I did end up reading though was a couple of threads that I started when I'd only been learning the piano a few weeks. It was really funny to see that I was agonising over a piece which I can play really easily now So don't despair Mini_mo... it's just one of the many hurdles that you'll reach - and cross - over your playing lifetime. It just takes time, and practice, and hopefully some better advice than I've given here!

This is something I really struggled with aswell when I first started, I'd stop at the slightest little slip even during scales. It has probably taken me 6 months to get over my urge to stop when I make mistakes but I can do it now. As skylark has already said this is practice and I found quite a bit of willpower was involved too! You have to force yourself to keep going.

What you are describing are exactly the problems I get aswell. I've been playing my Grade 3 pieces for about 5 months now so they are now at the stage where I'm doing a bit of refining and just keeping them up to speed and with one of them I thought I'd made every mistake possible but no, new ones creeping in all the time

I take the bar that's giving me problems, repeat ad nauseum until it really is secure (as opposed to me thinking it's secure) then lead into it with the previous bar, then the next one before that etc and find this helps. Also never underestimate the benefit of just stopping practising the piece for a week, play something else you enjoy, start learning something new and then come back to the piece that's giving you problems.

Keep it up Mini_mo you will get there. It's nice (and always my target) to be able to play a piece all the way through without making a mistake every time but the chances of it actually happening are middling to none so play through your mistakes, smile and chances are no-one will really notice anyway (unless you're playing for an examiner )

I agree with all of the above. I take grade 2 in December and have exactly the same difficulties which you are describing! My 11 year old daughter plays much better than I do (but at the same level - we are doing our exams together!) and has an amazing finger memory. She plays guitar too and with both her piano and guitar she seems to be able to mimic perfectly whatever she is shown, even pieces which are way above her current level - much to the amazement of her teachers!

However, as we all keep telling her, she won't be able to rely on this forever! At least you are aware of the need to really pay attention to your written music and are actively trying to do something about it! I also play clarinet to a higher standard and don't have any problem here - which only makes me think that the problems will disappear as we all improve!

Good luck, ,you are not alone!

Thank you everyone for your support. It's comforting to know that what I am experiencing is a normal part of learning. Obviously whilst trying not to be too obsessed about the issue, I still want to try and solve the problem (time might be the answer!).

I do actually learn my pieces at random points throughout the piece so I don't end up knowing the 1st page better than the 2nd, however as for really studying a piece, I probably don't do that to the level that you do Skylark and to be honest I probably am expecting to almost read the notes as I play (am expecting miracles!). So I will do that; assess each piece before I begin and will try to play with the music even after I know the song as well as I can.

I think I could live with it if it were not for the fact that I have foolishly agreed to play in my teachers beginners concert in December (along with my two girls 8 and 5). Whilst they will be quite happy to play even through mistakes I will be quaking in my boots with the fear of a catastrophic failure half way through the piece!!!

I am probably going to play the first part of Fur Elise (yes people have probably heard it a million times before) but it is very repetitive and I can play it well, actually one I can play reliably!

Wish me luck!!! Thanks for all the advice

Yes good luck! And I'm sure Fur Elise played confidently and musically is a far better choice than another piece which you can't play as well It sounds like you're all going to have a lovely concert

Hello everyone, I thought I would let you know that I tried playing some of my pieces much slower than I normally do to disrupt my finger memory and funnily enough I found it really hard!

So when I am paying attention to the notes and structure, the music is not fluent (at the start of learning a piece). This is when i know it the best. When it is fluent, it's my finger memory that is taking over, not a mixture of fingers and brain.

So I guess the answer is to work hard to learn pieces not by relying on the fingers. Not totally sure how I am going to do that, (although one approach will be to study the structure of the music more carefully as Skylark recommended) so at last I may be a step closer to understanding the problem.

Thanks

As you've worked out you can't rely on finger memory - it will let you down (or sometimes loop you back into an earlier / later part of the music - equally embarassing).

I think that one problem is that you want to enjoy your music (thats why you do it, after all). You assume that if you've put in all that hard work to learn a piece, then you have a right to relax and enjoy listening to it when you play?

Unfortunately it doesn't always work quite like that, and if you relax too much and the finger memory takes over, you run the risk of waking up in the middle of the piece, in a panic, not knowing what comes next - then crash! Skylark is right in that you must know the structure of the piece, but more than that you must force yourself to actively concentrate on the structure. Its rather like having your conscious mind driving the structure, while letting the finger memory help with the more automatic routine stuff.

When you are playing from music, it is still to some extent a memory exercise: you are not playing what you are reading, but rather what you read a second or two ago (i.e. you are reading a bar or so ahead). You have to use the same technique when playing from memory - that is, thinking ahead of the coming chord sequences, etc, in the same way. Doing this helps to keep you focussed on the structure of the piece.

If you are not succeeding when playing from memory, you must force yourself to read the music (or at least find something in the music to look at!) And I speak as one who is very guilty in this respect

PianissiMole - I think you have totally and utterly hit the nail on the head there. Thanks

A. The counsel of perfection (Gieseking, Hofmann, Rubinstein, ... others) is to memorize the music (structure, rhythms, motifs, tunes, harmonies, transposition, figuration, dynamics, imagined sound, moods, possible fingering) before you ever touch the keyboard. It is very hard work, that is why most of us wimp out of it.

B. Repeatedly playing a piece from memory - while relying mostly on so-called "finger memory" seams re-assuring in the practice room or comfort of home, but actually WEAKENS the ability to recall under pressure. Far more effective is mental play. That way everything must come from the mind. There is neither tactile nor aural feedback to "trigger" subsequent actions, nor is there visual stimulation (NOT necessarily reading the score) from the presence of the score. Checking accuracy against the score is useful too, but is a separate matter.

On all counts I speak as a not-yet-fully-reformed sinner

I am afraid, 2 pregnancies and rearing 2 children has frazzled what little brain cells were left.

It will be very hard but I will try my best.

Hi mini mo

You are definetly not alone here. I am suffering exactly the same problems. When you are playing near the limit of your ability, I think it's impossible to sight read. So trying to read every single note and instruction is impossible. You must to a certain extent rely on memory. Of course, this is where problems start. Quite a few of my grade pieces, which I thought I'd got to a standard that would be difficult to improve on before the exam have broadly fallen apart. I think I need to deconstruct each piece and try and learn the notes from scratch again.

I like the comments above about being able to start from anywhere in a piece. This is a great test of how well you know the piece. It was brought home to me recently when I started to review my grade pieces again with my teacher. She would ask me to start at various points through the piece, but it took me ages to find the fingerings. I think I might try starting a piece from every single bar to try and nail this.

Playing through mistakes is also something we have to learn to do. Sheer willpower is definetly required. I wonder whether there is something in the theory that pianists (all musicians) are a perfectionist bunch so as soon as a mistake appears, you stop, throwing your toys out of the pram. I try and imagine I am performing for someone and know myself how frustrating it is to hear performers stop part way through a piece. I'd much rather hear them finish, even if the mistake is completely obvious. Also, I certainly make loads of mistakes that a non-performer would probably not pick up on. For example, certain notes not played with the correct dynamic. When I play them, I know I've got it wrong, but the listener wouldn't necessarily, so it's better to keep going.

I found that when I was stuffing up my exam pieces, it was because I'd subconsciously started to use different fingerings. The fingers you use/choose have to be set in stone, otherwise it'll all snowball when it goes wrong...

This might not be the issue, but I thought I'd throw in my tuppence worth

Good clarification Solari
I wasn't intending on changing any of the fingerings. I would have thought fingering problems would show up pretty early, before your piece gets into muscle memory. So assuming you are playing more or less from memory, your fingering must be 'right'. If, in the course of deconstruction, something isn't working, then I might look at fingering, but unlikely. Lots of the fingering is so obvious that one would dream of changing it. Never say never, but it would be an absolute last resort.

Thanks guys, I am now trying out the following which is to NOT memorise pieces as this is where it's all going wrong. For now I am sticking to the sheet music and religiously trying to track it as I play (even if I am not really paying an awful lot of attention to it.) Then if I make a big mistake that I cannot rectify (like fingering which messes up the next notes) I start again from that bar.

I am also trying to think ahead in my my mind what I have to do (as Mad Tom - I think - suggested).

The point that I feel my playing is at it's best is when I have just finished piecing the song together and it's all fluent but I still have the freshness of really looking at the notes and structure of the bars that I learn (and in no particular order). I tend to make a couple of mistakes at that point or sometimes none! . But then after a while of playing the piece in its entirety, it starts to deteriorate. So I am now not playing them too often so they don't become too familiar once mastered.

Also I am going to have a go at completely leaving a piece for about 2 weeks after getting to the point described above so when I come back to it, it makes me reassess it in more detail.

If any of these help you David, please let me know. It would be interesting to see if what ends up helping me, may help others.

Following the sheet, even if it only means following "patterns", seems to be the trick, especially in an exam situation. As long as you follow it, you stand a good chance of recovering if you make an error that you probably wouldn't recover from if playing from memory.

It's *really* difficult to get into this habit though, especially if you have a propensity for memorising things. It's all too easy to let your eyes wander down to the keyboard for too long, meaning that next time you look up, you'll be lost. If I'd not followed the sheet in my last exam, I'd have panicked and lost it while recovering from slips that I made, I think.

That's a very interesting post David... Less is more?

I've found leaving a piece really helps. It's so easy to fall into the trap of just playing and playing the same pieces, but they don't improve. Then it starts to fall apart....

The point skylark and pianissimole make about understanding the structure of the piece are excellent - I'm just starting to take this advice into practice. I've been reviewing Kummer (grade 1) in which there are effectively four lines, two on each hand. My teacher got me to do each line individually. It was only at this point that I started to see (Ed. 'hear' surely?) how each line had it's own individual coherence. This has improved my respect for the piece i.e. it's much more complicated than I thought (and I already thought it was v v clever!), and I think will also improve my playing. It sounds so obvious, but I didn't even realise that one of the lines was basically descending a half note each time. Something as simple and obvious just got lost when the whole piece was learnt together, and then played ad infinitum.



Yes, my fingering needs some work.
Or maybe it's the buddhist approach to piano.

This is the root of the problem.

It is tempting, once you can play a piece well from memory, to repeatedly play it for confidence, and to think that this makes the memory more secure.

It does not. As I have learned in the last 2 years - you become more and more dependent on the tactile and auditory feedback to trigger the correct movements. It all becomes very fragile, and eventually results in memory lapses - usually at the worst possible time - when you are on stage playing for an audience. It only takes a bit of extra stress or a slightly uinfamiliar instrument or setting.

The right way to keep pieces well memorized is to mentally play them through away from the instrument. You imagine strongly the exact physical movements that you will make, and the sound that results. This can be supplemented with your intellectual understanding (and, if you have a strong visual memory, the image of the score).

If you can't play a piece through mentally, but need the feedback of the keyboard and the sound to get through it, then you have not properly memorized it yet.

If your mental play reveals errors or forgotten sections the way to imoprove them is by studying the score, and repairing your ability to play the piece mentally, before goimng to the keyboard to play it in reality.

As it is just as necessary to be able to sail on when you make a mistake in performance as it is to be able to perfect a piece, can you recruit a knowledgeable person to sit with you when you practise? This one also works if you have problems with stopping during sightreading - the other person covers up the music as you go, using a piece of card or paper, so you can't go back. You need to find out how far ahead you can read, so start by only letting your accomplice cover up what you've actually played, then perhaps let them go half a bar ahead. It won't make you play perfectly, I'm afraid, but it shows you what you need to do to keep concentrating on the music, and does prevent you from retracing steps if you make a mistake. One musician of my acquaintance goes back and back and back over a section when he fluffs, and actually ends up fixing the mistake in his memory - then he will come back to the piece a day or three later and do exactly the same again, much to the frustration of his family .

I do agree that prevention is important too though - and for that you have either Mad Tom's preferred option of memorising, a skill which has evaded me totally, or the option of learning how to keep reading together with what you're playing - and yes, that is a matter of not letting your mind drift. I've done two babies and sleepless nights too, and have suffered from the resultant fried-brain feeling, but if it's any encouragement...it does come back . Just takes time...

Re: A: I've never heard that before! And I actually think it might work and I might actually try it! I could memorise as a teenager with no problem, but having been appalling at it since I came back to music after a long gap, one thing I have found is that the memorising now (for me, anyway) has to be done while the piece is still in the learning process - ie when I can't play it fluently yet, but am able to struggle and find the notes in my head rather than have to do it from the score. And even this is very difficult for me as I'm primarilly a reader. I just can't identify with people who learn the piece first and then commit it to memory. By the time I've 'learnt' it, the looking at the page has become an integral part of the process that I can't eliminate. Your suggestion here seems to take the 'in the learning process' to its logical conclusion.

I'm not sure that I completely understand B. How do you get away from relying on finger memory? And what actually is it that triggers subsequent actions? Does it not lead, potentially, to mechanical playing if you're not relying on aural feedback?

It has been recommended by several famous teachers and pianists - most notably by Gieseking and his teacher. I've tried it (when I was in Australia for three weeks - two of them with no piano). It works. It takes a huge mental effort. I am too lazy to use it as a regular method of learning pieces.

You do not get away from "finger memory". When you are playing it is important for fluency.

The problems come when it is the main memory that you rely on. The problem is that the piece is often incompletely memorized, and when you play it the missing information comes not from the contents of your brain, but from elsewhere.

That may be in the form of the presence of the score - for those that cannot dispense with it - even though they are not actually reading it. But for all of us there is also feedback from: the internal sensations in the hands and arms, the feel of the piano, and the sound that we are making. These combine with whatever the brain is supplying to "trigger" then next note/chord/section.

For that reason"finger memory" is insecure. It can be derailed by the stress that alters your internal sensations, by a strange instrument, or by different acoustics. By practicing mentally, away from the instrument, the tactile, auditory, and kinaesthetic components are eliminated, so the only way to get through the piece is if it is completely and securely memorized, entirely in the brain.

WHen you play on a real instrument you do not, of course, ignore the feel or the sound, but you are secure knowing that even without them you can always find the next note!!

Last night I attempted to play a piece in my memory away from the piano. I found it almost impossible (I found it really hard to visualise the keyboard in my mind hence not being able to visualise pressing the right keys) and is something that will need a lot of mental power and concentration to do from me. Maybe this is something for advanced students only, or should anyone be able to do it?

Saying that I have just re read your post Mad Tom - Should I be visualising the keyboard and the notes mentally or the sensation and sound of the score? Sorry I am only a beginner!

Bit of a similar problem here; as a pupil I was complimented on never looking at my hands - so I prided myself on it then, but it makes life kinda difficult now when I want to memorise the shape of something on the keyboard.

It certainly takes a lot of concentration. I don't think you are any different from the rest of us in that respect.


I suspect that it is more to do with how much you practice memorizing this way rather than with how advanced you are in terms of the difficulty of the peices you can manage to play.


All of the above, supplemented and assisted by your intellectual understanding and memory of the structure, harmonic sequences, motifs, themes, modulations etc. ...

The more dimension syou have taken in, the more secure the memory. It is like the difference between a web and a single strand. If one strand breaks there is always another way.

*clutches score tightly and won't let go*

C'est moi aussi...
I'd love to get past this though - it looks so much more impressive to be playing without it!

It is not a matter of looking more impressive (unless you are after a career as a professional soloist) but being able to devote more attention to playing, and to the sound, and so (in theory at least) playing better.

But you are right that it is psychologically very difficult to release the "security blanket"of a score.

So I sympathize.

I memorize almost everything I learn, and certainly everything that I intend to perform. But when the time comes to step up on stage I am often so nervous that I put the score on the music stand as a "safeguard".

This is especially stupid because I end up making more mistakes when I have the score before me than when I am brave enough, or relaxed enough, to do without it!!

Yes it is!
Even as an amateur soloist!
And even at pupil concerts the audience seems to focus so much more intently on the ones who walk up there without a book and just play. The music seems to be emanating from performer and instrument as a unit so much more directly than when it has to come via a page.