Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner NPR Piece on Muscle Memory

thanks for posting. Very interesting. I have a terrible memory. But when I play a piece over and over day after day, it is not memorized but as I read/play the music the fingers almost seem to go where they are supposed to next in sequence.

You're welcome, Michael. The topic comes up fairly frequently here, so I thought members would find this of interest.

It was interesting, but it seems rather a stretch to tie the results of those experiments very directly to what we musicians refer to as "muscle memory". After all, the experiments had nothing to do with performing.

I've always had the feeling though, that memorizing a piece is like learning a path up a mountain - and there are certainly many!

When I was younger I believed memorization had much do to with the vizualization of the music. I simply closed the music and felt I could see the pictures. As I got older I realized that getting 'stuck' somewhere in the music really meant I did not understand the piece throughly in terms of theory and fingering.

I believe memory is a skill and for me the repetition is what gets the song blue-printed into my brain.

I don't like to remember a ski run unless I might get stuck in a black diamond. I like to preserve my brain cells mostly for music.

rada