Maintaining Your Memorization

September 17th, 2009

I’ve really been meaning to post on the topic of memorization lately. I think it’s funny, because a lot of piano players and musicians that are taught professionally (through school or with a private teacher) think that mastering technique is the key to perfection. While important, memorization is probably just (if not, more) important to successfully mastering the piano.

If you watched my YouTube video I uploaded yesterday, (see previous post) you can see that I was absolutely not looking up to read any sheet music. I had put the entire piece to my memory. If you ever watch a performer, you’ll see this almost 99% of the time.

We can break down memorization into two key elements.

First, you must take the time to memorize the piece initially.

Secondly, you must take the time to “maintain” that memorization, making it more permanent and really sticking it to your mind and your hands.

So, what does this mean? Well, in a piano player’s lifetime, the initial investment is almost zero or even negative. And maintenance is actually why some individuals give up memorizing their pieces. They think, “why should I memorize this if I know I’m going to forget it later anyway?” Maintenance ability can really limit the amount of repertoire because after one has memorized something like five or ten hours of music, the maintenance required for those pieces may prevent the person from memorizing anything else (depending on the individual).

Don’t worry. There are a lot of different ways to improve your repertoire knowledge beyond any limit of maintenance. Firstly, you can just forget about the already-memorized pieces and re-memorize them once again later. Pieces that have been memorized very well are MUCH easier to be polished up, very quickly, even if they have not been played for years. Think about it like riding a bike. You learn when you’re a child, but even if you haven’t ridden one in ten years, you may struggle a bit at first, but you would most likely find your balance quite quickly.

Here’s another tip: Memorize as many pieces as you possible can before you turn 20. Why? Pieces learned during earlier ages are almost NEVER forgotten. Again, even if you do forget them, you can pick them up again quickly. Pieces learned after the age of 40 actually require a lot more effort for memorization and maintenance.

Sometimes you don’t even need to memorize (although it does help almost always). If you want to learn a large number of very easy pieces, it may not be the best investment of time to memorize every single easy piece. Sight reading pieces should also never memorized. After all, it would defeat the purpose of sight reading! I used to try and memorize all my sight reading exercises for the week so that I would appear to do very well when my piano teacher chose one to test me! I would not suggest doing this. Sight reading was usually my worst area in my conservatory exams.

If you think that you’re a poor memorizer, you should try to learn an entirely new piece that you have never studied before and try to memorize it from beginning. You will most likely be surprised at how well you can pick up the memorization, if you learn it effectively. Most people think they have poor memory because their methods of learning are not quite right. It’s not your brain’s fault.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

I added a new option to my blog with the subscription. If you click “Subscribe” at the top, you now have the option of typing in your email, and I will be emailing you a summary of each post that I make, so you can always stay updated. There is still the option to subscribe via RSS feed. So, I would really love it you would subscribe to my blog! It would just make my day.

Everything Piano | Piano Sheet Music

Leave a Reply