Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Is memorizing pieces a bad thing?

I do the same thing.

If your concern is that you want to improve your sight reading then I would recommend you sight read something new/different everyday and never sight read the same thing two days in a row.

Some people have trouble memorizing so I see it as a bonus to be able to memorize.

You're saying, in effect, that "muscle memory" is a convenient shortcut name for the complex psycological/physical processes that occur thru constant repetition of a piece until it's memorized and subsequent performances of the piece are accomplished more or less automatically (with little or no conscious effort) such that it "seems" as if the muscles guiding one's arms, hands and fingers have "a mind of their own" with a sort of built-in "memory" - does that about sum it up?

Regards, JF

Yup.

I have a theory, untested of course.

It seems that people who are better at memorizing and improvising tend to be poorer sight readers and vice versa.

I've met a few really great sightreaders who cannot improvise to save their life other than whip out pre-canned chords and stuff.

Also, some people who are great at improvising seem to be a little slow at sight reading.

I wonder if different parts of the brain are being used. It seems that if this is true, a *creative* person would do much better at improvising (and composing) as opposed to an analytical thinker.

The more structured analytical type may have a harder time at improvising while doing much better at reading a written score.

Just a theory, maybe true, maybe not.

Hmmmm interesting indeed but (for me at least)...

I'm a very Type A, actually classed once (at a sales training) as Analytical Achiever. You know the ones who love all the little awards and trophies and pats on the back

I am also quite the creative type and even in my short training have messed about and "added" stuff to various pieces. This also flows over into modifications I've done to my house / car depending on what it was I was trying to get done..

I also find that after playing the same piece over and over eventually I have it memorized without really trying that much. Sometimes I miss things like dynamics or certain fingerings, so even though you think you have it memorized it is a good idea to read through it again to make sure you haven't missed anything.

Memorizing and sight reading are both good, so you should practise both.

I would class myself as more logical than creative. I cannot memorise, though increasing familiarity with the piece does help with my practice, when I try to play blind I freeze. Just once I realised I was staring out the window whilst my fingers were producing music with a fair degree of accuracy. As soon as I had the realisation I froze, so maybe for me it is a mental block. I assumed at the time 'muscle memory' had taken over.

This is probably an adequate approximation but the whole question of levels of memorization is pretty subtle and hard to pin down.

I'm not sure it's really possible to play something with little or no conscious effort. It seems like you have to be thinking or feeling something about the music even if you let you fingers find the notes on their own.

I know there are lots of folks who can memorize and play a piece from memory but can't then play one hand or the other separately. Or they can't play just the harmony or just the melody line from memory. Or they can't play the piece at a tediously slow tempo (this is a good exercise by the way for a memorized piece). They are also unable to tell you at any place in the piece (from memory) what key they are in or to describe the harmonic progression of a passage. I would say that these folks are relying entirely on a learned pattern of unified two-hand movements that they can't easily disassemble into its component parts. I would call this muscle memory.

I think you must develop a stong muscle memory for any piece you can play from memory, but my teachers have always stressed that you need to do more and try to internalize everything about the piece, not just the notes.

packa - thanks for the details and clarification - your points seem reasonable and your definition of muscle memory may be more precise than mine, or an important addendum to it.

I wonder why playing a piece "at a tediously slow tempo" (as you say) is "a good exercise for a memorized piece" (if by "exercise" you mean perhaps "test")?

Regards, JF

That fits me. I can improv, write songs and eventually memorize classical pieces by repitition... but I can't sight read very well at all.


Also, FWIW, when I took lessons I remember my teacher telling me that my ability to memorize through muscle memory and my weakness at sight reading and "understanding" what I was playing would eventually interfere with my classical playing. She was right. I forget pieces very easily if I don't play them constantly and I'm terrible at playing for people for when I get tense my muscle memory fails me. I'm also, as Pacca so wisely brings up, unable to change my "patterns" and play it very slowly or with one hand at a time or pick up the piece at any point in the work.

I think this reinforces pacca's points. We need to not just rely on muscle memory but on a fuller understanding of the work.

I do mean test. I think it's just another way of changing the "pattern" (as Peyton says) which we have committed to muscle memory. It sure seems to be true for me that when I change the tempo dramatically from what I've learned to play for performance things just don't flow with my muscle memory anymore and I have to think about the next notes or the next chords much more consciously.

Oops.

Wow - I would LOVE to be able to play from memory. I can do that for only ONE piece I learnt in childhood, nothing else since.

Given that advanced compositions are very complex and long (and thus very difficult to sight play 'cold' or without a page turner!) wouldn't the ability to memorize a piece accurately (without killing the freedom to express it personally) and quickly simply add to the pleasure of playing the piano?

Why emphasize sight-reading over memorization in the earlier stages of learning?

thanks packa ...that's very good advice I think, and I'm going to try it. btw, I neither memorize nor read very well I try to memorize evrything I learn (such as the pieces in my signature), but it takes ages and a great deal of effort. One reason I do this is to try and keep my 58-year-old brain cells active! I would dearly love to be able to improve both my sight-reading and memorizing abilities.

I don't think it's a bad thing, but when done carelessly it will cost you a good performance imo. When I was much younger I would memorize pieces as quickly as possible but then found out that I had missed a dynamic mark here and there, and misremembered the exact rhythm here and there, and the list goes on...

Now that I'm older (and duller) I take longer to memorize a piece and even after I've memorized it I usually have the sheet music up to refer to in case I've "slipped".

Of course this doesn't apply to a performance piece, but the same principle goes --- if I can't see the music as it's written when I close my eyes when I'm playing it then I haven't studied the score enough.

Maybe a little too neurotic? :p

(Please note, in the reply when I say you, I mean "you" as in a general populace, and not the OP in particular )

Well, does one have to be emphasized over the other? The thing is, it's so easy for a lot of people to memorize music by ear. How many people can actually say it was so easy to learn how to read music fast and accurately?

It seems the trouble a lot of poor readers have is that they memorize things quickly -- that works great when you're learning one, two page pieces but when you're studying longer pieces it's going to hurt you in the end.

I am a very poor reader. It's hurt my ability to learn the more advanced pieces because I read so slowly (very frustrating). It's very tempting to just memorize these hard pieces by ear because it's so much easier, but in the end it'll also be less accurate -- unless you have an amazing sense of rhythm and a very good ear you're not going to be playing something marked as how the arranger or composed has made it.

Yes, you don't want to lose spontaneity, you don't want to lose your own individual style, but you must also respect the intent of the composer, yes?

It's too easy to rationalize not learning to read well (I know this and rue this all too well). My instructor has mentioned that it is very difficult for her to get students to learn arpeggios and other "dull" things because they just want to learn fun pieces and play those. This seems as if it's in the same vein --- I don't think you can ever read music *too well*.

If you have a bad memory, that is a different and unrelated issue to being a good reader -- since when has a good reader of books ever blamed the reading for an inability to memorize a poem or passage?