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.

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!

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.

You and your metronome

Much of what I can say about using a metronome is standard wisdom for those who practice music. As I already discussed, the field of "early music" tends to eschew these modern inventions. In any event, knowing where the absolute beat should lie is a very useful piece of information.

For the memorizing musician, the metronome takes on a new significance. Because we are working without score and, sometimes in performance, under fear of memory lapse, it's really good to know the optimal tempo for a piece. And, by optimal, I don't mean "fastest." This is to say that, when one works from memory, it can be easy to become too concerned with the notes or the maintenance of memory to give much thought to tempo. Of course, this scenario would indicate that one wasn't really listening to what one was doing--but that's another matter entirely.  Suffice it to say that it's a good idea to know how fast or how slow a piece should go. This is your own interpretive decision, unless the composer has left specific indications.

I have a hunch (based on my own past habits) that musicians who don't play from memory don't do a lot of metronome work. As I feel that working from memory forces all good habits, I'm aware that not working from memory allows for apathy. In my own case, I didn't use a metronome for years. When I started working with living composers, knowing their beat became a necessity; when I started working from memory, knowing my beat became even more imperative.

When I resumed my memory work, I didn't start working with a metronome right away. I remember one concert when I arrived to do my warmup, only to realize that just about all of my fast tempi were the same. That's a disconcerting thing to consider just before a recital! My only explanation is that, in my memorization work, I had settled into a comfortable pace with tempi and had not really thought much about it until I was on the spot. I would like to suggest that, had I not been playing that recital from memory, I might never have noticed it at all. Memory forces a certain level of self-examination.

My own personal anecdotes aside, there are some very specific ways in which metronome work can help your memorization practice.

1. Slow metronome work (from memory, of course) helps to avoid any reliance on tactile memory.
2. Slow metronome work helps to avoid sentimental practice.  It's easy to get caught up in the emotions of our music. By forcing a slow tempo, we can focus just on making sure that we know the notes.
3. Slow metronome work makes sure that a piece is rock-solid. Every note goes where it should metrically, and that insures that every note is properly memorized.

As you can see, I don't have much use for non-slow metronome work, except when I'm trying to find the optimal tempo for a piece. From the standpoint of learning memorization, a slow metronome is the best tool.

I haven't written too much yet about working away from the instrument, but one of my favorite techniques is to work with a slow metronome. The metronome is very good at keeping my mind from wandering while I'm mentally working my way through a score. It keeps me from mentally rushing through my well-memorized passages, and, just as when playing, it makes sure that every note is sitting in the correct metric place.

Do you use a metronome to help your memorization practice? Or do you have some metronome techniques for any type of practice, memorized or otherwise? Post your thoughts here!

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.

My second lapse...four days later!

By the title of this post, you've now figured out that my attempts to fix what went wrong with my first lapse were not entirely successful. On concert day, I proceeded to play the 30' recital with all the confidence I could muster, but, once again, I had a lapse...in just about the same place as before.

But how did I try to fix the problem in three practice days?

First, I knew that my first lapse was based on relying solely on tactile memory. Second, I knew that, once I had had the lapse, I had no where to turn to, other than the start of the A or B section or an improvisatory exit. (Ugh. You try improvising in the style of Bach after you've just played real Bach. Poor Bach.)

So I did what I should have done in the first place: I created landmarks in the score--in other words, rehearsal letters, just like in an orchestral score. I strategically placed these at important cadential or phrase points, just about every eight bars or so. With these, I could go forward or backward to a landmark should I have a lapse. 

For my three practice days, I played from these landmarks and tried to make sure I could start from them cold. I even forced myself to have mistakes and lapses so that I could find my way to the landmarks. Everything worked really well in the practice room!

My recital began with a contemporary work, played from score. Then came the "memorized" Bach movement. And then came a premiere, also played from score. I remember building a fair amount of anxiety during the first piece on the program. By the time I pulled away the music desk for the Bach, I was quite shaken. After all, the Bach had not gone well just a few days before. More so, the venue was pretty full, namely because I was playing a premiere, and that added to my anxiety.

I started playing the Bach. I felt the heat of the audience's eyes on my face, and, I'm sure, my ears turned bright red. But it was going well! I made it through the first A, then the second, then the B, then...oops, I'm back at that place where I messed up on Sunday...let's go back to the start of the B...and here goes, all is going well, oops...where's the landmark?, what's the landmark?, what's the key?...damn! time to improvise...let's try to end this thing in E minor. Ouch.

All told, the worst part about this was that I was so rattled from this lapse experience that I didn't play the premiere nearly as well as I could have or should have. Sorry, Larry.

But I had prepared so well! What was missing? I clearly was doing something wrong, and I really thought I had been practicing hard enough. But is just wasn't enough. Did I simply need to practice more? How much time is this memorization thing going to take?!

My first lapse

As I already wrote, my first two back-to-memory experiences weren't that good. To get back to memory, I decided to choose a short, binary form movement. Since I was already preparing the complete Bach violin sonatas for a radio appearance with Rachel Barton Pine, I decided to memorize the third movement of the sixth sonata. I had never planned on playing that movement from memory in the performance with Rachel, but I figured that it would serve as an isolated test piece. (The third movement of the sonata is for harpsichord alone.)

I programmed the movement as a postlude for a church service. That was my first mistake. (I'll write more about this later, but, in short, playing from memory at the end of a long morning of rehearsals and accompanying is not the best way to do this--especially the first time!) My second mistake was that I had only prepared the work by repetition. I hadn't even studied the score away from the instrument. I had, in fact, applied none of the memorization techniques I had learned many years ago. 

And so, at the end of the church service (but thankfully after the radio broadcast had ended), I played the first A section...then the second...then the B section...and then, probably owing something to the Inner Game, I lost it in the second B section (or was it the first?). I managed to noodle my way out of the mess, and I think I ended this E minor movement in C Major!

I immediately knew that I should have known better, and I immediately knew that I had only committed this work to tactile memory, a type of memory that will invariably fail when it's all you've got. (Incidentally, the movement was perfect during my own practice.)

Making the situation a little more intimidating was the fact that I had already planned on playing this single movement from memory on a 30' recital less than a week later! (I had originally thought that this was an easy commitment, since the rest of the 30' recital had contemporary works on it, and there's some tradition of playing "new" music from score even if the "old" music on the program is memorized.)

And so, I had about three practice days to figure out how I was going to proceed...

A unique perspective

I started playing the piano when I was six, and for as long as I played, memorization was required. By the time I entered conservatory at 17, memorization was a pretty basic skill--although, that early on, I didn't have much of a grasp of how I was doing it. Indeed, I was probably just working from tactile memory.

In 1992, when I switched from being a "piano major" to a "harpsichord major," I no longer had to memorize. My piano teacher, Michael Ruiz, while very disappointed that I wasn't going to pursue the piano any more, seemed even more upset that I was going to lose the memorization techniques that we had worked so hard to build. 

Thus, I gave up memorization when I was 20, and I came back to it at age 38.

This has given me a unique perspective! When I started trying to memorize nearly twenty years later, I was amazed by what was different from so many years earlier. For instance:

• my ear was much, much better;
• I understood musical form;
• I had a firm grasp of harmony and compositional practices;
• I had an infinitely better technique;
• I had far more confidence as a musician;

and, very importantly,

• I had about twenty years of performing under my belt.

You know that fantasy of being able to go back to elementary or high school with the brain and wisdom of an adult? Well, this was a little bit like that!

But this is not at all to imply that this has been an easy path.