Andre Watts
“I’m very mistrustful of tactile memory. I think it’s the first thing that goes.”
–André Watts, pianist
The Musician’s Way, p. 82
Have you ever been blindsided by a memory lapse? Maybe you felt secure in practice, but, during a performance, you blanked on a passage.
I suspect that every musician has felt the jolt of memory slips.
I also believe that memory glitches could be far less common because secure memorization involves concepts and skills that any musician can learn.
This post summarizes a 4-part framework that helps both singers and instrumentalists become masterful memorizers.
All of these ideas are fleshed out in Chapter 4 of The Musician’s Way.
The Four Stages of Memorization
Stage 1: Perception
Deep perception makes for solid memory. When we grasp the inner workings of a composition as well as how we want to shape each phrase, those rich connections lead to steadfast recall.
In contrast, shallow perception – especially that rooted solely in muscle or tactile memory – readily falls apart under pressure. Here are strategies that deepen our perceptions of a piece.
a. Clarify the compositional structure. Identify where sections and phrases begin and end; look for rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic patterns.
b. Fashion a vivid interpretive map. Explore the emotional feel of every phrase; pinpoint where phrases peak and repose; write in dynamic and articulation signs.
c. Form a robust technical map. Before you begin to memorize, verify that fingerings, bowings, tonguings, diction, and so forth are unmistakable; ensure that you can easily execute from score. If you feel flooded, choose easier music.
Stage 2: Ingraining
Ingraining is the means whereby we lay down enduring memory tracks. But beware: ingraining necessarily involves repetition, yet only mindful repetitions will do.
a. Plan your practice. Schedule frequent memorization sessions in which you restrict the amount of music that you memorize – if you exceed your limit, much of what you absorb could become scrambled. Also get ample sleep to help your brain to consolidate what you’ve learned.
b. Combine imaging with executing. Mentally image a portion of music from memory before you attempt to play or sing it; if anything seems fuzzy, review with the score. In general, execute a portion securely from memory three times in a row, then steadily link portions.
c. Employ diverse memory types. Memory types include conceptual, aural, kinesthetic, and visual. To highlight different types, you might play hands alone, re-examine chord progressions, sing bass lines, recite song text without singing, or write out tricky passages. As you ingrain, explore subtle interpretive variations, and savor every phrase so that the music vibrates with meaning.
Stage 3: Maintenance
Even if we ingrain deeply, unless we maintain our memory, the mental connections we form will gradually disintegrate. Here are strategies that keep memories strong.
Zoom H4n
a. Rehearse mentally. Periodically run through a section or complete composition in your mind. Instrumentalists might vocalize and mime playing motions; singers could mouth words and act out a song.
b. Practice performing. Record your practice performances and then re-ingrain any slippery passages. Recommended recorders: Zoom H4n | Video: Zoom Q4n.
c. Review in detail. Reinvigorate your interpretive-technical map by going over the components of a piece and its execution. You might revisit fingerings, do a fresh harmonic analysis, and so on, incorporating new interpretive ideas in the process.
Stage 4: Recall
The following strategies help optimize our recall in performance situations.
a. Ready yourself. Attain a performance-ready state using tactics such as 2-to-1 breathing and the other backstage techniques described on pages 162-170 of The Musician’s Way.
b. Feel ahead. As you play or sing, direct your music making with soulful awareness. Avoid sliding into mindless execution.
c. Be positive. Trust in your preparation, and then play or sing your heart out. If slips occur, maintain the forward motion and improvise until you can regain the musical thread. To rehearse dealing with slips, simulate them in practice and ad-lib through them.
As you experiment with the strategies described in this article, bear in mind that we all have distinct learning styles, so no single memorization routine will suit every musician. It’s up to each of us to adapt these and other ideas according to our needs and personalities.
But whatever memorization strategies we opt for, we should energize our work with playfulness because when our practice is infused with spontaneity, our performances resound with that same expressive spirit.
Related posts
2-to-1 breathing
The benefits of accessible music
Feeling ahead
Mental imaging
Practicing performance
© 2010 Gerald Klickstein
Great article. Given the advances in understanding neural plasticity and visualisation there is much from the world of NLP that can assist and fine tune your excellent approach.
We have unconscious strategies for all sorts of activities wired from unconscious conditioning (e.g. think about how you fold your arms, dry your body after a shower, clean your teeth). It is an essential part of being able to function efficiently.
Strategies can be altered through the use of ingraining new behaviours and eye movement to reinforce unconscious competence as information is accommodated and assimilated holistically in the mind and the body.
Similarly the field of energy pscychology can help shift blocks in the human energy field to remove negative emotions that get in the way of ingraining new material into the mind/body system. There is case evidence from the field of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to show that acupressure techniques can help release the energy needed to take on and ingrain the lessons being learned.
Thanks for the comment, Rob, as well as the words of support – much appreciated.
As you point out, many aspiring players attempt to embed passages via muscle memory alone. But such mindless learning always becomes precarious under pressure, and it’s ultimately less artistic, too, because rote players typically can’t modify their playing spontaneously.
No matter what the style of music, deep learning gives us the control we need to be authentically flexible and artistic under the spotlights.
I have to say the whole ‘deep perception’ method for memorizing tunes flys in the face of what I have been taught for many many years as a more rock oriented electric guitarist – that is, scales and tricky passages can be committed to muscle memory by idly noodling away whilst watch TV.
However, I like to let methods stand or fall on their practical success.
I’ve been trying to commit Paul Gilberts arrangement of Bachs Prelude in D Major to memory since last November – without much luck; bars which I had repeated over and over would fall apart without the score.
Since reading The Musicians Way and applying the approaches outlined, I can now play the whole piece from memory. This has taken about 2 weeks. I’m not up to Glenn Gould tempos yet, but getting there!
Thanks again Gerald.
Hi George (aka Hucbald). Thanks for contributing. You’re right on target that a lack of deep learning is a recipe for memory gaps.
And I like your term ‘unconscious memory.’ Tactile/muscle/rote memory is like a reflex: it operates outside of the control of the conscious mind, so it doesn’t hold up under pressure.
Such ‘automated learning’ (as it’s sometime called in the ed-psych literature) depends on automated recall. So when rote learners are in their groove, they appear to be proficient. But when the pressure ratchets up, their automated recall becomes corrupted by stress.
Then, their conscious mind will try to fill in the memory gaps by thinking about an upcoming phrase, but there won’t be anything for their mind to grasp hold of because fingerings, interpretation, text, etc. were all ingrained unconsciously so the conscious mind can’t recall them. Not a situation that any of us want to be in on stage.
My favorite way to test my memorization is to play a piece with a metronome, starting out at the speed I perform it at. Every repetition, I slow the metronome down 5 bpm. At some point, my subconscious memory will fail – I prefer that term to tactile memory, because it is more indicative of what’s going on IMO – and I will have to consult the sheet music to bring the finger choreography back into my conscious memory. By doing this with every piece in my set over the course of several sessions, I know every move consciously and am very unlikely to have a memory lapse.
The reason many young players black out during recitals is that they don’t know the pieces well enough: They only have them in their subconscious. So, when their subconscious is occupied with performance anxiety, the piece vanishes.