My violin and viola students in my home studio are going to be performing this coming week in a studio recital. One of the things that I have bumped up against during the years of my teaching is the resistance that my students have to memorizing their music So I have decided that I’m going to perform on the recital and I’m going to play from memory. I’ve chosen two pieces. One of them I memorized when I was younger, so to recall that is pretty easy. But the other one is a piece that I just learned last summer and I performed it using the sheet music.
Well, this recital is in a week, and I realized that I haven’t done this process in a while and it’s been a challenge. It’s two pages and about 7 minutes long by Bach, and is very improvisatory so you can’t just memorize symmetrical phrases. Since it was more of a challenge than I thought it would be, I have a new empathy towards my students, and I’ve decided that I am going to analyze how I actually memorize a piece of music. This is something that takes a lot of awareness, which is why I’m using this as my first awareness activity on my 30 day journey.
One thing that I have realized about learning a piece of music by heart is that it is all about awareness to many, many details. It’s also about learning many languages (the language of harmony, theory, tactile ques, finger patterns, the language of emotion, etc.) and using them all towards the end of learning a piece of music by heart. Experts for years have said that learning to play an instrument is one of the best things you can do for your brain and can help you learn in all areas of your life. Well, this is why. Because you are learning multiple languages, and you’re using all of those languages to be able to put a piece of music into, not only your mind, but into your fingers, into your heart, and into your soul.
How do I do this?
Let me tell you how I used to memorize phone numbers. Trust me, this actually relates to how I go about memorizing a piece of music. I used to live in Chicago. There were several area codes used there because of the large population. There were two area codes used in the city- 312 was the central part of the city and the ring around it was 773. For those who lived outside of city limits, there was 847 to the north, 630 to the west, and 708 to the south, etc. Since I drove all over the metropolitan area, I became quite familiar with these, so it was easy for me to make a visual map in my mind. Therefore, when I am learning a phone number, I don’t have to remember the area code. I simply find where on my map it is and create an association with that. Then I go to the next three digits. I can easily see them as a unit, so I take a mental picture of the image of the three numbers, as if I was taking a picture with a camera. With the last four digits, I memorize the numbers, usually by repeating them several times. If they create a date, I might use that to remember. For instance, if the last four digits are 1983, I remember that was the year we had terrible floods where I lived, so all I have to do is remember the flood, and I know the numbers.
So now I have the entire phone number of 10 digits using these different tools. If I was required to memorize 10 numbers in a row, my mind would want to explode! But doing it this way helps me to later be able to regurgitate all 10 numbers.
This applies to memorizing a piece of music, only there are way more tools you can use to put the parts of the music together. I am a detail person, so I like to bite off small chunks at a time.
Turning to this Bach piece that I’m memorizing, there are cadences, which are where the music comes to a natural pause. This is where I will start. I will use thoughtful repetition and the languages I know to work on this first section. Some of the languages I use to memorize it include: my knowledge of theory and chord progressions, finger patterns, scale patterns, tactile sensations, the sounds created by the notes and how they make me feel, structure, and patterns I find. There are just so many ways to approaching putting music to memory. The more details I can become aware of and put into my consciousness, the more successful I will be. I’m able to memorize something by paying attention to more details. Accomplishment: one half page memorized today.
What is paying attention to more details? AWARENESS. What am I trying to do for the next 30 days? Be more aware. This was so much fun, I have a feeling I am going to explore this activity more! It definitely brought me to the present and centered me.
If you would like to listen to the podcast version of this blog, go to https://anchor.fm/tamara-tanner/episodes/Day-1-Memorizing-Music-e13lcqs
Explorations in Healing 