Hands apart

Who needs metaphors when you have reality?

Much earlier in this blog, I commented on the practice of "learning" a piece before committing it to memory. This practice creates a foundation of tactile memory while also confusing the fact that "learned" should also mean "memorized."

In this blog post, the author discusses a technique that I'd forgotten about since my piano years: memorizing hands separately. That, to me, is even more unmusical than memorizing individual voices in a fugue. 

I'll ask again as I've asked numerous times in this blog: What is the ultimate goal of your memorization work? For many memorizing musicians, there is a strong degree of impatience with the process, especially with a conservatory mentality that's not always working in the best interest of the music.

If one is memorizing hands separately, one is truly establishing tactile memory. It can't really be aural memory, because one isn't actually hearing how the piece will sound. It can't be visual memory, because one is presumably not working with the score away from the instrument. Ultimately, this type of memory will fail, if not in performance then in the amount of time it takes to bring a piece back to memory.

As the parable says, a house built on sand will fall under stress. If you're going to make the effort to memorize your music, you really should do it in a way that ensures lasting quality.

A FEW STICKING POINTS: Fear factor

I left off congratulating you on graduating from the middle stages of memorization, but, before going on to the very final stage, I need to address a few items that have gotten swept under the rug. The first one is fear.

Without a doubt, you will experience memory-related fear at some point in your performing life. As a performer, you've already experienced fear and nervousness before going on stage, and you already know not to let that fear take over. You certainly don't want fear to be come so much of an issue that you are unable to perform at all.

Memory-related fear is, for me, a whole different level of performance anxiety. What if I have a lapse--will I come to a complete stop? What if I get caught in a loop and I can't find my way to the end? What if I go completely blank? At this point, I can't even imagine being nervous for a performance from score. (Here's another reason why working towards memory is such a good thing. It raises the bar so that everything but playing from memory seems so much easier. And once you get rid of the memory-related fear, everything is that much easier!)

This admission is not to make anyone too scared to try playing from memory. Think back to the early parts of this blog. Aside from teaching how to memorize, I've been teaching how to create a strong foundation. Think of your landmarks and mnemonics, and think about how you've developed your three memory types so that they work together. You must have confidence in the process, and you must have confidence in your ability to call upon your foundation. 

For this reason, I advocate practice performances. I've already covered them with regard to individual pieces, and I'll return to them when I discuss recital preparation. Your practice performances are a part of the confidence-building process. Even if you are an advanced memorizing performer, you still need to rely on practice performances to work out potential issues that can not be felt alone in the practice room. One of those issues is fear.

So, dim the lights and get ready for some scary stories as I share some of my own fear anecdotes in the next post.

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!

Doing it right

I'll never, ever suggest that there's a right way to do something. I got out of that habit years ago, when I realized that my way was not necessarily a better alternative to the highway.

When I posted about at what stage one should memorize music, I was probably a little too dismissive of the practice of bringing a piece to playing level before memorizing it. In my previous post, I discussed why I work from scratch when starting the memorization process, and I also gave some tips on memorizing a piece once its already "in the fingers."

But what are the advantages of doing what I advise against? That is, what are the advantages of

It might look like an advantage. Is it?

bringing a piece to playing level and then memorizing it? That seems to be what a lot of musicians are doing, so it can't be so bad, right?

Tactile Advantage
The piece is in your fingers, now you just have to commit it to memory.
Aural Advantage
You've played the piece a lot from score--so much that you've brought it to performance level. Now it's in your ears!
Visual Advantage
You've seen the score so many times that you've been able to solidify tactile and aural memory. It shouldn't be hard to visualize the score away from the instrument.

Wow! These are really strong advantages, and, as a write this, I'm wondering if I should take up this method. 

Not so fast!

Look at my previous post...carefully. Presuming you take my advice to heart, you'll see that the process of "learning" a piece and then memorizing it becomes a two-step process. You've taken a lot of time to get a piece up to playing level, and now you have to go back to a crawl in order to bring it to a non-tactile-based memory level. And, unfortunately, your foundation will always be one of tactile memory since that's what sticks before aural and visual memory become certain.

In the end, it may seem that the "play first" method is faster. But, aside from it being a two-step process, it also has the potential of creating an insecure foundation in tactile memory. Just as correcting wrong notes is very difficult when you've already learned them as right notes, undoing tactile memory to create an aural/intellectual foundation will take much time. And even once you're good to go, you may still have concern about your shaky starting foundation.
Take it from one who knows. Practice patience.

Taking an old friend to heart

In a previous post, I suggested that new repertoire needs to be memorized as it is learned, as opposed to learned and then memorized. I also asserted that, if a piece is not memorized, it is not learned.

In my own case, I've been bringing a number of learned-but-not-memorized pieces to memory, although, this summer, most of my learning has been from scratch. While this blog has been mostly dedicated to scratch learning, it does raise the question of how one might memorize a piece that is already in the fingers (or voice) and may have already been performed with score.

As you know, I firmly believe that tactile memory is the weakest form of memory. This is why scratch learning is so important to me, as it keeps tactile memory from taking precedence over intellectual (i.e., visual and aural) memory. However, if you already have a piece in your repertoire--but not memorized--, how are you going to get it memorized?

Begin by approaching the piece as if you don't already know it. After placing your landmarks, spend some days only doing mental practice with a metronome. You might surprise yourself by how much you know; you might also be discouraged by how little you know. In your mental work, establish your landmarks. Be able to see them and hear them cold.

After a few days, set up a daily schedule beginning with mental work followed by work at the instrument. At the instrument, work only from your landmarks--slowly, with a metronome--, and resist the temptation to play through the piece. Are you able to visualize and play the first few notes of each landmark?

You might need some remedial memory work. Use the techniques described previously in

The same could be said for memorization.

this blog. Find patterns in the music. Use analytic techniques to bring you to a greater understanding of the piece. The good news is that you probably already have a strong aural sense of the piece, so don't be afraid to use your ear as much as possible.

When you finally come around to some fairly thorough memorization, play the piece slowly with metronome, but make sure that you are thinking of each landmark before you play it. Congratulations! You've now reached the middle stage of memorization. I'll discuss this stage in the next section of this blog, along with techniques for making your piece ready for performance.

Above all, assume nothing, and make sure that you have approached your old friend with as much care and attention as you've been approaching your new friends.

Those slow pieces

When I first returned to memory work, I started researching memorization techniques on the internet. If you've found this blog through a similar search, you know that there's quite a bit of information out there. (I will say, however, that one of the reasons I'm writing this blog is because most of the information out there is cursory--and, as you know by now, memorization practice is not a cursory endeavor.)

Back then, I came upon a site (reference forgotten) that briefly discussed how to work on slow pieces. The general suggestion was to play them quickly. The logic, as I understood, was to establish tactile memory as a foundation and then eventually slow the piece down to the desired tempo.

You already know my opinion on establishing tactile memory as a foundation! But let's explore what else is wrong with this approach, not only because it applies to slow pieces, but it applies to all repertoire as well.

It is true that learning a slow movement by playing it fast can work. I've done it, although I no longer do it. But what is it we are trying to achieve?

By learning and playing slow pieces quickly, we are affecting the manner in which we will ultimately perform them. Just as listening to recordings will influence our personal interpretations, this method will certainly get in the way of our ultimate goal of transcendent performance. In short, it's unmusical.

Aside from this highfalutin talk, there is the practical issue of the very nature of slow music: Slow music is slow, making it easy to lose one's concentration and get lost in the lack of activity. Therefore, slow music requires the highest level of visual and aural memory. Building a tactile foundation in order to achieve this will ultimately fail. 

Personally, I use a slow metronome to work my slow movements. That metronome is set at a speed slower than my ultimate tempo. I do this for my mental work and also my work at the instrument. The metronome keeps me from speeding through the long, slow notes--both mentally and physically. 

You know what? I do the same thing for my faster movements. All in all, I apply the same approach to my repertoire, regardless of final tempo.

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.

Working away

Up until now, I've written a whole lot about working at the instrument. (And, although I haven't clarified it before, I should point out that, by "instrument," I also mean the voice. A singer's instrument is just that: an instrument.) But what about working away from the instrument?

On the whole, I strive to spend as much time working away from the instrument as I spend working at the instrument. There are many stages to the memorization process, so a 50/50 ratio doesn't always work out. Then there's my own little secret: I don't really enjoy working away from the instrument. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't, so I force myself to make it a part of my daily practice.

I suspect that a lot of musicians don't enjoy working away from the instrument. For me, I simply enjoy playing too much. Sitting on a sofa and visualizing my score isn't a whole lot of fun. But working away from the instrument is probably the best way to quickly develop visual and even aural memory. 

It should be stated that visual memory isn't just about "seeing" the score. Some visual memory can be related to how one visualizes chord shapes or hand positions at the instrument. It can also be how one envisions a musical form. Nevertheless, I feel that the best visual skills come from working away from the instrument. In fact, what we're really talking about here is mental practice, as opposed to physical practice.

In my day-t0-day routine, there are many times when I don't feel like practicing a specific piece or practicing at all. Keeping my practice agenda concise and creative helps me stay motivated and inspired. In that same vein, I keep my mental practice as varied as possible.

Not only does this help to keep me interested, it also keeps the work from becoming routine and, therefore, thoughtless.  

Here are some of my techniques: 

• Do mental practice away from the instrument. Use a different room, use a different chair. Go outside, even if for a ten minute session. Use your mental practice as an opportunity to stand up and not be sedentary. Who ever said that cerebral work didn't burn calories!?
• Apply everything already discussed to your mental practice: landmarks, metronome, mnemonics. 
• Landmarks: Jump around. If you know all your landmarks, don't visualize your piece in forward order. Go from Z to A. Or skip every other landmark. Make sure you can visualize the start of each landmark.
• Metronome: I use a metronome for mental practice because it helps keep me from daydreaming. It also keeps me from mentally rushing the easy spots.
• Mnemonics: Visualize those patterns and differences in patterns. This is really helpful when in the early learning stages. When you return to the instrument, you'll identify those patterns much quicker.
• Visualize a piece straight through. This is really hard to do early in the memorization process, but it does help develop aural memory. Later on, once a piece is more or less memorized, a straight-through visualization can become a good exercise in concentration. (I'm not terribly good at that, so I tend to work with landmarks instead.)
• Can't sleep at night? Try some mental practice. If it doesn't help you sleep, at least you're doing something with the wasted time. You can also do mental practice while out for solitary walks or sitting in a park.

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.

Do you have any techniques for mental practice? Or maybe you have your own anecdotes. Post them here!

Developing aural memory

Nothing helps advance memorization practice like actually knowing how a piece sounds. From that point, having a good ear and being able to apply that ear to your instrument will make the memorization process move very quickly.

There are different degrees of knowing how a piece sounds, of course. You may have heard something for many years, giving you the freedom to play the piece by ear. Or maybe you've heard a piece several times, and you can pick out many, but not all, of the notes without a score.

But what if you've never heard a piece before? Many musicians will turn to recordings to help get to know a piece. I can't begin to express what a bad idea this is. For one, you'll learn a performer's interpretation. That's what's going to stick in your ear when you start playing the piece. Maybe you'll try to solve this problem by listening to several different interpretations. But you simply can't know what effect this is having on your own interpretation, and I feel that, in order to be authentic to yourself, you should be making your own interpretive decisions. Skip the recordings and allow yourself to learn a piece the right way: the slow way. Patience!


If you're working on a contemporary work, recordings might not even be available. In many cases, you have a unique advantage: you can talk to the composer. Many composers won't tell you how to play their music (although some will insist), but they can give you an idea of what it is they had in mind when writing the piece. 

(Now here's a funny thought for those who disagree with my stance on not listening to recordings: What were the composers listening to when writing your piece? They didn't need a recording to figure out how it sounds!)

One of the hardest things is to memorize a piece that you thought you heard differently. When something's already in your ear, it's pretty hard to erase it. With that in mind, you should be careful about what and whom you listen to.

In conservatory, I had a colleague who had a brilliant memory. He had no money to buy scores, so he would take them out of the library on Friday night, memorize them over the weekend, and then return them to the library on Monday. When it got time for performance class, the students would enjoy following his playing with the score, because he had surely memorized wrong notes, wrong dynamics, and a myriad of other missteps. He did have a brilliant memory, but he was very sloppy in its application. 

There's one area where I advocate the use of recordings: concertos. In this case, recordings can be used to learn your cues. Since rehearsal time with orchestra is always very limited, knowing your cues cold is very helpful, and, while you could use your imagination, nothing helps like knowing exactly how the orchestration should sound.

I know that this post doesn't offer much advice on developing aural memory. If you've really never heard your piece before, your aural memory might come last in the process. But you can be assured that, if it's last, you've got a very solid foundation to work with. Just be patient, and let your three memory types work slowly together to create well-rounded retention.

And what about developing a better ear? I'm afraid that's an entirely different topic. Suffice it to say that you can never have too good of an ear.

But wait...there's more!

Repetitious practice is not always the best practice, but it can't be ignored. In my worst, most impatient type of practice, I tend to repeat and repeat. I'm just too anxious to get the piece to playing level, and all I want to do is play. 

This sort of practice can be thoughtless. Even if it isn't thoughtless, it does little else but to assure a tactile foundation. Those musicians who bring a piece to playing level before attempting to memorize it have probably done not much more than repeat passages after, perhaps, marking fingerings and other foundational notes. After a point, it may be possible to play such work from memory, but is this really as far as you want to prepare before going on stage?

As I write this blog post, I'm asking myself, "What are some other early memorization techniques that I can use?" You should be asking yourself the same question, because there is no one way to do this, and you must always be creative with your approach. 

What about form? I've just started working on the slow movement of Bach's D Minor Harpsichord Concerto. I began by putting in landmarks, and that inevitably raised the question of the movement's form. This is a simple form, essentially a series of episodes flanked by a ritornello. Knowing that the ritornello only occurs at the beginning and at the end of the movement has helped me understand where to put some landmarks while also minimizing my work. (That is, if I learn the first ritornello, I don't need to learn the final one, since it's the same thing.) Looking closer at the form, I see that the ritornello functions like an ostinato bass, occurring regularly throughout the entire movement.

What about harmony? With that same concerto movement and now knowing about the ostinato bass, I can use harmony to help my memorization. For instance, the opening ritornello is in g minor. When it's repeated as a bass line with melody (my "A" landmark), we're in g minor, closing to a c minor cadence. In the next section (my "B" landmark), we start in c minor, but the ostinato bass appears a few bars later in d minor, eventually cadencing in B-flat Major. From there, there are some sequences and other harmonic machinations, all eventually bringing us back to g minor. 

None of this formal and harmonic analysis is worth publishing in a scholarly journal. I did this in sketch form for my own purpose: to memorize. With that in mind, you don't have to come up with a hardcore analysis. Simply do what works for you, but make sure that whatever you're doing is going to bring you to a better level of memorization. Think of these small steps as mnemonics towards the greater goal of memorized music.

Sometimes I work and work on a piece, and parts of it just won't stick. One way of dealing with this is to take time off, something I'll discuss later in this blog. By getting away from the piece for a few days or an even longer period of time, I might return and find the piece in a better place than when I left it. It's hard to judge how and if such mental rest will work, so you might not want to count on it. A more reliable technique is to play through your piece as you might have already been doing. Every time you get stuck, write down the location, taking detailed notes of where the problem spots are. In truth, you might find that there are less sticky places than you originally thought! This process in itself leads to better memorization, and it also gives you a practical foundation from which you can fix any problems.

I'll admit that I'm not always this intellectual in my memorization practice. I recently started work on an unmeasured prelude by Larry Bell. Because the movement isn't in my ear, I'm using the fingering I've established to help me memorize the right hand. This is tactile work--though mnemonic in its own right--, but it's with the goal of creating aural memory. The visual memory will follow once I have a better sense of how the piece "goes."

And what about aural memory? And what about visual memory? Both of these are very important to the early memory process, and I'll address them in my next posts.

What are some techniques you use in the early stages of memory? Did I leave something out? Post your comments here!

Some examples

I use repetitious practice to help to establish a sense of pattern. In my previous post, I wrote about how pattern could be manifested in terms of notes, harmony, or rhythm. Below are a few examples from my recent work. In each case, these are excerpts of the whole, and the entire pattern-finding process is greater than the single examples I give for each piece.

Bach: D Major Prelude, Well-Tempered Clavier I
click here for a score
I've been aware of this prelude for a long time, having played it as an undergraduate pianist. I already had a lot of the right hand (the "tune") in my ear, so memorizing the left hand became the challenge.

The left hand begins with a series of repeated notes (in octaves)--six, in fact. Measure 6 (a landmark) starts with four repeated notes, and then there are eight repeated notes starting in m.8. These moments of pedal points continue throughout the prelude.

Bach: C# Major Fugue, Well-Tempered Clavier I
click here for a score
This was a fresh learn for me last fall, having heard others play it for years but never having played it myself. Believe me, it took a long time to memorize!

I came to think of this as an etude on thirds. An obvious example would be the descending gesture in the right hand (m.7). This returns in the left hand in m.12 and many more times throughout.

On a larger scale, Bach takes more complicated patterns and has them descend by thirds: mm.16-18.  Later on, he overlaps the two descending thirds gestures in mm.31-34.

Bach: c# minor Prelude, Well-Tempered Clavier I

click here for a score
In m.5, a pattern emerges in the alto voice. The first pitch appears as a quarter note and is then repeated as a dotted half-note in the same measure. This alto line descends for three measures.

Couperin: Les baricades mistérieuses
click here for a score
In the third couplet, there is a famous pattern of deceptive cadence, repeating a bass line of D-E-F-G nearly four times. In looking at the tenor line, one sees an undulating D-C-D-C pattern. However, in once instance, the bass line is D-E-G-F. In this case, the D-C pattern is D-C-C-C.

Couperin: Le tic-toc-choc
click here for a score
Throughout the piece, the right hand has repeating fifths or arpeggiated patterns. In the rondeau, the arpeggiations conclude with the lowest pitch in the pattern, as opposed to what one would expect: the next pitch in the pattern (e.g., m.3). A hallmark of the third couplet, however, is that the arpeggiations conclude as one would expect: on the next pitch in the pattern.

Bach: Concerto in d minor, 3rd movement
click here for a score
One of the hard things about memorizing this movement is keeping the cadences straight. The cadential formula set forth in the opening ritornello (mm.8-12) never seems to come back the same way twice. The trick here is to establish how each ritornello cadence is different from each other and then find a mnemonic to keep you on track. Otherwise, it would be very easy to play any d minor ritornello cadence exactly as it appears in mm.8-12!

These are just a few micro-examples from my work. Obviously, the memorization of an entire piece will be made up of many of these types of examples. And, in the end, the performer may not even remember the process that led to full memorization--especially if this slow process results in very good aural and visual memory. Regardless of how one ultimately retains a piece, these patterns create essential mnemonics for the early stages of memorization.

A discernible regularity

Now that I've gotten us through the fact that not everyone agrees on memory types, I will admit that I'm not always sure when a mnemonic is memory and when memory is a mnemonic. I'm not a strong advocate for memorizing music that's already in one's fingers, and, as a general rule, I never listen to recordings in order to get to know the music that I'm working on.

That all said, let's presume that, in the early stages of memorization, just about everything is a mnemonic. The big advantage to this is that you won't develop tactile memory early on. This advantage will play out later when you might experience self-doubt during a performance; you'll have your mnemonics to rely upon.

Landmarks are mnemonics on a grand scale. I make them a part of my daily routine, and I find that they are essential to a successful memorized performance. But landmarks don't come right away. What about memorizing a few measures a day?

Repetition plays an extremely significant role in the memorization of even the simplest passage. You might find yourself repeating the same measures over and over again. The goal should not be to create a tactile memory experience, however. It can be used to create aural memory, but that's a hard thing to maintain when a piece is being learned from scratch. 

My repetitious practice creates a comprehension of pattern. I like the Wikipedia definition of pattern: "a discernible regularity in the world or in a manmade design." In musical terms, that pattern could be a simple regularity of notes, and it could also be the regularity of harmony or rhythm. It can be any combination of those three, and possibly even more elements. 


Presuming that you've already created a phrase-influenced landmark in a piece, repetition of that phrase should help you discern the patterns therein. But be careful: don't let your repetition ingrain tactile memory. This is where a timer and metronome become important. Limit your time with repetitious practice while also keeping your metronome slow so as to avoid tactile memory.

More on memory types

My previous post has got me thinking that I may have been too dismissive of the other types of memory discussed here: structural, emotional, and linguistic. Also, when I was writing the previous post, I came upon this discussion at Caroline Wright's blog on memorization. Her post discusses author Jane Ginsborg's writing on memorization. (For references, please visit Wright's blog post.) Wright writes of a fourth memory type, "conceptual musical representation":

A more holistic understanding of the music and its organisation also requires analysis and conceptual thinking. Developing a conceptual musical representation requires understanding not only each individual piece, but also familiarity with the musical language and culture in which it was written. Ginsborg states that “the use of conceptual memory is the crucial overarching strategy that no musician can do without”. Regardless of training, expertise or musical genre, fundamentally a musician must know where they are in a piece and how the structure of the work fits together. Oftentimes clear structural boundaries exist within the architecture of a piece (chorus and verse, for example), which create natural chunks to organise practice and facilitate memorisation.

The idea of "conceptual musical representation" feels a lot like structural and linguistic

memory. When I briefly discussed these, I dismissed them as being subcategories of what I feel are the three main types of memory: tactile, visual, and aural. 


All in all, more people have done more research into memory than I have done, and I don't want to get into a debate about exactly what types of memory there might be. For the memorizing musician, I think it's important to consider what type of memory is being used and when and how it's being used. For me, the simplification of memory types has been helpful, and I like to keep it at three: tactile, visual, and aural. For you, you may want to consider more possibilities. After all, it's your brain and your performance.

You say memory, I say mnemonic

About a month before I started this blog, an audience member approached me after a recital with the usual memorization question: "How do you do it?"

My response was, "Well, it's not really memorization. I use a bunch of mnemonics to create the experience--but if I didn't have those tools, the piece wouldn't be memorized."

"But you just played a recital from memory!" he replied.

Silly me, he was right. I was, in fact, playing from memory, but my perception was from the business end. I was doing hard work while this audience member was experiencing something that appeared effortless.

Look at the Wikipedia definition of mnemonic:

A mnemonic, or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids information retention. Mnemonics aim to translate information into a form that the human brain can retain better than its original form. Even the process of merely learning this conversion might already aid in the transfer of information to long-term memory. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory form, such as short poems, acronyms, or memorable phrases, but mnemonics can also be used for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms. Their use is based on the observation that 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.

The word mnemonic is derived from the Ancient Greek word μνημονικός (mnēmonikos), meaning "of memory" and is related to Mnemosyne ("remembrance"), the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words are derived from μνήμη (mnēmē), "remembrance, memory". Mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the Art of memory.

Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory: the 'natural' memory and the 'artificial' memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses automatically and without thinking. The artificial memory in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practicing of a variety of mnemonic techniques.

Mnemonic systems are special techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory, it helps employ information already stored in long-term memory to make memorization an easier task.

Is there every any case in musical memorization when one isn't using mnemonics? Sure,
there are ingrained tunes that require no memory device (e.g., Twinkle, twinkle, little star), but, for the purpose of memorizing music to play in concert, a large majority of the work is based in mnemonic memory. 

A while ago, I wrote about three types of memory: tactile, aural, and visual. Because mnemonics play such an important role in the musical memory process, it almost seems as if they should be considered a fourth type of memory. But mnemonics are tools, not actual memory. Of course, this can get really confusing when we start needing mnemonics to remember our mnemonics!

I use mnemonics to create all three types of memory. From landmarks to form, from harmony to visualization of chord shapes, mnemonics guide the memorization process from the inception to the final stages.

At what stage?

I came upon this blog post by pianist Alisdair Hogarth just the other day, and, had I seen it sooner, it would have fit nicely into my post on the media's opinion of memorization. But, given that the writer makes some assumptions about the memorization process, it fits nicely into this post.

Without going into the fact that Hogarth works primarily as an accompanist of vocal music (a field that, for the pianist, does not have a history of memorization) and that he refers to the Tommasini article as if Tommasini were referring to accompanists (or, if you will, collaborative pianists), it's important to note an important lapse in Hogarth's understanding of memorization. He seems to think that one must learn an entire score before committing it to memory. Truly, this is not a good way to proceed.

At its core, "learning" a piece with music before memorizing the piece is a flawed approach. Why? Because one will surely develop a tactile memory before aural or visual memory are established. And, as I've already written, tactile memory is the least reliable form of memory.

In my own work, I never "learn" a piece before committing it to memory. (Of course, I am also in the process of committing some previously performed works to memory, but that's unique to my situation.) I'm a very good sight-reader, so, unfortunately, it's easy for me to get a piece to a reasonable state in very little time. But my goal is to truly know a piece, and I firmly believe that this is only possible with true memorization. 

What is "true" memorization? It's the real deal, not the kind that non-memorizers talk about...you know, the "oh, yeah, it's practically memorized" type of musicians. These musicians are like those people who say that they understand and read a foreign language and then, when in that foreign country, are incapable of communication. There are shades of knowledge, but let's be clear that memorized should mean memorized.

This is hard work, and this blog is working with the assumption that its readers will be learning pieces from scratch. And, in this context, "learning" includes memorization.

In For the Long Haul: Three Types of Memory

There's quite a bit of information on the internet about musical memory. However, I find that it's either too scientific or too cursory. The scientific pages go into great detail about what might be going on in the brain, and the other sites tend to give a series of tips in short form. Because memorization is such an intense, drawn-out process, I find that a handful of tips doesn't give justice to the needs of the process. In turn, scientific research doesn't create an applied, practical approach.

While there is some variation among the research, it's generally accepted that there are three main types of memory:

• tactile
• aural
• visual

Some of the research adds additional categories, such as structural, emotional, and linguistic, but I feel that these are subcategories or crossover categories from the three main types. (For more on these categories, see Chapter 33 in the Oxford Handbook of Musical Psychology.)

Tactile memory, generally considered the most fleeting, is the memory of automatic response. As muscle memory, it has little, if any, basis in the intellect, and it is learned by simple repetition. On the whole, tactile memory comes into play with extremely technical (read: fast) music. While it's often the first type of memory to be lost under pressure, it's also saved me in a number of instances when I couldn't see or hear what was coming next; thankfully, my fingers kept on going.

Aural memory is best when a musician has an excellent ear--and one can never have too good of an ear. While one may lose tactile memory, aural ability allows one to play by ear, anticipating upcoming pitches by "hearing" and finding those notes in advance. The memorization process will be greatly accelerated when one has already heard a piece many times--either by one's one playing or by hearing other performances. For this reason, memorizing a piece from scratch without having previously heard it can be a lengthy process.

Visual memory is exactly what it should be: seeing the music as you're playing it. This type of memory can be built entirely at the instrument, but it's most solid when learned away from the instrument. In my own practice, I tend to bring a piece to rough memory at the instrument (tactile and aural) and then move more and more away from the instrument to solidify my visual memory. At times, I'll start the visual process sooner, but in my own impatience, I tend to prefer playing the instrument instead of thinking about it. (That's my own problem. Don't make it yours!) When a program is good to go, however, I will spend at least half, if not two-thirds, of my time with a score, away from the instrument.

This leaves us with those subcategories. All three mentioned (structural, emotional, and linguistic) are created when practicing the main types of memory. Structural is based in musical form, and it needs to be tied to all three memory types from the beginning of the process. Emotional memory might have more to do with performance experience (and even anxiety). In my opinion, it doesn't hold a solid place in the practice room, although one must learn to manage and be aware of this type of memory. Finally, linguistic memory--the process of narratively guiding oneself through various cues and landmarks--is, for me, also a part of the three main types of memory. As it's based in cues and landmarks, it's closely tied to structural memory and, by association, the three main memory types.

Hopefully, this is about as scientific as I'll get in this blog, and, trust me, I'm not getting nearly as scientific as the hardcore research that's out there. If I could summarize the goal of my approach to memorization, it would be this: 

I should be able to write out every memorized piece away from the instrument.

To do so, I would call upon my visual, my aural, and (even!) my tactile memory.