One of the things that is said to improve your memory is sleep. I have heard accounts of people working on a passage, and the next morning, after a good night's sleep, almost miraculously, they have improved.
I have never experienced this, and I had started to wonder if something was wrong with me, especially with my sleep. Don't I not sleep enough (I don't usually sleep more than 6.5 hours)? Don't I get enough deep sleep?
However, one of the websites that Molly Gebrian recommends is a blog from pianist Tara Gaertner (http://trainingthemusicalbrain.blogspot.com). And what do I read there?
"Older people are able to improve at a new skill over a practice session, but they show a different pattern from young people when it comes to retaining that skill. When young research volunteers learn a new motor skill, such as a finger-tapping pattern, they improve significantly over a practice period, with a decrease in the number of errors and a gradual increase in speed. When the volunteers come back the next day for a second session, their performance often has improved overnight, without any further practice. This is due to sleep-dependent consolidation, in which our motor skills both improve and become resistant to interference from other memories, while we’re sleeping. People can literally improve their motor skills, such as playing a musical instrument, just by sleeping.
As we age, things start to change. Older adults just don’t show the same between-sessions improvement in motor skills, and in fact their performance on the second day of training on a task starts out much lower than where they left off the day before..."
So nothing is wrong with my sleep! Except, I am older.
Tara Gaertner continues, a bit later:
"In order to counteract the effects of poor declarative memory on motor learning, we should choose practicing strategies that rely more on implicit, procedural memory, strategies based on repetition of the movements we want to learn rather than our cognitive appraisal of the notes and movements required to make them.
The obvious candidate for this type of learning is a technique called errorless learning. This technique suggests that if you can simplify a task somehow so that it can be practiced without making errors (or at least as few as possible), then you engage procedural memory systems, leading to more automatic performance.
[...] In music practice, errorless practice can be achieved by practicing at a slow enough tempo to avoid mistakes in pitch and rhythm."
Very interesting! Since listening to Molly Gebrian's YT series and her Q&A, I am much more focused on avoiding mistakes, and it works. And now I have decided, The first play-through of my Bach piece each morning should be significantly slower than the tempo I reached at the end of the previous day.