PRACTICING, MEMORIZING & ANALYSIS
When someone plays a piece from memory they are often said to be playing without music, meaning of course that they have memorized all of the material written on the sheet music they have previously practiced. As I am typing this, I am thinking about what would be the best way to compose the following few sentences in an interesting and logical manner. Grammar and spelling is not my greatest talent so I just barge on and get my wife to sort it out later. All this information (the subsequent paragraphs) is stored away in my brain like a familiar Beethoven Sonata might be. I tell everybody how wonderful it sounds but (if asked) I couldn’t play all the notes and chords in the right order and remember the exact keys, modulations, dynamics etc. without the music. The problem is I haven’t memorized it. What I might do is make a hopefully convincing improvised version based on my experience of hearing a pattern of (memorized) notes in my mind before I play them. That would work well in a jazz club but greater accuracy is usually required in classical concerts. Read the song lyric below and then look away and see how much you can remember. You may need to read it through several times before you can recite it back fluently. Everyone has a different capacity to do this but like everything else you can improve.
I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night, a candle glows.
I believe for everyone who goes astray, someone will come to show the way.
I believe, I believe.
If we wanted to memorize this song lyric we might start with the 1st verse and note obvious things like every line begins with ‘I believe’ and this phrase is repeated at the end. Alternatively, we could imagine or create in our minds a little story of the sequence of events of events contained within the verse such as, line 1:- ‘rain and flower’ line 2:- ‘night and candle’ etc. line 3:- salvation. When reciting the lyric our memory might play tricks on us and we may get the first two lines the wrong way round, or we may even sing ‘candle grows’ (instead of ‘glows’) or ‘someone will come and ‘go astray’ (instead of ‘show the way’) or ‘someone in the darkest night’ (instead of ‘somewhere’) but we know this wouldn’t make sense, so by practicing we could soon iron out these problems. If we personally believed in the sentiments expressed by the words of this song then no doubt we would learn the song even quicker and perform it immediately with the required passion and integrity. Thankfully, most performers (like actors) can give a convincing performance of the speech or song or poem or a musical work even if it is not something that is their heartfelt belief or something they would personally choose to perform, because they know how to convince themselves that they inhabit that particular role or that the story they tell (literal or musical) actually happened (or is happening) to them.
But, surely music is different to words.How can we remember the correct order of fifty notes? Try moving any word in the previous (underlined) sentence to any other position and the sentence will probably become nonsense, so those fifty or so letters are comparatively easy to remember, because we are so familiar with the English language.
This example (below) looks complicated but when analyzed it is simply an ascending diminished 7th arpeggio followed by a descending scale of G major.
One of the reasons we enjoy listening to music is the journey music takes us on. Sometimes cadence points are satisfyingly predictable and other times we are transported into the unknown. The more familiar we get with the music the more we enjoy the predictability of it, rather like the child who enjoys the same bedtime story every night. So the first thing we need to do is to know the musical story we are to re-tell
- Read through the piece mentally and try to hear the music in your mind
- Try to make mental notes (or write down) information about chords and melody lines and form
- Look for unusual passages, sequences, important tonal and dynamic contrasts
for example if we were to try to memorize Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ sonata we might first note the key signature (C# minor) and then maybe the way the right hand plays the chord structure in triads in slow quaver triplets with the melody played by the upper (4th & 5th)fingers of the right hand. The left hand supports all this with lovely deep octaves. The music begins with the right hand playing the tonic triad (2nd Inv.) repeatedly supported by the tonic (key-note) note and octave sustained under the broken chords. The second bar is similar but the bass descends to B. Then after passing through a couple of major chords (A and D/F#) the chord structure passes through a decorative chord movement over the dominant to return to the tonic. Thinking about a piece of music in this way using your preferred form of analysis (Roman numeral, Figured bass, Greek, Jazz etc.) can be a powerful aid in your quest to memorize a piece for performance. Because I worked extensively in the commercial music world I became accustomed to using Jazz chords in analysis, although we usually use whatever conventional system is contextual to the particular form and genre in question.
After thinking about the music and making your analysis you can then play through the music SLOWLY as if it was a sight reading exercise. There will no doubt be areas that prove a problem technically and you can highlight these passages by making notes in pencil. You can then devise exercises to to help you (your student) to gradually overcome these problems. Unless these areas are dealt with in the early stages there is a danger that they will become a fixation on the part of the performer particularly during the concert or exam.
Remember, at the beginning of this page I used the expression ‘playing without music’, well, we need to ensure this applies to the absence of the sheet music only, rather than the fact that our performance sounds like a string of notes rattled out in the correct order but without any of the beauty and expression the composer intended. So never forget to research as much information as possible about the composer, the period he/she lived and the musical form of the particular piece.
Free advice from Mel Stallwood atwww.classycoolmusic.com