Memorize 24 measures

[Piazzo22]

I need help to memorize quickly the Allemande from Bach´s French Suite 1.
It´s only 24 measures long.

Can you explain me how would you do it?

[Shagdac]

For myself, I have found that after playing it thru enough times to learn it correctly, I usually have the piece memorized already. However, you may want to read under Piano Performance/How Big Are Your Hands/ the reply from Bernhard is terribly interesting and something I plan to try right away(he's usually right). Apparently your after practicing something thru, it is your subconcious that learns...this process takes place after the actual practicing. Apparently, you reach your maximum at 15-20minutes, meaning that is enough time practicing to allow the subconscious to absorb and learn later.

Using this information, I would divide the piece up in 4 sets of 6 measures each, or easier sections, however you want, and practice each section 20 minutes at a time, with breaks in between each. If you have a week to memorize this, you may want to do a different section each day, with 10 or 12 seperate 15-20 minute practice sessions for each set of measures.

Also, I have spent time memorizing even when away from the piano. I will play on my desk, steering wheel, etc...anything while I try to visualize each and every note on the score. I have also tried to write out the piece myself....as much as I can from memory. Listening to a recording of the piece while visually picturing the score in front of you also helps me.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

S

[faulty_damper]

Yes, play it through.  If you spent your time perfecting the first four measures, you're wasting time memorizing the other 20 measures.  Perfecting the piece, any piece, should usually be done after knowing the entire piece.  Maybe not remember it but knowing it.

I've just recently realized this after trying the method I just said is a waste of time for quite some time.  Live and learn, eh?  Oh well, I'm not Canadian.

One reason of this method is that I usually did this because there were way too many notes for me to comprehend on the SHEET, not my mind - the black dots with lines attached to them were very intimidating when there were a lot of them.  But once memorized, the piece is quite easy.  So don't do it this way.  Play it through.  Play it through.  Play it through.

[bernhard]

First of all, Bach is considered by most students as notoriously difficult to memorise.

One of the reasons is that most people memorise without a system. That is, they think “memorising” is something they were born with. It is “intuitive” (meaning that the whole process happens unconsciously; most people have no idea how they actually go about memorising something. They just do it), As a consequence most people memorise in a very inefficient manner. It will take me to long to write about efficient memorisation, and even longer for you to train yourself to do it. You probably will not have the time to do it and memorise the piece as well.

The other reason is that Bach’s music is composed according to different principles to the ones we grow accustomed to. It is not about a tune and an accompaniment. It is about a motif (a fragment of melody) that is repeated varied and developed in countless ways during the course of the piece. And this is all done by different “voices”. This makes it  very difficult to follow by ear: it is done on purpose so that the music, no matter  how many times you listen to it, always sound fresh.

Most people when memorising music, what they are actually doing is memorising the “sound” of it, and then playing by ear. Another number of people repeat the movements so many times that they develop “hand memory”, that is, their bodies know exactly what to do, and the player has the uncanny experience of seeing his finger hit all the correct notes, while he himself has no idea of what he is playing. A few rare individuals, can create a photographic image of the score in their minds and follow it. Finally, you can create a memory for the structure of the music, its architecture, the way it was built. Almost no one bothers with this “architectural” memory unless they are musicologists teaching classes on it. None of these memories are mutually exclusive, and I strongly suggest you work on all of them. The most important is hand memory. It is also the most dangerous, because if you make one single mistake you will have a huge black out and you will need to start all over again form the very beginning hoping that this time around the fingers will comply. At the same time it is the most necessary: without hand memory you simply will not be able to play in any fluent way (even with the score in front of you). So you must back up hand memory with one of the other kinds, preferably with all of them.

So, here is how you go about it:

1.      Since you have little time you will need to work intensively on it. This is bad, since memory needs time to settle. You must be extremely organised and completely systematic. You cannot afford to jump all over the place or to plunge head on  repeat after repeat hoping for the best.

2.      Start by working on structure and architecture. This allemande is built on 4 voices. Your very first step is to rewrite the whole score using 4 staves so that the four voices are clearly visible. You will not play the complete piece from this score, but you will analyse and understand the piece from it. You will also practise each voice separately from it. (And this act of rewriting the score will also help with the memorisation process – use a notation software, rather than handwriting).

3.      Now you must write the appropriate fingering on every note of this four voice score, and you must practise each voice separately using the correct finger. Whatever fingering you decide to use, stick to it. Ingrain this fingering on your subconscious mind by repeating each passage in each voice endless times. By the time you come to work on joining the voices, the correct fingers should automatically go to the appropriate keys. This fingering will be the basis of your hand memory, so do not confuse your unconscious by changing fingers every time you play the same passage. If you have little time to memorise this piece, you cannot afford not to spend whatever time it takes to ingrain the fingering from the start. Take your time over this step. Decide before starting to practise this piece which hand and which finger is going to play each note on each voice.

4.      Now start learning each voice separately. You must work with a metronome so that you hold each note for the appropriate length of time. When you join voices later on, some fingers will need to hold a note, while other fingers are playing other notes. This is one of the chief difficulties in counterpoint playing (which this ultimately is). This is what is really difficult to remember once the score is not in front of you anymore, so you must take your time to ingrain this both in your fingers and in your aural memory (that is, you must memorise the sound of it as well as the physical feeling of it). This will take countless repetitions. The most efficient way to do it is to do the following routine for each voice separately:

a.      start with the first seven bars. Repeat bars 1-2 countless times, until you cannot get them wrong, even if you wanted. Because it is only two bars, and you are working on a single voice, this should take you only 2 – 3 minutes.
b.      Now do bars 2-3, then 3 – 4, then 4-5 , then 5- 6, then 6 – 7. Have a break of five minutes.
c.      Start again but this time repeat bars1-2-3, then 2-3-4, then 3-4-5, 4-5-6 and finally 5-6-7. Have another 5 minute break.
d.      Now do bars 1234, 3456, 4567. Notice how much overlap is going on. Also notice that every time you start from a different point. This will avoid the problem many people experience of always having to go back to the beginning of the piece if they make a mistake and have a blank. Another 5 minute break.
e.      Next bars 12345,23456 and 34567. Another 5 minute break.
f.      Finally bars 123456 and 234567.
g.      You should now be able to do the whole passage perfectly, and you may find that is already memorised. Remember you are working on each voice separately at this stage.

As you are going through this routine, do not just play mechanically, but engage your mind in looking for patterns. See how each of the four voices has quite different contributions (for instance, the tenor voice almost is not there, disappearing completely in some bars; notice how the bass voice uses a lot of augmentations as a way to vary the motifs; observe how in the alto voice and in the soprano there are quasi canonic sequences, and how the motifs are inverted and modulated. Finally figure out what makes this piece an allemande, that is a dance.)

Memory is based in associations, so at every phrase you must create a strong association and keep reinforcing it.

Working in these first seven bars in this fashion may take you any time between 45 minutes and 2 hours. So after you went through it, leave it. Do not repeat it until next day. But you must repeat exactly the same procedure the next day, no matter how confident you are that you have learned it.

[continues next post]

[bernhard]

[continued from previous post]

5.      Now, since you are pressed for time, I suggest that you go through another
practice session just like the one you just did for bars 1 – 7 (by the way, I am counting the anacrusis bars at the start of the first and second part as well, so for the purposes of this explanation this piece has 26 bars, not 24). But instead of doing bars 1 – 7 (remember, you must have a night’s sleep before you tackle it again), now do bars 20 – 26. That will be another 45 mins – 2 hours.

6.      If you still feel like another practice session, do it all over again, but his time on bars 7 – 13 (notice: 7 – 13, and not 8 – 14. By starting on bar 7 you will have an overlap with the first session). Or you can do this session in a couple of days once the previous two sections are well under your belt.
7.      Finally repeat the same routine with bars 13 – 20.

8.      Now, comes the next day, you must repeat all the above again. When you start in the morning you will feel as if you have never seen the piece before. You cannot remember anything! It will be as if all that practice time yesterday was wasted. This is the trap most inexperienced students with this way of practice fall into. Instead develop a “so what?” attitude. You cannot remember anything? So what? Start again from scratch. To your amazement, you will se that it all comes back to you very, very fast. If yesterday each practice session took 2 hours to complete, now it may take only 15 – 20 minutes. But do not be lured into a false sense of confidence, and assume you learned the piece and move on to the next step. Instead wait until tomorrow. See what happens then.

9.      Comes tomorrow and you will experience exactly the same frustration that you experienced before: it is as if the whole piece has vanished without trace from your mind. Fear not! It is there. Start from scratch again. It is really important that you do not cut corners here. I am not joking when I say you must start form scratch. You will be pleasantly surprised that you can now do what took you some 6 – 8 hours in the first day in less than 30 minutes. If so, add another practice session where you start joining these big chunks, e.g., join bars 1- 7 and 7 – 13 and play the complete first part. Join the other bars and play the whole of the second part. Finally join it all together and play the full piece. You are still working on separate voices. And remember: you must make this a different practice session.

10.      Next day, one of two things will happen: you will feel like you have never seen the piece before, in which case you will have to start from scratch again (but it will come back to you with surprising ease) or you will simply remember and play the whole thing perfectly first time in the day. If this happens, then you are ready to move on. While this does not happen you will have to keep at it. In my experience no one has ever needed more than seven days to achieve this state – provided that they follow the instructions above to the letter. Most students are ready to move on by the 3rd, 4th day.

11.      If so, you are now going to join the voices, but you are still going to keep playing hands separate. In this piece the right hand gets most of the work , since it will be playing two voices most of the time (and occasionally 3), while the left hand plays just one voice and occasionally 2. So repeat exactly the same procedure you did for separate voices with separate hands. Again after 3 or 4 days it should be under your belt.

12.      Then move on to join hands. Again repeat the same procedure. If you did a through work on separate voices and separate hands, you should by now have a pretty good memory of the piece. So this should take another 3 – 4 days.

13.      This is the basic procedure. Now there are lots of details you can add. For instance. Once you are confident you can play the sections by looking at the score (even though you are looking at the score, you are actually playing from memory. It is just that your associations are linked to the score), try playing the section by looking at the keys. This will throw you off at the beginning, so do not wait until you can play the whole piece to do this: start at the level when you are working on just two bars/one voice. Alternate between looking at the score, and looking at the keys. And throw eyes closed in as well. This way you will have memories associations with the score, with the visual pattern of the keys and with the “feeling” pattern of the movements. And of course, meanwhile you are also developing aural memory.

14.      Once you are confident in your ability to play from memory, try this: Leave the score on a desk nearby (but out of sight). Start playing. When you get stuck, go to the desk and look at the score. See where you went wrong and make an effort to memorise it. Then go back to the piano and try again. You can look at the score, as many times as you need, but you must not bring it to the piano. You have to leave it at the desk and go there to look at the bit you forgot. Keep doing that until you do not need to look at the score anymore.

15.      Hear the music in your mind. From what you are hearing, try to write down the score. Then compare with the real score and see where you went wrong. Now there is a correct way to do that, and a way that is just a waste of time. The correct way is to writhe the score form what you are hearing in your mind. The incorrect way is to memorise the score and remember what it looks like (photographic memory) and simply copy what you are “seeing”. Do you understand the difference, and why it matters?

16.       Listen to a CD of this piece as many times as it takes for you to be able to recall what it sounds like in real time. The more accurate this aural memory is, the more reliable your general memory of the piece will be. Also, memorise what each voice sounds like on its own when you are practising separate voices.

17.      Once you have done all the above, find a sympathetic friend who is willing to go through that and give him a lecture about this piece. Talk about its structures, its motifs, how each voice sounds, how they go together. Do all that at the piano illustrating each one of your statements with your playing of the relevant fragments. End your lecture by playing the whole piece. Include in your lecture everything you believe to be important to remember. Repeat this lecture as many times as you can. If are able to do it say, ten times, you can use notes and even the score the first three or four times. But as soon as you feel confident try to do your lecture from memory. Teaching is an amazing memory trainer. This whole article was typed from memory without me even bothering to look at the score. Does that mean that I have a super memory? Not really, it just means that I repeat this everyday to my students, and I have taught this piece countless times over the years.

Although all of the above may seem like a lot of work, it is not really. You are already doing it every time you practice. As you sit at the piano to repeat one more time to play a passage for the nth time, you are hearing it, you are looking at the score, you are feeling the sensations in your body as you move and touch the keys, you are following the music structures, and so and so forth. But most people do that unconsciously. They turn on the automatic pilot, and as they practise fill their minds with their last holiday on the Caribbean.

All I am really suggesting you do is that each time you play a repeat, you direct your attention to one of these aspects (you will not be able to kkep all of them in consciousness all the time because the conscious mind is very small – most of them will drop to the unconscious) systematically.

Most people are very energetic and when it comes to physical effort: they can sit at the piano and practise for hours on end (physically). But they are also mentally lazy. They cannot concentrate their minds for more than a few seconds. And for memory work your mind must be there if you want fast and effective results.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Clare]

I've got a method that's a bit different to the others mentioned here, but then again I guess it doesn't contradict what has been said.

I haven't got a photographic memory, but I tend to be able to see the score in my head naturally after a while of knowing the piece. However, there are usually some bits where I'll always forget what happens next. When this happens, I will not immediately run and grab the music to see what the notes are. I'll try and guess them and usually after a few tries I'll find the next part (if not, then I will run and look at the score). After having to find the next part the hard way, I'll keep going in this way and then do it all again. I find that forcing myself to figure out what to play makes it end up sticking in my mind more. Also, especially in the works of Bach, I'll discover many of the sequences this way. I think, OK, here's a tune using a broken diminished chord, and then it repeats itself down one tone, etc. So, then, if you know the first part of the sequence, you'll know the next ones too.

I hope I have added something of use.

[bernhard]

I've got a method that's a bit different to the others mentioned here, but then again I guess it doesn't contradict what has been said.

I haven't got a photographic memory, but I tend to be able to see the score in my head naturally after a while of knowing the piece. However, there are usually some bits where I'll always forget what happens next. When this happens, I will not immediately run and grab the music to see what the notes are. I'll try and guess them and usually after a few tries I'll find the next part (if not, then I will run and look at the score). After having to find the next part the hard way, I'll keep going in this way and then do it all again. I find that forcing myself to figure out what to play makes it end up sticking in my mind more. Also, especially in the works of Bach, I'll discover many of the sequences this way. I think, OK, here's a tune using a broken diminished chord, and then it repeats itself down one tone, etc. So, then, if you know the first part of the sequence, you'll know the next ones too.

I hope I have added something of use.

Well said!

What Clare is saying is absolutely essential: "I find that forcing myself to figure out what to play makes it end up sticking in my mind more."

Memory work cannot be done on automatic pilot: you must force yourself to figure things out. You must add Clare's advice to every step  of whatever procedure you are using for memorisation.

Best wishes,
Bernhard