Musical Memory

Playing from memory is a bit different discipline then playing from scores. How to switch from following the sheets to the memory mode?

We all are individuals and each of us has a bit different talents, preferences, a bit different individual approaches. But there are some general principles and we should be aware of them. Let's look at the learning process.

When we decide to learn a piano piece from memory, our initial idea could be to play it over and over again with less and less looking at the notation until we reach the ability to play it by heart.

This is quite a straightforward approach that could seem natural and even could work well for some people, but in fact it is far from optimal, if we don't call it bad straight away. Why?

There are at least two strong reasons. First, this way you primarily address your muscle memory. The resulting 'product' will be fragile and immature. Second, this kind of practicing leads to musical exhaustion. You will probably get oversaturated mentally with the piece much sooner than you reach it's satisfactory memory knowledge. You will just stop liking the song sooner than you learn it.

If this approach is not optimal, what to do? We experimented a bit, we cut some songs into small chunks (bars) and learned them using interactive purely aural method. We used a software for it (first version of Piano Trainer application). This way of learning wasn't too fast, but it was quite thorough and results were good. When we compared the results with results of the first learning approach, it was clear that not only it was qualitatively better, but that they represented two different interpretive approaches. Passive and active. We described it in the article Active vs. Passive playing.

After discovery of these two playing approaches, it was one another step to see that there are four (two and two) different learning approaches. More in the article Learning and Practicing Modes.

These ideas lead us to the discovery of Mental Sound Image (MSI) phenomenon as a necessary element of active playing approach. It's functional meaning is presented in the article Active Playing Diagram.

(Some professional musicians learn whole piece aural-mental way so that they are able to replay it in their head from the beginning to the end. It is interesting possibility and you can consider it to increase your playing confidence, but we consider it not necessary for non-professionals)

Maybe it's all too theoretical. What to do with it? How to apply it in our routine?

There is learning/practicing method stimulating the MSI approach. When you learn per fragments (small parts, e.g. bars). When you play one fragment repeatedly, you not only develop your ability to play it, but you imprint it's sound image into your mind and develop the association between the image and the way how to play it.

There is another issue. It happens that you practice some part (more bars or lines) of a song to play it from memory. When you think you know it, you go to some other part. When you are finished with the second part and return to the first one, you feel like you start from the beginning again. The previous knowledge is gone. This feature has a stong impact on effectivity of learning. It is necessary to minimise it, to eliminate it.

The best solution for this is what we call cumulative learning. It is as follows.

When you master one fragment, you go to the next one. When you master the second one, you practice the first one and the second one together. This way you not only refresh the knowledge of the first fragment, but as well you build another necessary mental association - fragments interconnection. When you are ok with playing them together, you go to the third fragment. Master it and add to the previous part the same way (practice it as whole). And so on.

As you can see when using this approach you alternate between learning new parts and repeating previously learned parts. It is obvious that the starting sequence is continously growing, so it is reasonable to split the whole piece into parts (sections) of about 8 - 24 fragments (depending on the character of the fragments and the piece) and practice them separately.

When we advance this way and there are more parts of the song already learned, let's not neglect refresing them at least once a day to make sure our knowledge of them didn't weaken or even evaporated. The forgetting curve principle is very imporatant for learning playing from memory and you will learn how to work with it.

(Recently we encountered another interesting version of cumulative learning [1] that we could name a 'reversed variant'. It works by starting from the last fragment, then you learn the one before last, then the two ones together, then the third one from the end and so on. The advantage of this approach is that your learned sequence doesn't grow constantly, but you can freely adjust it's length)

There is another issue with our long-term memory. It's erosion. It is a process when previoiusly gained knowledge or skill that was clear and bright somehow starts fading or morphing in time. In our context it could mean that after some time (especially when we learned some new pieces in the meanwhile) we can start playing some parts of our song a bit different way than it was in the original notation (missing or adding notes in chords, different chords in/versions, different octaves). That can be problem more or less depending on what kind of music it is and how differnt our morphed version is from the original. In any case, occasional maintenance is appropriate. Another type of memory erosion manifests itself in such a way that you are playing and suddenly you don't know how to continue. You 'hear' it in your head roughly, but you don't know what keys to press. It is the leakage of the sound memory-muscle memory connection. This kind of leakage is natural and partially is positive, because you realize where you have weaknesses and mostly after couple of trials you restore the spot without having to look at the notation.

Now let's summarize what types of piano memory exist. We detaily described sound memory that is being manifested by Mental Sound Images. As well we mentioned muscle memory. This type of memory is based on the fact that when we consciously repeat certain movements, those movements become automatic. We mentioned this memory with the implication that it is not good enough. It is not good enough when used exclusively without support of sound memory and other types of musical memory. Let's mention that muscle memory has a dynamic aspect and a static aspect, which can be called tactile memory, but from a practical point of view it is not necessary to divide them. Definitely for pianists muscle memory is important and necessary element of whole memory complex. There is another element of this complex - visual memory. Let's make it clear. It is not memory in terms of remembering notation. It is memory connected to the system of white and black keys and our fingers working there. It is remembering of the 'pictures' of pressed keys. You don't need to train it specifically, if you practice without looking at the notation it will emerge spontaneously. This kind of memory is useful for more difficult spots that are not so easy to automate, as well as for beginnigs of individual sections. You will probably activate it either consciously or subconsciously at these spots.

(According our further findings this kind of visual memory is even more important and used than mentioned above. We have found that some professional pianists even visualise their hands movements mentally so that they are able to replay whole piece visually in their head. Again, it is interesting, but quite demanding approach. However continual engagement of visual aspect plays a strong supportive role in the process of learning and playing)

As concerns the ability to remember notation, that is, photographic memory, it is not standard ability, although some people can have this skill and use it with advantage, we can't include it into standard musical memory complex. Is there still something? Yes there is - understanding. Knowing some music theory, understanging the structures of the music we are playing, mainly in relation to it's diatonic context, chords and patterns. Truth is that for interpretation we don't need to know much. On the other hand the more we know, the better. Good thing is that for understanding of what we are playing we don't need to know full-fledged theory of harmony that is necessary for composers. We don't need to compose new music, we just need to find as much logic as possible in the existing one to absorb it easier. We pay special attention to this topic here.

So we have memory sound, muscle, visual and logical. The first two are crucial, visual is very important too, logical is not necessary, but is very welcome. The dominant sound-muscle pair forms a complementary unity. While sound memory is a 'macro' memory fulfilling the role of a kind of manager, muscle memory works perfectly on detail level ('micro' memory).
Some may be disappointed that logical memory isn't higher on this list, but it is better to accept the fact, that the most important role in the process of remembering a piece is our emotional memory, which is an alternative name of sound memory. Music is all about emotions. The positive news is that there is a way to use sound memory rationally and efficiently as described higher.

[1] Josh Wright - How to Memorize Music Quickly and Effectively (Youtube)