Memorizing and Practice

I admit it, I have been resisting memorizing everything I work on.  The pressure is on from my teacher to work everything from memory (well, not everything: the Popper etudes I’m still working from the music); increasingly we are not using the music during lessons, just working on a piece without it.  Preparing for this takes an incredible amount of time and effort, and I do see that I am developing a more thorough understanding of the pieces.  However….

I, so far, with most pieces, have not gotten to the point where the memory is so solidly there that I can play with freedom and emotion.  With most of the pieces my brain is still focusing on the memory of what comes next: often the dynamics and emotion fall by the wayside.  I’ve created some tracks with piano accompaniments (using Finale), and trying to play along with these is a great test of how far I’ve come in my memory work and in playing with proper tempo and rhythm.  The Paradis “Sicilienne” at the end of Suzuki book 7 is a piece that I have been able to play comfortably from memory.  (And also, although not quite as competently, the Eccles and Popper pieces from the same book.)  Those have come more easily, I think, because they have very melodious singable phrases, and repeats of material (this makes the memorizing easier).

I’m learning the Faure “Elegy” from book 8 right now; I have most of the first page from memory and can play pretty comfortably along with a slow accompaniment.  The tricky rhythms and fast runs of the second half are much, much harder; here, I think, memorizing will help me to be able to play the piece well, but the memory is harder because the syncopated sections and the fast runs have so much more detail (and the piano part is so different!).  But the memory work is helpful.

Memory work on the pieces from the Bach Suites is much trickier and much more difficult to accomplish.  It is dense, complicated music with so much detail that it is hard to keep everything in memory well enough to play with musicality.  The Third Suite Bourees are okay; they are pretty melodic and have some helpful (!) repeating sections.  The Allemande has taken an incredible amount of time and I’m still not there in terms of playing it well.  I’ve just started learning the Sarabande; the double stops and complicated fingering will make this one another difficult one to learn and be able to play from memory.  I read somewhere this week that the longer it takes to memorize something, the longer it will stay in memory.  Hope that applies to the Bach Suites!!

Use of Memorization in practice and learning

Gemini’s question about memorization inspired me to return to this subject again (I’ve written here about memorizing the Bach Suites, for example), because using memorization seems to create another level of knowledge and understanding of a piece of music.  I’ve done some thinking since that question about how I use memorizing and some of the things that result in memorization. 

Years ago learning the piano, I never thought much about memorization; learning and playing a piece just seemed to result in the ability to play it without music. But it was an incomplete process: if I stopped in the middle of a piece, I often couldn’t go on, and to do it I had to start at the beginning and run the whole piece.  It was almost like a tape playing a bit automatically.

Learning the cello as an adult has been so complicated and involves so many different skills that for a long time I didn’t even think of memorizing the music, although rote muscle memory of pieces was certainly happening.  My first teacher used Suzuki books, but did not teach her adult students the Suzuki technique of memorizing each piece as it was learned.  Several years ago I started lessons with a new teacher who uses the Suzuki technique and she has been encouraging me to use memorization in my learning.  I’ve tried doing this in several different ways, but the most effective, for me, is the process below.

First of all, I need to thoroughly know the music before trying to memorize it.  By that I mean I need to be completely accurate with the notes, the rhythm, the intonation and the fingering.  Otherwise, I would be memorizing mistakes!  So first things first: I like to be able to play the piece properly using the music, using the metronome so that rhythm and evenness are there in the playing.

Next, I divide the piece into phrases that make sense, maybe 4-8 measures.  The idea is to memorize just a segment of the piece at a time.  I take the segment and analyze it: I might sing it and look at the notes, being sure that I can say the notes that are in the phrase.  I look at which strings the notes are played on, which positions I’ll be playing with the left hand, any string crossings to be negotiated and the rhythm.  I’ll also look at the dynamics; is this a quiet phrase, is there vibrato or is it a loud phrase with accents? Here’s a four measure clip from Vivaldi as an example:

 Next, what is the bow doing in the phrase?  Are there long bows, short bows, detache or staccato, on the string or or bouncing?  Which are down bows or up bows; which notes are slurred?  Should the bow be played near the bridge with a loud harsher sound or close to the finger board or in the middle.  My teacher always suggests bowing the measures on open strings without fingering the notes.

Finally, and this is all being done in my head rather than while playing, I see if I can visualize the music, the shape of the line and the notes to be played. 

The last step is to play without the music.  I start with one measure, see if I can play it, referring back to the music when I can’t. Once I can do one measure I’ll add another and then another until I can play the whole phrase without the music.

The phrases can be learned in any order.  I like to learn the first phrase in the piece first, but then I might go to the last phrase and learn the ending.  It’s fun to work backward, learning the next to the last phrase, and then the one before that.  If I’ve learned the last two phrases, then I might try playing them together.  The best thing about this method is that once you’ve learned all the phrases you can pick up and start playing anywhere in the piece.  When you play the whole piece, you go from phrase to phrase using the phrases as landmarks to ease the way through the piece.

I guess it goes without saying, you should start with a short piece, not try to memorize a very long piece for your first one.  But if you work in phrases, even a long piece is possible. I hope I’ve given Gemini some new ideas about memorizing.  Whatever works for you is the method you should use.  These are just a few ideas, some that I’ve gleaned from my teacher (who is amazing), that I have used with some success. 

Happy Memorizing!!!!

Memorizing Bach

I love the music of the Bach Suites for solo cello; I love listening to the different interpretations and I love playing them.  My teacher’s most recent challenge to me has been to learn them from memory.  So far I have memorized three first suite pieces, the Prelude, the Allemande, and the Courante.  Right now I am learning and starting to memorize the Sarabande.  I had worked on the Minuets and the Gigue with a previous teacher but never memorized them.

It’s one thing to learn the notes; adding to that the articulations, the fingerings, the bowings, and the dymanics is a daunting task.  It’s certainly true that memorizing commits you to know the music in a whole different way, knowing every note and every phrase.

Above is the music for the Allemande with bowings as found in AM Bach’s manuscript.  My teacher has added more complex bowings and phrasings, and fingerings that range from first through fourth positions on all the strings.  I’ve had the most success memorizing the piece in phrases; that way it is possible to start playing at many points in the piece.  It also breaks the memorizing into small manageable pieces.  I use the Allemande as an example, because I found it to be the most difficult to memorize.  It has many phrases with similarities and complex fingerings and bowings.  

As I was learning the cello, starting as an adult, I used the Suzuki books; however, I was never required to memorize the pieces as most Suzuki students are.  I regret that now.  I feel as if I should go back to all of those pieces and really learn them through memorization.  The student before me at lessons is a very young cellist; every piece she is working on in Suzuki is from memory.  Her playing is wonderful.  She inspires me to work for that kind of thorough knowledge of every piece I play.

I wonder, too, if I brought that kind of memory work to my ensemble music if I would be more ready to lift my eyes and ears and focus with greater attention on the other players.  Something to aspire to!