Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Adult vs Child Students

MoB, it was "pushing for polish". In the example I gave, once "recital season" rolled around, attention tended to go only to the recital piece, work on other things stopped. With recitals being held twice a year, if this went on for 2 months each time, then 1/3 of a year's lessons went that way. This is "push for polish". I don't think anyone is against spending some portion of time polishing a piece, as you're also saying.

Because every moment you spend polishing means playing the same thing or couple of things over and over and over and over and over and over.

The result is always memory, even if a student is still supposedly looking at the music.

For the first year or two, If you do this for short periods, no problem.

This is not what most teachers do. They spend much too much time on too little music, and reading stops.

That's what I'm talking about.

If you teacher(s) are not doing that, then there is no problem.

Not disagreeing just adding:
Memorizing music is a skill in itself, but it seems it's not often taught but expected to happen just by sheer repetition in an ineffective manner which is slow and the results are inconsistent.

I have to blame the ABRSM, et al., to some extent for this, at least in the UK. Our early musical training is very exam-focused, and even teachers that cater to the isn't-little-jemima-clever crowd are expect to prepare kids for exams.

The bulk of the marks on ABRSM exams, at all grades, come from playing three pieces. It's almost -- but not quite -- possible to pass on the strength of those pieces alone. The sight-reading requirements are not strenuous, even at the higher grades, and it's possible to score zero in this section and still get a good pass overall.

One of the chief reasons I left my first teacher was her expectation that all students memorize and play, at an over-produced, end-of-year recital, a suite of pieces at the edge of their current ability levels.

Learning stopped for the last three months of the year (replaced by "polishing"), reading was consciously tossed aside for rote memorization, and lots of crash-and-burn bad experiences ensued.

My current teacher is affiliated with a good music school where semi-annual juries and performance opportunities are much more naturally integrated into the routine course of learning.

It's a big change for the better.

Wow, that's just about the opposite of what happens in my studio.

Most students--especially the very young ones--memorize music without prompting. After playing through their 8-bar exercises from method books 10-15 times, the music is almost automatically memorized. And after that they just stare at their hands without looking at the book. Only those who don't practice piano at home will come to lessons without having at least some of their exercises memorized.

I have to come up with clever solutions to get kids NOT to memorize music. Kids are memorizing music in lieu of reading the notes.

I was thinking of adding that most kids memorize simple music easily and I was referring to us older folks and memorizing longer and more complex pieces, but kind of thought it was obvious

Memorization is linked to repetition. If you don't repeat, you don't memorize.

The number of times repeating the same passage, the same way, is what leads to memorization.

None of my students - and I do mean NONE of them - memorize anything until I ask them to do so, later, as an extra step. I call this "icing on the cake".

Everything I teach revolves around the idea, "Get it right the first time."

It's not quite that simple. There are memorization techniques that do not rely on repetition. I think you are mainly thinking of building muscle memory here.

There are memory techniques that cut down on repetition.

We are simply not talking about the same thing here.

What I am talking about IS that simple. Get it right the first time. If it is already right the first time, with a score, then you can immediately start memorizing.

That's not what beginning students do. They get it right the 10th time, or the 50th time.

My son memorizes easily and that’s possible because he practices a lot. His teacher stresses quite a bit of doing things right the first time because of the hours he puts in which makes it hard for him to undo mistakes.


On a separate note, I personally think there is a balance between learning music and polishing. My son’s teacher has very high standards I think for passing a regular piece- but it’s really rewarding to hear a polished piece.

How long has he had lessons? Is he already an advanced player? Does he read quickly and easily?

Are we talking about a method book page, memorized and polished, or a Mozart sonata? What level are you talking about?

I'm talking mainly about the first year, if all goes well. Once reading becomes a habit and it is no problem, then memory for some is almost automatic.

I'm not sure what level we are talking about.

As an advanced student I played everything from memory that I performed. But I already read very well and could learn music very quickly.

I must take your word for it, because you know your beginners.

True, we are probably not talking about the same thing. When we advance the pieces become more complex so the idea of getting it right the first time is not quite the same. Even if you do read things like notes and rhythm right from the start, the piece and the way you play it evolves and there is no single "right" way to play it. That means also the memorization must be on a different level or you are stuck with the way you first practiced. This all applies to pieces one wants to keep for years to come, not worth it for something used just to improve playing skills in general.

BTW. I also found that playing with the score for prolonged time makes memorizing extremely hard for me (in fact I am yet to fully memorize any piece I first polished with the score). So I would want to put the score away as soon as possible even if I still return to it regularly. I have not memorized anything for almost a year now, but starting to feel I want to and will have more time for it soon with no lessons to prepare to, so lets see how it goes...I make a good lab rat for memorization techniques because I have no natural talent for it, quite the opposite...

Gary-

I would say that my son from the very beginning (at 6) has been good at memorizing. He played two pieces memorized at his first recital which was 8 months into lessons. I honestly think it’s harder now for him to completely memorize his pieces as they are longer and more difficult than they were then. One of the first pieces he ever memorized was Sheppard Count Your Sheep in MFPA. I don’t know why but when he’s being silly he will still play it. Even at 6/7 though- he was a good practicer.

"Get it right the first time" is a principle, a way of working. It does not mean that you never make mistakes. It's about this:

2+2=5
2+2=3
2+2=6
2+2=1
2+2=10
2+2=4
2+2=7

This is very basic, but the idea is that if you have multiple "answers" in your head, and only one of them is correct, under any kind of pressure the wrong answers come out instead.

I don't mean that at all. There are certain things that are right and wrong. You have to have good fingering, so this should be worked out first. Then you have to consistently press down the right keys, in the right order. Quite obviously this is only the beginning, but trust me when I tell you that my students don't get this far unless I continually remind them not to go to the next step until these basics are in place. This is as true in a Bach fugue as in a simple method book piece.

As you very well know, fingering that is not the best for you will mean that you will always have glitches, so until these mechanics are worked out, the next layer will not work.

When you get the correct notes, with smart fingering, and you add to this the correct timing, this is the basic foundation. For advanced music there is a whole universe to be added, but most student never get those basics absolutely nailed.

When you say "polished", to me this means that before memorization everything already sounds as good as if you played it from memory.

Let's get that out of the way first. Because maybe you mean something different...

You should know better than to present such an example to someone with dyscalculia

But I do get what you mean...



This to me is self-evident and logical. I cannot ever remember expecting to work in any other way. So why does not everyone? Maybe it is something that has stayed with me from childhood even if consciously forgotten. Or maybe it's just how I approach things in general. After all I am a child of two engineers

But I have also seen the kind of unwillingness to work on the basics. This is how my two adult piano friends do: The other insist on playing through the pieces endlessly without getting the rhythm right. Ignoring me when I suggest she does some counting. The other one has good ear and can play the rhythm correctly but keeps messing up a certain spot. She ignores my advice to isolate and work on that spot and just keeps practicing by playing through the whole piece. I am sure their teachers are competent enough to give the same advice but do not have any more authority than I do. In fact if they were my pupils I would probably end up whipping them or at least yelling to them. I have little patience for stupidity which is why I could never be a teacher. I have high respect for those in the profession.



I mean that I feel ready to "perform" the piece so basically yes. But if I do not have the score in front of me I have absolutely no idea what to do. It's about association. Even if the playing and movements have become somewhat automatic all that relies in the associations with the score. If I had it memorized the association would be different. To change that means a lot more work that I have not really had the time for. But I will try because my eyes are getting worse and it would be wonderful to sometimes just play without them as I sometimes used to.

Because people enjoy playing wrong. It's more fun for them to continue messing things up, over and over again, than to get things right. This is INSTANTLY fixed for those of us who perform, because it does not work. I call it, "Let's pretend." Even my young students get it when I explain, and they even laugh. In their minds they are playing the music, and it is wonderful. Maybe they even have people applauding, in their minds.

No one, of any age, does that in lessons with me. Do they do it at home? Of course I don't know, but I think I mostly stop it. If they start to play for me, from the beginning, I immediately stop them and say, "You've been doing this at home, haven't you?" And the answer is always, "Yes."

Then I say: "Then you have been doing the one thing I've told you is most important not to do. I never do it. All the professional musicians I know don't do it. Why do you think it will work for you?"

If they argue, I show them the door. It's the one thing I will not put up with.

Here is what is happening. Essentially it is the same thing as getting "off book", in theatre. We both know that great actors can be just as convincing while reading, script in hand, so the difference is the look. It's obviously not connected with reading problems. So the question is this:

The moment you can read something smoothly, how quickly to you push yourself to the next step, getting rid of the script. And how do you do this?

I think it is the same for playing. When I was young I would get very good at playing things with music, and I would delay getting to the final step. For me, at that time, that last step was necessary. You can't get a degree in performance without performing from memory on piano. Juries are from memory. Recitals/performances are from memory. I personally think there is way too much of this, and far too little playing in ensembles, where the exact opposite is the norm.

Later I found out what my problem was, at that time. Not enough theory, not enough chord structure, not enough analysis of the music. I was experiencing a lot of it intuitively, but intuition is a lousy way to memorize. Today I think about the music much more, and the memory comes faster. Obviously my memory SHOULD have been much faster when I was young. But it was not because my way of memorizing was horribly wrong.

I think maybe hearing what you really sound like is a skill that must be developed, and that's not an easy process.

It was probably also good that I recorded myself first thing when I started learning. Difficult to imagine after that. It's like hearing yourself sing on tape for the first time...

Much food for my thoughts here, thanks. Since I won't be performing really, I will make it my goal to record from memory for one of the upcoming recitals.