Memorization (when you hate it)

ShiroKuro Yes, this is what I was thinking while watching that video, just how hard it would be to learn and memorize at the same time…. But the funny thing is, for people who habitually memorize, even beginners, that’s probably what they’re doing.

That's what I do indeed. But what happens when I do that, is that at some point halfway I keep practicing/playing/perfecting the part I already learned, because it's never good enough, but even more because it's more fun than learning and memorizing the other half of the piece, so I think, I'll do that tomorrow. And tomorrow I think, well maybe not now, maybe I'm a bit too tired for it now. Tomorrow is better.

@keystring thank you for quoting @Sgisela because I had read that post originally (a week ago?) but now, after all this discussion, my own thinking etc., returning to Sgisela's ideas is a great reminder!

Esp this:

Sgisela He had some very concrete recommendations for approaching memorization. 1. Work on small chunks — maybe a few measures. 2. Start with the music, then try to play from memory, then go back to the music and read through the phrase. Continue this (alternating between memory and the music) until every note in the small section is memorized. Then expand the section or work on the next section, but always alternate between reading the sheet music and memorization (I think this will actually help to not have the problem of feeling that you can’t continue to work both from the sheet music and from memory, which others have described). 3. There are several aspects to memory, and each is important. They include a. Visual memory — both the visual memory of the notes on the score and the visual memory of the appearance of the phrase on the keyboard (what does it look like your hands are doing?) b. Kinetic memory — how are you moving between notes/chords? C. Aural memory - how the phrase sounds; my notes from the lesson say “hear the ‘song’ of the phrase,” d. Conceptual memory - what is the structure of the music? Chord progression, etc. my lesson notes are, “ it is Impossible to memorize without understanding a phrase” and “Transitions can be perilous; it is important to understand these.” And finally e. Technical memory. Lesson notes: “technical failures often causes memory slips.” Make sure you are technically secure. As you memorize a section, you need to pay attention to each of these things and memorize each of these aspects.

I added bold to make those categories pop out... I feel like I want to print out a list with just those categories! For one thing, it really makes it easy for me to look through those elements and target the ones I'm better at, and the ones I'm worse at.

Re this:

The recommendation was also that if you are planning to work on memorizing a piece in its entirety, it is beneficial to do so from the beginning so that you incorporate all aspects of memorization before the purely kinetic memory sets it (and you will be over-reliant on ‘muscle memory’). He also recommended memorizing hands together as much as possible.

This also makes a lot of sense to me... despite what I said about it being difficult to think about learning how to play at the same time as learning the piece. I am sure that in my own playing, by the time I've learned the piece, my "memory" of the music is based on a lot of muscle memory and also on cues from the score, and so it surely must be harder at that point to engage those other aspects of memory.

Lastly, it seems clear that even when we don't plan on memorizing a whole piece, using selective memorization (of a tricky passage, of a part where mistakes frequently crop up etc.) is a key technique that us "habitual readers" can really benefit from.

I'm super excited to apply these ideas to my recital pieces and also to the "hard piece" I started with all the four-note chords I keep playing wrong!

twocats I'm not going to do chord analysis in the sense that my friend is doing-- as in "what's happening relative to the key". His chord analysis layer in forScore showed I, IV, VI, etc. Since he majored in piano performance he says all that is second nature to him, but that's like adding a non-trivial math step to me. But I can recognize a simple chord on its own without much effort, as in "that's an E major chord".

On the I IV V type of analysis. This is helpful if your music is rather diatonic. Like IV are the 4th, 6th, 8th note of a major scale in that key - in a minor key you could have IVm (or iv). But what if the music uses notes and chords not in that key (so, not diatonic)? Although very often we do have these, maybe with others interspersed: I (stuff, stuff) IV (other stuff) V - kind of like a rough framework of the general path of the music.

But then, even if your music does have that kind of structure, you have to already know them - you must be able to recognize what key the music is in (at that moment) and be able to recognize those principle chords.

I just finished working on a piece my teacher wrote to make the pattern of the "Tristan chord" (sequence) more apparent to students; kept "simple". It's an A B A' B' type pattern where all the A's are block chords, all the B's are like broken chords. There is a level of memorization just knowing this first fact. But the 2nd thing is that it is not diatonic - deliberately. the I IV V doesn't happen except maybe somewhat at the very end.

I did, however, memorize the pattern in the A sections, and that did help me. There are different kinds of patterns in music, which is why I thought of this little piece.

This isn't polished. I put it together shortly after getting the notation, but it might give an idea. I'm thinking of other types of patterns.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q3duahrhe91p8mo6sd63p/25.03.24a-Chr-Tristan-Pastels.mp3?rlkey=zvhr4oxlu1wmg244jtjxs8wep&dl=0

The pattern starts: Em7b5 (half diminished), E7b5, Eb7b5, Eb7 ...... new sequence: Gm7b5, G7b5, F#7b5, F#7 ... new sequence Bbm7b5.... etc.
Or the pattern is: half diminished chord (Em7b5), raise the 3rd so G to G# for the E7b5, do that same chord a semitone lower, turn it into a straight Dom7 (E7) by raising the 5th ..... do not resolve E7 normally (would be to an A) - instead start the whole cycle again starting a major 3rd higher.

This is the pattern I memorized. It's type of chord with one or two notes sliding over to form a different type of chord, and knowing that pattern. It would be a short step to memorizing the whole thing. The first Chopin I ever did, the Am Prelude, I learned how one chord note slides down to form the next chord note for much of it, and that helped me play the piece. I'd have memorized it more easily had I planned to do that.

I wrote yesterday about my beginnings, where mostly I simply had that book of sonatinas. They were very formulaic: esp. the Clementis. I was predicting what would come next. At that point I picked up patterns without knowing the names of anything, like a child learns to speak grammatically, but might end up saying "I knowed" instead of "I knew".

ShiroKuro I think you are right that there's a close connection between sight reading and what you call read- playing which is commonly called just reading. They're both related to one's ability to read notes with sight reading just being the first time. It would be very rare for a person to be a good reader but a lousy sight reader or vice versa. And I think it's also almost universally true that the more one plays a piece the less one is very closely following the score because the piece becomes semi memorized so following the score very closely becomes less necessary since one starts using aural memory and finger memory.

Memorizing music doesn't have to be forced. If you know a tune well and how the LH accompaniment is put together, you can sit down and play it without thinking about the song or practice it for a week to get it into your head.

There are several Pop songs I've learned that are arranged in a simple way. Once I was invited to a gathering and played a Pop song by ear without the sheet. It's not my favorite song but nonetheless the arrangement is very simple with LH arpeggios throughout. Once you learned the sequence, the rest are just repetitions.

There was a video by the piano teacher Jazer Lee from Australia. He said that people who appear in a talent show like "America's Got Talent" or "Britain's Got Talent" wouldn't perform on stage with sheet music. Otherwise the performer would look unprofessional.

When I started learning violin in strings class, everybody around me had to learn to read and played from the sheet. I assumed this is the norm but soon discovered that I was a natural memorizer. Over the years I've seen many student performance videos. Some are really good readers. Their eyes are locked to the sheet while playing expressively. Others play well without the sheet. When I was young, I thought that reading off the sheet was the only way to play pieces. Over the years I've played pieces at gatherings and on public pianos without reading a note. Today I'd play mostly from memory although I carry a lot of music PDF files on my phone just in case.

Depending on the way a piece is arranged, some pieces are just easier to memorize. Anything with a lot of repeated notes, chords or intervals is easy to remember. A piece like Bach Prelude in C out of WTC Book 1 is an easy piece to memorize simply because of the repetition. A piece out of Bach 2-part Inventions such as #4 or #8 is challenging to remember dispite playing just 2 notes at a time (1 on each hand). A piece like the Bourrée out of Lute Suite #1 (BWV996) in "First Lessons in Bach" is relatively easy to memorize. The piece has 2 lines (1 for each hand) except for the ending chord..

twocats
A piece can be easy or hard based on the repetitions. Having few or many notes doesn't automatically make a piece easier or harder.

You can be playing intervals or chords that are repeted throughout the piece makes it easier. Some pieces can look easy without many notes but the fingerings can be challenging. Pieces with overlapping notes played with the same hand is more difficult to remember. A few years ago I learned a Sarabande from a Handel suite.with Variation A & B after the main theme. The main theme has chords that are easy to remember. Var A is a bit tricky because of overlapping notes where you'd hold a note and play others on top.

A while ago I learned a piano arrangement of a movie theme. There are a few chords & jumps throughout the piece. Otherwise it has a lot of repetitions that made the piece easier to remember. After a few weeks of practice, I was able to play it on a public piano with ease. 1 aspect of "repetition" is the music being repetitive. The other is you repeating phrases many times to lock in the notes & finger sequences (muscle memory(.