Passion

Those who know me well know that I suffer from an addiction to any Gordon Ramsay show. Don't ask why, because I don't have the answer. During his programs, Ramsay repeatedly refers to chef's passions. If a chef doesn't cook to a high standard, Ramsay will often ask if the chef has "lost his passion."

I've puzzled over this for some time. What is passion? And how does a lousy meal mean that a chef has "lost his passion?" Does Ramsay mean that the chef has lost a commitment to excellence?

The creation of this blog has helped to define my passion. I've always been an avid practicer, but writing about my practice has made me realize the extent of my passion. Even more so, quantifying my daily practice with my online practice log has shown me how much work I put into my passion. If passion is defined by quantity of work, I certainly have a lot of passion!

But this isn't about quantity. It's about quality, and this blog has influenced the quality of my practice time. I went from knowing (and writing about) what is good for me to consistently implementing what is good for me. If I had passion before I started this blog, then it is now tenfold.

We can always do what we do better, and we should always improve what we do. For me, memorization was something that was missing from my performing life, and I knew deep inside that I could do better. Is it "better" to play from memory? I think so, and I believe that audiences think so. 

If you have passion for what you do, you will always refine what you do. Passion has forced me to work even harder at my performing. If you are passionate about what you do as a musician, you must always work harder.

What is your passion, and what are you doing about it?

CONCLUSIONS: A summary of HOW

Writing a concluding summary to a blog seems counterintuitive to the dynamic nature of blogs. Likewise, writing a concluding summary to a blog on memorization seems counterintuitive to the dynamic nature of memorization.

Throughout the entire process of writing this blog, I kept coming back to some very basic concepts. Going forward, I can't imagine working without these fundamental elements:

• practice log
• timer
• metronome
• landmarks.

As I continued to write, I found that, while I had been using these elements consistently, my application of them was in constant need of refinement. I also found that, at times, I was sorely lacking in one of the most discipline-challenging parts of any memorization practice:

• mental work away from the instrument.

In the coming days, months, and years, I am sure that I will continue to refine my approach to memorization. I don't every think it will get easier, but I do think that I'll get better at it. Will I memorize faster? I hope so, although another main concept of my approach is:

• patience.

It's not about speed; it's about quality. This becomes especially apparent when returning to pieces that have been put aside for some time.

Above all, it's important to know that you and I will continue to find new memorization techniques along the way. These will be applied to what we're working on at the moment, and they will be applied to works that we're bringing back to life. Just as I improved from my early lapse experiences, we can continue to improve further down the path.

There is always more to learn.

Memorizing Bach and his fugues

Along with some music of the 20th and 21st centuries, there's not much music more difficult to memorize than that of J.S. Bach. As a keyboardist, I write from experience, and I know that other instrumentalists and singers also find Bach to be among the most difficult music to memorize. I don't want to speculate too much on why this is, but, as a case in point, I can honestly write that it takes me about twice as long to memorize a Bach movement than it takes me to memorize, say, Handel or Couperin. And it easily takes me about four times as long to memorize a Bach fugue.

In conservatory, I was taught to memorize Bach fugues by memorizing each voice separately. I remember doing this. It was absolutely nuts. I also vaguely remember bringing two voices together, then three, in all manners of possibilities. This was a long and arduous process, and, today, I really question the musicality and practicality of this approach.

Today, I memorize Bach fugues just as I memorize other works. I use my landmarks, metronome, practice log, mental work away from the instrument--you know, all those good habits. This entire process is intensified by the fact that Bach, unlike so many contrapuntal composers, accounts for every single fugal voice with striking regularity. (Handel's fugues, in contrast, are much more informal, with dropped lines and voices that don't follow through from their starting points.) In this memorization process, one doesn't just memorize notes or chords. For Bach, each note is part of a line that is carried throughout the entire composition; each line is a living entity that is co-dependent upon the other voices in the fugue. That, my friends, is the highest level of contrapuntal writing!

When I performed Bach fugues from score, the learning process did not require me to know what each voice was doing. I intellectually understood that I should be aware of the voice leading, but, since I wasn't memorizing the music, really understanding and committing to the counterpoint wasn't essential. At that time, I played fugues with a certain level of indifference to the compositional process.

Memorization has forced a new respect for Bach's fugues. The number of voices has become paramount to the learning process, something that wasn't so much the case when working from score. Once memorized, there are always new discoveries in the relationships between the voices. This can be a distraction on stage, especially when hearing something differently for the first time...in front of a live audience! For this and for so many other reasons, I consider Bach fugues to be the hardest things to memorize and, once memorized, perform.

Aside from the techniques already described, there's not much advice I can give to learning fugues any quicker than the very slow route. I do advise, however, thinking of the appearance of fugue subjects and answers as landmarks and mnemonics. Along with larger phrases, fugal entrances can make good landmarks. At the very least, the performer should know the placement of each and every one. 

Fugue subjects and answers can also be thought of as mnemonics behind the foreground of other material that's developing. In my earlier Wikipedia quote, mnemonics are used when "the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise 'relatable' information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information." If we think of a fugue subject or answer as a spatial or physical element, we can concentrate more on the activity around it, thus aiding the memorization process.

I know, these are tough thoughts to consider. But, I assure you, memorizing Bach fugues is much harder! Good luck.

Dr. Bell asks a question

All around nice-guy composer Larry Bell left this comment on this blog some time ago:

There is something that I would like to see you explore in a future post: how do we keep pieces alive (and memorized) that we have played from memory in concert. Most conservatory musicians learn to play the same pieces again and again and then the few who become professional are encouraged, I believe, to play that same safe set of pieces repeatedly. (Management assumes that the public wishes to hear the music that they already know.) In addition, there is a common complaint among music teachers that playing in competitions where one is expected to play it safe is not a good thing for music; technique being valued over substance, etc. Any thoughts about keeping pieces in one's memory for months or years would be most interesting to hear.

I already addressed part of Larry's question in my previous post, but I'll expand on it a little bit. If you've memorized well, then it shouldn't take much effort at all to bring back pieces. If you've memorized impatiently, then it's going to be a longer road. (Remember my story about the colleague who worked so fast that he memorized wrong notes?) Obviously, it's hard to memorize patiently when under the gun of the conservatory. 

With proper documentation of landmarks, metronome markings, and more in your practice log, it shouldn't take too long to bring back a program. More to the point, if you've been documenting well, then you already have a strong foundation. To that end, I don't think one has to keep pieces in memory for months or years. Besides, why would one want to? I'd be more concerned with getting bored with the repertoire. For that reason, I always recommend time away. Even if management is asking for the same pieces over and over again, you'd be better off letting them sleep for a bit and then bringing them out when needed, as detailed in my previous post.

Larry's comment makes me think of the great pianist Shura Cherkassky. I had the pleasure of meeting him several times in the years before his death in 1995. (One encounter involved a rather strange weekend in New York, where I spent the night with a friend at Stephen Hough's apartment after attending Shura's Carnegie Hall recital with, among others, composer Lowell Liebermann. Somewhere along the way, I teased Shura too much about something or other, and he punched me in the leg so hard that I can still feel it. Don't ask. It was a strange weekend.)

Shura Cherkassky, long before he punched me in the leg.

The first time I met Shura, my friends and I drove him back to his hotel after he played at Ravinia. On his hotel room practice piano was a score for some just-published Ligeti Études. Shura continued to learn new music well into his final years. Not only did this keep him young, I'm sure, but it also contributed to his extensive repertoire. 

That all said, we can chose to be musicians who only know a limited repertoire, or we can be lifelong learners. What will make you a more interesting person and musician?

SOME FOOTNOTES: Resuscitating a program

You've now performed your recital several times, and you've put the program to sleep for months or even years. Now you can get back to learning new music! But the day will come when you'll want to resuscitate your pieces, most likely for a performance. How should you go about this?

While I think it's a good idea to always have a piece or two ready to play for people, I don't feel that it's necessary to keep an entire program ready to go at all times. Not only does this make for tedious work (and, hence, tedious performances), there also isn't enough time in the day to keep all of those balls in the air. 

If you've done your memorization work well, bringing back repertoire shouldn't be much trouble at all. In my case, I started my return-to-memory only a few years ago, so when I revisit some of my early pieces, I find that I didn't memorize them that well. This makes for extra work that I'd rather not be doing just before a recital. But, in your case, you've been following this blog, so I'm sure that you're only working with good habits!

All kidding aside, I find that no matter what I bring back requires new work. Interpretation is not a fixed thing, and your interpretation will change from the time you put a piece to sleep till when you wake it up again. Memorization-wise, your own memorization techniques and abilities will always be improving, so you might find that your process from just a few years ago is very different from what it is now. 

Because of this, I tend to wake up a previously played program about five or six weeks before a performance. This allows time to apply any new interpretive ideas while also giving me enough time to bring the program back to memory. At this point, I'm not practicing the program at full capacity; that won't happen till about two or three weeks before the performance. But some light practice is a good way to assess what has changed in my conception of the program and if any memory and technical issues are appearing.

In the run-up to a revisted recital program, I go back to the places in my practice log from when I originally worked on the program. This reminds me of landmarks, metronome and optimal tempo markings, and practice skills for each piece. If I've documented everything well, the resuscitation process is surprisingly fast, and it can be quite fun.

All in all, good memorization practice should result in easy resuscitation down the road. And that's why I've been preaching patient learning!

Practicing for performance

I've already established that a piece and, in turn, a recital is never truly ready. There will always be room for improvement. The more we work at what we do, the more we are critical with what we do. 

This is not to say that we shouldn't be working towards a goal of "ready to go." There is a point at which you have to decide that your interpretation and knowledge of a piece must crystallize for the sake of your performance. You don't want to go on stage with lingering doubts about your interpretation.

I tend to reach this crystallization stage about three or four weeks before a recital. Even if I'm in doubt about the interpretation of a particular piece, I must stop trying to make it work, and I have to set my mind to making a convincing performance. Of course, at this stage, I already have a pretty solid interpretation, but sometimes I find that a tempo just hasn't settled or that I still have some questions about rubato. Whatever the case, the experimentation must stop at this stage, because I need to be working on the performance--not the interpretation.

As I write this, I'm preparing a performance that's about three weeks away. Since I already played the program before, I started a light review two weeks ago. Last week, I began seriously revisiting the program. Due to its length and complexity (and in spite of already having played the program), I've put all other repertoire on hold. 

In returning to the program, I noticed some issues with tempi and interpretation. (Thankfully, the memory retention has been quite solid.) In order to address those issues, I spent all of last week and this week focusing on the program in that capacity. But next week, I need to start reigning in that corrective work and settle into a state of assuredness about my interpretations. I'm sure that the next time I prepare this particular recital, I'll find new issues to address. It's always an uphill battle!

As I approach the recital (and the same could be said for practice recitals), I know that there isn't enough time in the day for me to go over every single piece with the same amount of detail. I like to touch on every piece every day, so I'll develop a pattern of alternating types of work. A day might look like this:

• Pieces A, C, E, G, I: do mental work from landmarks with metronome.
• Pieces B, D, F, H, J: play slowly from landmarks with metronome; play at tempo with metronome; play without metronome.

I'll alternate this pattern the following day so that I cover everything equally. As the recital approaches, I'll try to stay off of the metronome for the at-tempo work, just so that I become more reliant upon my inner metronome. Likewise, I'll keep up with the slow metronome work for the sake of technique. Most important throughout this entire process is the mental work. I never stop doing this. The mental practice isn't just about memorization. It's also about confidence in interpretation.

As ever, it's really important to keep reassessing your daily practice goals. If you establish a pattern such as the one above, it's far too easy to let it become a habit instead of intelligent, thoughtful practice. To that end, don't forget to list your daily goals in your practice log while working towards total presence in your own practice. Your practice habits, including total presence, will manifest themselves on stage, so be wise!

The Inner Game

What about the Inner Game? (Maybe you're asking, "What is the Inner Game?")

I mentioned the Inner Game very early in this blog, but I didn't address it at that time. The "Inner Game" comes from a book on tennis playing in which author Timothy Gallwey discussed "that which takes place in the mind, played against such elusive opponents as nervousness, self doubt, and fear of failure." Gallwey's approach to tennis playing eventually led to a collaboration with musician Barry Greene and the creation of The Inner Game of Music.

My interpretation of the Inner Game is that it's the little voice running in your head when you're performing. It happens when there's music in front of you, and it happens when you're playing by heart. With music, it can be a big distraction; without music, it can be deadly. Sometimes, it's a negative voice reminding you of how nervous you are. Other times, it's a positive voice telling you that things are going really well--after which you invariably make a mistake. The Inner Game will never really go away, so you must learn how to manage it and, if possible, have it work for you. Giving practice performances is an excellent way to find out exactly how your Inner Game is affecting your ability to play from memory. Just like memorization, you need not be afraid of it. You just have to harness it.

In the practice room, the Inner Game is an entirely different problem. Normally, you're not nervous in the practice room--unless you're using one of the practice techniques I discussed in an earlier post. For this reason, the practice room Inner Game is more about the wandering mind. I'm an expert at the wandering mind in the practice room! This is another reason I use a practice log. Should something important come to mind while I'm practicing, I'll jot it down in the log as soon as possible. This has the dual effect of getting it out of my mind while also helping me to remember it later on. My use of landmarks also helps to keep my wandering mind at bay. By working in small sections, I don't have to have a long attention span, and my wandering opportunities are minimized.

All in all, it's of utmost importance to recognize the Inner Game when it's occurring, both on stage and off stage. Because what goes on in the practice room invariably influences what happens on stage, it's imperative that you are not feeding the Inner Game by allowing your mind to wander without any sort of discipline or awareness. And aside from the distracting factor of the Inner Game, you also want to be totally present when you're playing. After all, that's what you've been working so hard to do!

Mental techniques

Now that you've made it through the early stages of memorization, you've already got some good mental practice techniques. (By "mental," I mean "away from the instrument.") You also know that mental practice is essential to successfully playing by heart. With your regular mental practice, you will maintain and improve your visual, aural, and, to some extent, tactile memories.

The difficulty at this stage--well, with any stage, really--is to sustain freshness and alertness while doing what you have to do to keep a piece internalized. In order to be fresh and alert, you need to keep some variety in your practice. Otherwise, you might find yourself in thoughtless routine, and that could lead to some unfortunate surprises when you bring your piece out in public. Because I'm least motivated when it comes to mental practice, I find that this is the area where I have to be the most conscious about finding variety in my practice. 

Leapin' landmarks!

You've already read about some of my mental practice techniques. I do a lot with landmarks. For example, I might leapfrog landmarks, visualizing A then C then E, eventually returning to B then D then F, and so on. It's much more common for me to work backwards, starting at the end and then working, in reverse order, through each landmark. On the whole, I try to do this work with metronome, sometimes well below tempo and other times at or near my optimal tempo. (Oddly enough, my optimal mental tempo is usually a few clicks slower than my optimal performance tempo. I'm not quite sure why this is, but it could be that I'm more careful (i.e., less tactile) when I'm working a piece mentally.)

If I'm short on time or I really feel confident about a piece, I'll just review the starting points of each landmark. From there, I might go to play the piece directly. (I'll write about playing techniques for this stage in my next post.) Generally speaking, my mental work at this stage takes less time than the playing work--but that doesn't mean it's no less important. 

As I become more and more confident in my mental work and the playing of the piece, I might alternate days of mental work and days of playing work. This is not so much about time constraints as it is about keeping things fresh and varied. Also, by taking a day off from playing in favor of a day of mental work, new interpretive insights will emerge from the silence.

There's really an endless variety of ways to diversify your mental practice. The most important thing is to keep it varied and to make sure that your choices are conscious. For those reasons, I continue to work with a practice log, a timer, daily goals, a metronome...you know, all of those good habits. This isn't to say, however, that I don't enjoy the occasional unplanned mental practice session on the beach, in moments of insomnia, or in walking meditation.

With so many options available, what are some other mental practice techniques that you can think of? Post your comments here!

Respect!

In a previous post ("Daily routine, with variety"), I discussed the need to keep variety in one's daily practice. It's far too simple to do the same thing day after day. Now that you've got a foundation and you've entered this middle stage, it's time to reassess your daily routine. (Of course, I advocate this reassessment on a daily basis, but this middle stage will require a higher level of assessment. You're in a new place now!)

With your solid foundation, you'll find that you don't have to do the same thing every day. There's nothing wrong with just playing your pieces, and you should not feel obligated to do mental work and landmark work every day. At the same time, you don't want to let your foundation slide, so you might want to alternate days of mental/landmark work with "performance" days. Whatever you do, let your planning and decision making be conscious, and avoid letting routine become a crutch.

You've only got so much time in your practice day, so it's still important to keep working with a timer and a practice log--especially when you've got to maintain your discipline with other pieces you're working on. It's so easy to get excited when you're finally able to play an entire piece after having spent so much time crawling through those early stages of memory! With that in mind, you need to remember that this middle stage is still a stage in the learning process.

I write these thoughts from experience. If you've read the early part of this blog, you'll remember that I had a number of significant lapse experiences when I returned to memorization practice after so many years away. What was missing from my work was a respect for this middle stage. I had quickly memorized my pieces (the early stage, but much too fast) and then naively paraded them out in performance without respecting the need to establish a firm post-memorized foundation.

After spending so much time to memorize your piece, the unfortunate fact is that you're just not there yet. If you embrace this stage as a learning stage, however, you will approach the concert stage with the confidence of knowing that you can, indeed, play by heart. Hang in there.

Daily routine, with variety

This blog was started in May, the beginning of my summer practice season. Since I've only had one concert this summer, I've been using the season to set groundwork on a lot of new pieces. This has meant that my practice has been almost exclusively about establishing, as opposed to retaining, memory.

I'm nearing the end of this section of the blog ("In For the Long Haul"), so it might be

valuable for readers to see what I do on a daily basis while most of my practice is about establishing memory. Once the fall arrives, I'll still use most, if not all, of these techniques, but my relatively pure practice schedule will be muddied by the need to prepare for performances. If I haven't written it before, I'll write it now: I much prefer the learning process over the performing process! But more on that in subsequent chapters...

I begin my daily practice routine by writing down my goals for the day. This gives me a sense of what I'm going to do, of course, but it also helps me come up with a realistic time frame, and it keeps me from practicing with little regard for my own endurance. Breaks need to be scheduled!

Currently, my daily goals include several numeric indications:

• a ratio-like marking, such as 15:10, indicating for me that I'll do 15 minutes of mental work and 10 at the instrument;
• metronome markings, usually one for mental and one for instrumental work.

By creating daily goals, I can work toward creating variety in my practice. It's so easy to get stuck in a routine, and routines result in unproductive practice. I often find inspiration for variety by looking at my notes from the previous practice session. I can not stress enough the need to maintain thoughtful, varied practice, and establishing your daily goals is a very good way to do this.

I like to use a table for mental practice. I used to use the sofa, but my poor posture equaled poor results. My practice space also includes a music stand. The stand sits next to the instrument, and it's where my score sits when a piece is becoming really solid. This assures that my eyes aren't on any music, but it allows me to easily refer to the score if I get into trouble.

At the earliest stages of memory, I'm either working completely away from the instrument, or I'm dividing my time between mental and instrument work. I work by landmarks, as I've already written about. If you've attempted to interpret my online practice log, you might have seen that I like to jump around a lot with my landmarks. This is part of my drive for variety in practice. If I were to always start from the beginning, I wouldn't be developing a fully dimensional understanding of the piece.

One of my big summer challenges has been the third movement of Bach's D minor Concerto. It's quite long, and there's a lot of just-about-but-not-really-repeated material. That's very Bach! With this movement, I've had to take landmarks to the next level. Because so much of the musical material seems repeated, I've classified the landmarks into several categories:

• those that resemble the first half of the ritornello;
• those that resemble the second half of the ritornello;
• those that follow a deceptive cadence;
• completely original episodes.

Since I used letters for my landmarks, these groupings look like this:

• A, D, [F, G], J, L, P, T
• [B, C], E, O, P
• H, M
• [I, I1], [K, K1], [M, N, N1], [Q, R, S]

Earlier in my learning process, I would play each landmark up to four times, stopping when I felt that the landmark was minimally acceptable. I'd write that number down in my log with the goal of reducing that number over subsequent practice sessions. At this point, I've got all of the landmarks down pretty well, so I'm working towards differentiating each by grouping, thus creating a mental map of the movement. I'm also working towards playing the entire movement slowly with that map in mind.

My description of the Bach movement isn't really intended to be understood by you. It's there to show you some of the ways I use variety to keep my practice fresh as I march towards the goal of total memorization. 

One of the great challenges in the early stages of memorization is time. When starting a piece, a lot of time isn't required. You're working mentally, possibly at the instrument, but you can only do so much. But once the piece gets closer to total memorization, you need more time to think through and play through all of the landmarks. Fortunately, once a piece is totally memorized, the time window contracts, and you'll need less time. This reality may make you want to stagger your work so that everything isn't reaching maximum time at the same time. 

In my own summer routine, I've found myself needing more and more time for practice as many of my pieces have reached their maximum time at the same time. For this reason, I've now dropped a few pieces for the time being and also relaxed some of my goals for the season.

The long and winding road

In my previous post, I admitted that I didn't really enjoy working away from the instrument. As true as that is, the fact remains that I haven't been doing much of it at all. Up until now, I've started my work at the instrument and then made my way to working away from the instrument--quite begrudgingly.

Since starting this blog a few months ago, my practice techniques and the quality of my practice have skyrocketed. From posting an online practice log to dissecting my day-to-day good and bad habits, my practice keeps getting better and better. I was aware that I had a passion for music, but I had never quantified it in such an analytical way. I knew that this is what I do, but I was never so acutely aware of how intense this is.

One obstacle to putting down my thoughts in a "how to" manner is that the reader might assume that I know exactly "how to." My own success at memorization has given me a vantage point, however that vantage point is still one of renewal and discovery. Memorization-wise, I may be far ahead of those who play from score, but I'm still far behind those who've been doing this much longer than I.

My previous post, on mental practice, ended with this paragraph:

What about learning a score completely away from the instrument? Why not? It's something practiced by many musicians, and I've been incorporating more and more of this type of practice into my own routine.

If truth be told,  the process of writing that post and coming to that final paragraph raised a big red flag for me: I haven't been doing enough mental practice. More so, I'm not so convinced that some of the techniques I've written about, namely repetitious practice, should take place before mental practice commences. I'm doubting if one should even touch the instrument before having spent a lot of time with a score away from the instrument.

If you've kept up with this blog, you may have surmised that I write the posts a few weeks in advance of their publication. This gives me a little leeway to take time off and also to proofread my writing before it's posted. This post is being written on July 26. Before today, my last day of practice was July 22, as I took a few days off for a short vacation. 

On July 22, I reached a crisis with my practice: Was I doing it all wrong? I've been writing about a solid foundation at the instrument, and, until now, I hadn't thought too much about starting with mental practice. Thankfully, I had a few days off, and I resumed my practice today with a new verve.

As I've stated multiple times in this blog, there is more than one way to memorize music. After all, it's your brain, and you need to do what's best for you. I've also stated that the process of memorizing music will make you a better musician. It forces self-analysis. 

And so I start again with some new thoughts on my approach to memorization practice. I've developed a ratio system for my repertoire, trying to keep mental work at a 2:1 or 3:2 ratio to work at the instrument. I'm trying to be more conscious of my work by writing down daily goals and keeping my practice approach varied. Just as professional athletes need to switch up their workouts, we musicians need to, too. 

One of my pieces, the second movement of Bach's D minor Concerto, is now being practiced completely away from the instrument. I'm going to make sure that I can "hear" it before working at the instrument. If I were to continue as I had been, I would just be repeating passages over and over in an attempt to develop aural memory. It makes a whole lot more sense to do this away from the instrument. I suspect very strongly that the learning process will be much faster, too.

Today's practice session was very quiet. I played very little, and the only constant sound was a metronome. When I returned to the instrument after so much silence, I was reawakened to the timbre and expressive possibilities of the instrument. Mental practice made my playing much more special and less routine. My ear was rejuvenated!

I'm sure that I'll arrive at another crisis point in good time. In the meantime, consider that this "how to" guide is from the perspective of one who doesn't have all the answers.

Efficiency in practicing

Gene Moy, a grade school friend who recently became aware of this blog and my online practice log, led me to the University of Connecticut's Music Performance Lab. At their website, you'll find SYMP, "Study Your Music Practice," a software tool that facilitates empirical study of music practice techniques.

Click here to view SYMP.

By helping musicians to study themselves, as well as their colleagues and students, we hope to learn more about what musicians actually do when they practice. We expect that empirical study of music practice will lead to strategies for making practice more effective and rewarding, and less frustrating and time consuming.

This is practice log maximus! Go Huskies!

Landmarks

You now have your practice log, and now it's time to get organized. The practice log does more than just remind you of what pieces you've practiced and what you need it do. It also helps you keep track of landmarks.

Landmarks are, in short, rehearsal letters. (Orchestral players know what these are, but keyboardists may not. These are editorial letters in scores so that the conductor can tell everyone to start at "C" or "D" or wherever. This works beautifully, except when the conductor has a different edition from the rest of the orchestra.)

As you know, solo repertoire doesn't come with rehearsal letters, so you're going to have to make your own. But before getting into how to do that, we should consider why we're doing this at all.

Landmarks are those places to where you'll jump backward or forward when you have a memory lapse. (I write "when" because it's going to happen sooner or later.) Landmarks need to be in logical places, and they also have to be in places where you'll be able to make a seamless transition. In other words, landmarks should be where phrases naturally rest. Yes, it's really important to know the music theory behind your score, but you don't necessarily need to know the theory to find the phrases. Use your ear and your instinct.

Placing landmarks is kind of fun, because it's nice to see a piece break up into manageable sections. Sometimes, in a piece with which I'm very familiar, I'm able to mark landmarks right away. But if I don't know a piece too well, I'll add landmarks much more carefully, only marking them out as I work my way through the memorization of the piece.

Sometimes I use actual letters, but the problem with letters is this: They're much too firm. For instance, I'm currently working on the third movement of Bach's Concerto in d minor. I finally got around to working on my letter "N," only to find that my "N" was much too long. Since I'd already written "O," the temptation was to just deal with the long "N," and tolerate the fact that this landmark was too big. But that's not good practice! (Remember patience...) So, I ended up creating N1 and N2, a simple solution. More often than not, however, I tend to draw asterisks in my scores. I don't feel a need to enumerate my landmarks; I only need to know that they're there.

Some writers on memorization have said that you should be able to begin playing from anywhere in a piece. They also suggest jumping around in your practice, apparently so that you'll be able to recover from anywhere in the score. But this only confuses matters. Knowing that audiences expect musical phrases, we can assume that musically placed landmarks will help you survive lapses in the most musical manner. Jumping from, say, measure 101 to measure 55 just because you can is not a musical decision. Be logical, be musical.

Once those landmarks are placed--and remember, they can always be changed or moved--, I begin work on the piece. Lately, I've been doing the following: I memorize the final landmark and then go to the first, then the penultimate, then the second. This seems to pace things patiently, and it keeps me from becoming too excited about finishing a piece. Believe me, I've memorized pieces where the last page isn't memorized as well as the rest of the piece. That's happened when I've rushed the process out of impatient excitement. (Well, it is fun to finish a lengthy project!)

In the case of the Bach concerto movement, I've been leapfrogging landmarks (A-C-E-G, etc.). I've gotten to the end of the piece, and now I'm filling in the blanks (ABC, CDE, EFG, and so on). In my just-started C# minor Fugue (Bach: WTC I), I decided to begin on the landmark at the top of each page and work my way down, thus trying to learn four landmarks at a time. While I make many of these choices for the sake of variety in my practice, in the case of the Bach fugue, it's a piece I have never played before nor heard much at all. I don't know where I'll ultimately be putting my landmarks, but, by jumping around, I'm able to keep better musical track of the scope of this five-voice fugue and Bach's magnificent voice-leading.

This brings us to the most important part of landmark work. Once a piece is memorized, one must know the landmarks backwards and forwards. Indeed, knowing the landmarks becomes, in some ways, more important than knowing individual notes. I make sure that I'm able to start from each landmark; that I know where each landmark sits in the score; and that I'm able to visualize each landmark's starting point. When I have a piece memorized and I'm working away from the instrument, I don't visualize the piece from beginning to end. Instead, I work from the last landmark to the first, making sure that I am fully able to be at any section of the piece at any time as needed.

A final work with regard to concertos: In a concerto, you have nowhere to go but forward. The orchestra is dragging you along, but only in the forward direction. But in a solo piece, you can easily get caught in a loop, start over again, or who knows what. In this regard, I tend to think of concertos as being two-dimensional. They can only go in a temporal line from here to there. Solo repertoire is three-dimensional. In a lapse, solo repertoire has the potential to go up, down, left, right, backwards, forwards. Thank God for landmarks!

Those good habits

My last few posts, headed as "working at the instrument," should provide some fairly redundant information for anyone with a good practice discipline. The use of a practice log, metronome, and timer are standard tools for many, if not most, successful musicians. They're mentioned in the context of this blog on memorization practice because, as it was in my case, not memorizing for so many years helped me to neglect some of those good habits that I'd already learned. 

That's not to say that I wasn't using a metronome, practice log, or timer over the years, but it is to say that committing to memorization practice has made those items essential. And as I already posted, returning to memory forced a lot of these good habits to return.

None of the information given so far has, in fact, told the reader how to specifically memorize specific notes. As we'll soon see, there isn't one way, and the memorization process will take on multiple facets--just as there are three, and possibly more, types of memory. 

Because the memorization process is multifaceted, it's best to have as much as possible working for you, and this includes using all of the good habits that you may have already learned. So, take a moment to consider what your good habits are now and what they may have been at one time. Do you have any good habits that I haven't already mentioned? Post them here! (You can even post your bad habits, if you'd like.)

A Timer

The next step to making your practice focused, efficient, and patient is to use a timer. Call me nuts, but I time every bit of my practice. Call me compulsive, but I even time my breaks. (For the record, this post is being written during a one-hour break from the instrument.)

As you can see with my online practice log, I'm pretty precise about how much time I devote to each piece I'm working on. (I summarized some of my approach to timings here.)

So, what's up with the timer?

The timer works at both ends of the practice spectrum: it moderates the exciting moments, when one want to keep on working while avoiding everything else, and it forces those moments when one might not be so motivated. Let's begin by looking at the first end of the spectrum.

When I'm really excited about a piece, it's easy to go on and on. It's easy to ignore all of the other things on my plate, and, before I know it, all of my practice time is gone for the day. For me, the worst thing is when I practice a piece so much that I don't feel like practicing it the next day--or anything else the next day, for that matter. To this end, the timer keeps everything in moderation.

Let's face it: memorization practice (or any practice, really) is hard work. It's not always the most fun thing, and it's easy to get distracted with other things, such as email, phone calls, or writing a blog about memorization. The timer keeps limits while also making obligations. 

It's important to know, before beginning the practice session, how much time you have. From there, divide up your time. Don't forget breaks! Use a timing and stick to it. (You can always change it the next day.) My advice, if you're doing this for the first time, is to work with shorter timings. You'll be pleasantly surprised to see how much you've accomplished in a short amount of focused time. If you have a smartphone, you most certainly have a timer with your clock app. (You probably also have a stopwatch--another important tool.) Set it and use it!

A timer helps you to know your limits. It forces patience, and it forces you to do a little each day instead of too much one day and nothing the next. As Aesop wrote, "Slow and steady wins the race."

I haven't written yet about how to exactly memorize notes, but repetition is a large part of the process. Repetition practice can be redundant, and redundancy results in thoughtless and inattentive practice. With a timer, one can address the need for repetition practice while avoiding spending too much time in redundant practice. 

In a typical day for me, I try to practice around three hours. I might start first thing in the morning with two 30-minute sessions and then a 30-minute break. Because I'm most creative in the morning, I really need to set the timer for my breaks. Otherwise it's too easy to get caught up in my break activity. And since my break activity is often at the computer, it's really, really easy to lose a sense of time. 

Until I started using a timer regularly, I simply couldn't practice in the afternoon due to inattentiveness and lack of motivation. Knowing this, I'd squeeze everything in before lunch, with short breaks and a mad dash to the finish. But the timer has helped me to pace my work better, and, with short practice blocks, I can easily continue into the afternoon. 

The timer is my solution for disciplined practice. Do you have one? Leave a comment, and let me know what it is!

Online practice log

My conservatory piano teacher Michael Ruiz used to say that he wanted to own a Victorian house where all of his students would live. I suppose this meant that he would be available for coaching at any time and that all of the students would improve through semi-supervised hard work and osmosis. 

He would also talk about a scenario in which one student would practice while the another would observe. The logic here was that the practicing student would be forced to be honest and more diligent about using the practice time wisely; the observing student would learn from the practicing student's actions.

Having started this blog not too long ago, I've become increasingly aware that my own work has improved as I've put forth my ideas behind memorization practice. In effect, this public blog has become Ruiz's idealized practice room, with me as the practicing student and you readers as the observers.

After posting about using a practice log, I thought it would be useful to me, and possibly to you, to post my daily practice log to the internet. Not only does this discipline assure that I'll use my log more regularly (yes, dear reader, there have been gaps), it assures that I'll be thinking even harder about what I'm doing each time I'm practicing. I'm thinking of it as a lab/practicum to this blog.

For all I know, no one will make much sense of this online log. (If you do have questions, however, feel free to post them.) For me, it's a useful tool as I strive towards greater awareness in my practice time.

Click here to view the online practice log.

Working at the instrument: the practice log

Earlier in this blog, I listed some basic musicianship skills (i.e., good habits) that resurfaced with my return to memorization practice. A few of them turn up in the next few posts in greater detail.

Practice log
I can not stress enough the importance of good planning and good record keeping. Your practice log is a dated diary of your daily work, listing what you accomplished in your previous session and what you hope to accomplish in the current and future sessions. Use your log to list your goals, problem areas, successes, needs--anything that comes to mind when practicing. (I even use my log to jot down fleeting thoughts that might enter while practicing. Need to buy milk? Write it down quickly, and get that distracting thought out of your head!)

Your practice log will list metronome markings, landmarks, timings, thoughts on musical form, emotional ideas about the music--whatever it is that you feel your practice session needs or will need in the future. If you take a few days off from practice, you'll find that the log is also helpful in reminding you of where you've been and what you need to do.

Each day, before practicing, you will map out your practice session:

• How much time do you have?
• How will you divide your time?
• Based on yesterday's log, what needs to be addressed today?

Some days, the entries are short; other days, they're long. The page below has four days of work. (Don't try to decipher my notes. I'm a slob on paper.)

You might even use spare pages to create a chart of metronome markings with your intended tempo goals and the steps you've been taking to get there. In these cases, I flip back to these charts and update them each day.

When I have a full program to prepare, I'll create a checkoff list indicating which movements I've played at the instrument and which movements I've worked away from the instrument.

Over the years, I've saved my practice logs. I don't really refer to them beyond the moment that I worked on them, but I think they make nice keepsakes of my hard work. I particularly like this entry from a long time ago:

Now go out and splurge for a nice notebook. You might be keeping it for a long time!

Keep walking

After making my way through some baby steps towards a few memorized pieces, I established a few ground rules for future work, and I still follow these rules today:

Above all, program planning is of utmost importance. Memorization takes time, a lot of work, and a lot of maintenance. I have to be extremely careful to choose works that I feel I'll want to play for the rest of my life. Life is short, so why devote it to B-list composers or compositions? More so, why make your audience hear anything but the best? I'm sure that some audience members don't need to hear Bach's Italian Concerto again, but it's a useful

piece for any keyboardist to have in his or her repertoire--and it's an excellent piece of music. Without getting too much into how to build a program, just consider that every piece you commit to memory should be something that you'll play for more than one season. If not, is it really worth your time?

In that same vein and as one who returned to memory after years of playing from score, I focus at least 50 percent of my time on works I've already played. Why reinvent the wheel? If I've already played A-list works successfully years ago with music, why not make them part of my permanent memory? This approach immediately helped me to build some repertoire. In most cases, I've been able to memorize the previously learned (but not memorized!) music in less than half the time of new works. All in all, I try to keep a healthy mix of old and new repertoire, but all with the purpose of committing these works to memory.

Given my unique case, I feel that I have a big gap in the concerto repertoire, so I've also made learning one concerto at a time a top priority. Oh, sure, I have concerto repertoire...but now it's time to memorize it! In conservatory, we musicians are always forced to learn concertos with, quite possibly, little hope of ever playing them in front of an orchestra. But what if that opportunity arises? One never knows, and it would be a real shame to turn down a good opportunity. (As with many thoughts on this blog, this is the sort of thing I was told and taught years ago by my conservatory piano teacher, Michael Ruiz.) 

As discussed in the previous post, patience is extremely important when working towards playing by heart. For this reason, I insist on working pieces in different stages of development. Starting everything from scratch at the same time is deadly to one's patience, focus, and motivation! I'll go into more detail later when I discuss the use of a practice log and a timer, but, to start, a typical practice session for me might include these types of pieces:

• brand new work (30')
• review of almost-completed work (20')
• half-learned concerto movement (40')
• review of ready-to-go work (15')
• start memorizing previously learned work (30')

Again, I'll get more into this when I discuss the practice log, but it's important to note that the "ready-to-go work" takes the least amount of my practice time.

Finally, because memorized repertoire is permanent repertoire, it's a good idea to review what you've spent so much time to learn. It's probably impossible to keep everything fresh, but it's tragic to let your work wither on the vine. Is it possible to keep a full program ready all the time while learning another program? Maybe--although I don't have enough practice time in the day. But it should be possible to keep a half program alive. Since "ready-to-go" pieces take less time to practice, why not play 15 minutes of concert repertoire each day? Keep it ready, keep it fresh. Your audience needs you!

Why, according to me: Chapter Two

Aside from creating some general ideas about the benefits of playing from memory, my return to memorization practice did something for that that was completely unexpected: 

Practicing--with the goal of playing recitals by heart--forced me to recall and follow all of the good things my best teachers taught me! 

In other words, playing from memory forces good habits. 

I quickly learned that, if I don't follow those good habits, I will fall flat on my face in performance. (Remember all of those early lapse experiences? I hadn't yet recalled those good habits from my conservatory days.) This is all to say that not playing from memory for so many years had allowed me to become apathetic in the practice room.

(Let me interject here by stating that I already had a pretty good career as a harpsichordist and general musician. I certainly never considered myself apathetic, and I don't think that my colleagues would have considered me apathetic. However, we musicians must always strive to be better, and doing the bare minimum is never good enough.)

So what were these good habits that resurfaced?

• Written/consistent fingering. (Wasn't it Wanda Landowska who said that fingering is the strategy of the hand?)
• Using a metronome.
• Slow practice.
• Creating a practice log/journal
• Studying the score away from the instrument.
• Playing programs for others before making public appearances.

I did all of these things (more or less) when I practiced to perform from score. But playing from memory has made them essential, indeed, mandatory. 

When I finally get around to the how to part of this blog, I'll go into greater detail about how all of these elements (and more!) figure into my daily practice.