B1 (10 year old daughter) has just come home from holiday and sat down to practise the piano for the first time since last Sunday. To her horror, two of her pieces (which had been note perfect before she went away) fell apart and several scales were completely haywire. However, the new contrary motion chromatics which she has only tried a few times went perfectly and her newest piece sounded much better than before she went away.
Can anyone explain this? Why would well known pieces fall out of her head in 6 days while new stuff got better without practice?
Sitting at the piano a little later, fiddling about as she often does, she started playing (again very well) a piece which initially she couldn't identify - eventually remembered it was a piece from an old exam book that she learned for a few weeks about 18 months ago but then swapped for something else! Why on earth would she remember that and not the pieces she'd been playing daily since taking her exam last month?
Wise forum folk - is this normal? And will the lost pieces pop back into her head just as suddenly?
Full Version: Forgetting Well Known Pieces
Is she playing from the music (really reading it?) or playing from memory?
If the latter, my guess would be that she is relying too much on finger (muscle) memory to do the work and not enough on brain memory. Brain memory means remembering the overall shape and form of the piece, awareness of key signature, anchor points and other references. Whereas muscle memory is where the fingers remember (or not) how to get from a to b, b to c, c to d, etc. With over-reliance on finger memory, if you lose track of where you are, you may not be able to continue or pick up the piece. This causes crashes and resulting loss of confidence, which can be a vicious circle.
If the latter, my guess would be that she is relying too much on finger (muscle) memory to do the work and not enough on brain memory. Brain memory means remembering the overall shape and form of the piece, awareness of key signature, anchor points and other references. Whereas muscle memory is where the fingers remember (or not) how to get from a to b, b to c, c to d, etc. With over-reliance on finger memory, if you lose track of where you are, you may not be able to continue or pick up the piece. This causes crashes and resulting loss of confidence, which can be a vicious circle.
QUOTE(PianissiMole @ Aug 9 2010, 05:21 PM) 
Is she playing from the music (really reading it?) or playing from memory?
If the latter, my guess would be that she is relying too much on finger (muscle) memory to do the work and not enough on brain memory. Brain memory means remembering the overall shape and form of the piece, awareness of key signature, anchor points and other references. Whereas muscle memory is where the fingers remember (or not) how to get from a to b, b to c, c to d, etc. With over-reliance on finger memory, if you lose track of where you are, you may not be able to continue or pick up the piece. This causes crashes and resulting loss of confidence, which can be a vicious circle.
This is exactly what I would have said ... except that I'd probably have used ten times as many words, and not made it quite so clear ... and also that you can rely on "kinaesthetic memory too much even if you have the score in front of you and are not playing entirely from memory.
Nice to see someone else uses the term I like... "Anchor Point". When learning something I try to start randomly from as many different points as possible, so even if it all goes horribly wrong, I know that all I have to do is blunder my way towards, or go back to a secure part.
I'm actually trying to visualise the score these days in my head when I play from memory, and am finding that it does help somewhat - beforehand I was simply relying on muscle memory, which is exremely risky.
As for forgetting stuff, I completely forgot how to play one of my "core" pieces of repertoire for a few weeks. It suddenly popped into my head one morning when I tried to play it, everything fell into place. It's actually quite a scary thing, so I'm going to have to go through it again with the score... *sigh* Keeping a piece in a reliable state is so much hard work - especially if it's a 5+ minute piece!
I'm actually trying to visualise the score these days in my head when I play from memory, and am finding that it does help somewhat - beforehand I was simply relying on muscle memory, which is exremely risky.
As for forgetting stuff, I completely forgot how to play one of my "core" pieces of repertoire for a few weeks. It suddenly popped into my head one morning when I tried to play it, everything fell into place. It's actually quite a scary thing, so I'm going to have to go through it again with the score... *sigh* Keeping a piece in a reliable state is so much hard work - especially if it's a 5+ minute piece!
I would agree with the above posts.
Alternatively, just a very simple thought, it may be she just launched into the pieces she knew without enough thought, and then was thrown when they didn't work, and with the harder piece, a little time off actually relaxed her, and with less pressure on it, it worked better.
I'm sure it will all come back though!
Alternatively, just a very simple thought, it may be she just launched into the pieces she knew without enough thought, and then was thrown when they didn't work, and with the harder piece, a little time off actually relaxed her, and with less pressure on it, it worked better.
I'm sure it will all come back though!
Thank you for insightful comments! B1 had told me before that her hands often know how to do things when her brain doesn't. We'd never heard of muscle memory so we called it her autopilot. She is now fascinated and tries to differentiate between parts that she knows with her brain and parts that only her fingers know (usually tricky patches that she has had to go over many many times).
Being unmusical myself I have never been very involved in her practice except as captive audience or random picker of scales - I am now challenging her to play her pieces in chunks, starting at different places each time. She finds it helpful, except when a section is going consistently wrong when she maintains that she needs 'a run up to it' which often works! (Autopilot at work again?).
There are a lot of teachers complaining on the forums that their pupils don't know how to practice the right way - maybe someone could write a little 'how to' guide for unmusical parents. B1 spent first year of music lessons convinced that not going back to the beginning every time you went wrong on a piece was somehow cheating!
Oh - and all the stuff that 'fell out of her head' - fell back in after a good night's sleep.
Being unmusical myself I have never been very involved in her practice except as captive audience or random picker of scales - I am now challenging her to play her pieces in chunks, starting at different places each time. She finds it helpful, except when a section is going consistently wrong when she maintains that she needs 'a run up to it' which often works! (Autopilot at work again?).
There are a lot of teachers complaining on the forums that their pupils don't know how to practice the right way - maybe someone could write a little 'how to' guide for unmusical parents. B1 spent first year of music lessons convinced that not going back to the beginning every time you went wrong on a piece was somehow cheating!
Oh - and all the stuff that 'fell out of her head' - fell back in after a good night's sleep.
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