What do you all think about playing from memory in the early grades?
I have a Grade 2 pupil who has a good memory and quickly learns to play the piece from memory ( he looks at his hands all the time) I am trying hard to persuade him not to do this! I feel he is not taking in the dynamics or fingering and his sight-reading is weak at the moment! Any more thoughts on this!

I am certainly not against playing from memory but only to be done at the right stage of learning?

Katie

I'm no good at playing pieces from memory, unless they're really simple. However, I usually try to learn the first few lines of harder pieces from memory, so that i'm not looking at the notes the whole time, and can concentrate on other bits. Playing from memory is wonderful until you have to play in an orchestra, or as a group, where sight reading is essential, and you need to stop and move to different bars and sections of the piece. Maybe if you get him to start from different parts of the piece, he may not be able to pick up the memory and will be forced to follow the music.

My opinion?

Run with it!! Encourage it. Don't forget to tell the student's parents about this unusual gift and how you are dealing with it - they love positive feedback as well!

Reading skills may initially suffer - but you can compensate in other ways. Achieving reading more slowly is nothing if higher levels of musicianship and interpretation are achieved as they can be at Grade 2 level. You remove the barrier of physical music, and you can really work on the communication and love of music.

Regarding reading skills, the best advice I could offer is to make VERY sure that the theory stays abreast of the Grades, and even goes ahead of the grades.

Secondly .. reading can be encouraged by a diet of sight readiing in parallel with the perfomance pieces. [Serious concert pianists would probably argue that reading of music is only really necessary as a means of acquanting oneself with new pieces anyway!]

But for performance pieces (including exam pieces) - stick with the memory. This could be perfect foundations for a concert career and so confidence building at such an age.

The above is consistent with another philosophy - if a child's own inclinations can be incorporated into a learning programme, cash in!

Katie, I agree with George.

Children who memorise easily rarely sight-read well because they learn pieces in a different way to quick readers. They will not look at the music once they have even a vague idea where they are going with a new piece, preferring to play by ear and touch.

You cannot fight this. You can cover their hands with a piece of paper and bribe them with chocolates to look at the music but they still will not actually see it; they will still be playing by ear and touch. The moment they get home, they will stop 'looking' at the music again.

I have never performed solo from music. As an accompanist, my soloist is in trouble if I actually need the score!

Encourage and praise your pupil's ability. It will help him feel better when he struggles with sight-reading.

But Katie seems to be saying that her pupil is missing the musiccianship and interpretaion by not paying enough attention to the score.

As someone who naturally learns like this I find it to be more of a curse than a natural gift: so much so that I went back to the beginning and made sure that I learnt by reading. I'd say keep up with what he's doing (memorising is useful) but make sure he memorisies the dynamics too (if you get used to it it's no extra than memorising the piece really) but make sure that you give him a lot of very easy pieces (one every week,say) to take home and learn that week then he will get experience of reading too and not struggle with that making sure he has the best of both worlds. Learning purely by memorising and neglecting sightreading is quite a weak foundation in my experience. Now I still memorise pieces quickly but the time I feel most proud of myself is when I can play a piece with the score but not without, quite short lived but it exists now!

Katie, my daughter is in the same boat - grade 2 piano, won't look at the music, has memorised lots including fingering, but omits some dynamics and some phrasing. As George says - whether the music is there or not makes no difference. We are trying to get her to memorise all the dynamics and phrasing - we may get there, maybe not.
And her sightreading is weak too, no doubt as a result of a good musical memory. We're working on this as much as we can.
However, the GREAT upside is - wherever we go, she can play off-the-cuff. That is so great to see. How many people when asked to play say 'Oh without my music I can't play anything'! Non-musicians don't understand that concept - they think if you play an instrument, you just play it!
As already said - you might nurture this talent, it's not that common among grade-pupils I find.

I personally find it really hard to memorise pieces, unles they are really fast pieces, that way i can just let my fingers do all the thinking....

But with slow pieces such as Chopin's Nocturne in E flat, after the first few bars, my brain goes all fuzzy

When I started learning piano, the first ever piece I learnt was by memory. Having been sent in at the deep end and starting with Grade 2 instead of Pre-Grade 1 (It was called Volume 1, but it was later I found out it was Grade 2; probably the reason the First Volume is Grade 2, is because it is entitled "Hours with the Masters"), I was forced to memorise the first few pieces. But it turned out to be quite a good thing, because, as I am one of those people that plays music by ear; you learn to spot patterns in the music and understand where the music is going, and thus it becomes easier to lets your hands move by themselves, whilst you can spend more time focusing on the piece and its dynamics.

Sight-reading is now one of my strongest areas, as I can normally tell where the music is going from the first few bars, being familiar with musical patterns, so I'd say that learning by memory isn't a bad thing, and it doesn't prevent one from learning how to read by sight; in fact, it seems to help, because your hands are familiar to so many techniques that there are no technical difficulties, so when you practise you can spend more time focusing on dynamics as opposed to time being spent on physical difficulties. If you get what I mean!

Wobby

I have a really big problem with remembering music- so much that if you told me to play a piece I could probably play the first few bars and then stop. Help?

My teachers have always been pleased that I can play from memory so I don't think it should be discouraged. I find it very useful in exams as it allows me to concentrate on other areas like dynamics/articulation and I feel I can really 'perform' the music well when I don't have to concentrate on the notes as much. My sight reading is not bad as a result of this though as I obviously need to read the music first before I can memorise it. If you find that your pupil is struggling with sight reading then you could get some sight reading books for extra practise and he won't have a chance to memorise them as he will have a different piece each time! As for him not taking in dynamics and fingering, I normally just follow the music (not really paying much attention to it) and look for changes in dynamics, articulation etc.

Lisa xxx

The key is to focus bar by bar and repeat, seperately at first, then two bars, three bars and so on. It takes a bit of time; the reason many musicians are dependant on their music is they play the whole piece over and over again, but not every bar reaches their long term memory of patterns (which helps sight-reading too). You can do each section seperately so it takes less time, because once you have completed a section, you just put them together. Quite often, memory is a kinesthetic technique, to do with how your hands are used to the patterns. So, the more you get your hands used to the patterns of the song, the easier it is to remember. A similar note for sight-reading; the more you get your ears used to patterns of various songs, you'll develop an ability for understanding how the music should flow.

Wobby

In my opinion, a person playing from memory is more likely to incorporate suitable expression than someone wedded to the score.

A person who is playing from memory in this way is generally following the "ear". In the early stages of learning, there should be ample opportunity to incorporate whatever expression makes sense to the performer, so that what they "hear" is what they play.

Yes, but is that sometimes necesarily good in the lower grades? I always thought you were only allowed to veer from the score if you were excelent pretty much..

i am a memory person not a sightperson, which accounts for my absymal sight reading then...i DO open the book and read the muci when i play though. When learning the piece i try not to play form memory only, only after i know it really well, dynamics and all.
Is there a memory playing part of aural?

I was like that too. I memorised all my pieces. And I was bad at sightreading.

Since your student has already memorised his pieces, maybe you could ask him to add dynamics and articulation while playing. As for sightreading, it will come slowly.

Because I was good in memorising, I learnt the Chopin Op.9 no.2 Nocturne by myself and had it memorised when I was doing my Grade 2. My teacher didn't want to teach me the Nocturne. But as I learnt new pieces that were harder, my sightreading gradually improved.

I think if your student can memorise his pieces, you should encourage him to do some harder material that he likes. I think it would improve his sightreading. Although the expression may not be there when he has just finished memorising the piece, it will come to him slowly.

But you also get the ones who play from memory because they are too lazy to learn to read the notes and who only learn mechanically and with no awareness of how it sounds at all.

I agree with AP.
We've had this discussion in the past as we both learn the same way.

The way I best tackle the memory and dynamics is to learn the piece note perfect and then add dynamics.
It's important as a memory learner that the very few times the music is read that it is played with the correct notes. If not, the piece is memorised with the wrong notes.

As for covering the pupils hands forcing them to look at the music can work.
My teacher tries this periodically and I hate it ! I hit every other note rather than the correct one ! If repeated over and over, it becomes more consistant.
Trouble is when you practise on your own, you don't use this tecnique.

I do wish there was an easier way to read the music and then flick the memory switch to ON when ready. It just doesn't happen.

Yes sight reading also suffers, but mine is improving slowly

Fiona

I disagree, I do not memorise any pieces but can still play expressivley and that's my best thing. I'm good at that, looking at the music doesn't hold me back