Klarinet Archive - Posting 000771.txt from 2002/04

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] memorizing: suggestions?
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 11:17:21 -0400

Re. techniques for memorizing, Anne Lenoir wrote,
> Jon Manasse [snip] showed me how to play every
>measure as though it was an exercise itself, with repeat
>signs at the beginning and end. When I could play the
>measure effortlessly, say after several hundred times,
> then I would tie it to the next measure and practice
>2-measure segments, then 4, and so forth.

I don't think I've learned a piece until I can play it from memory, and I
tend to memorize fairly quickly, probably because my first instrument was
piano. But different memorization techniques seem to work for different
people. The method Anne describes above doesn't quite work for me, for two
reasons.

One is that this method of practicing gives me a rock-solid beginning
followed by increasingly weak memorization the farther I go toward the end of
the piece, which I've practiced less. If I run out of time to finish
learning something, I would rather bury the bad stuff in the middle
somewhere! The other problem for me is that proceeding one measure at a time
locks each measure so tightly against the previous one that if I make a
mistake, the lock breaks, I lose my place and I have a memory lapse.

To avoid those problems, I prefer to learn the ending of a piece first,
because it's the last impression I would leave (if I played for anybody
except the long-suffering cat). Anyway, I need to know where I'm going
before I decide how to get there. Then I learn the beginning, the first
impression. I learn the rest by starting from the beginning of the end, then
going back to the end of the beginning, so that I learn my way from both ends
toward the middle, unless something in the middle is such a beast that I can
tell it needs special work.

I play into the section I'm learning from a different measure every time; and
when I need to single out a passage for extra practice, I play into and out
of that difficult bit from a different starting place and ending place each
time (and I put some of those beginnings and endings mid-measure, or even
mid-note). I try to find time to play an entire movement at least once every
two practice sessions or so until memorization is secure, in order to "hear"
the phrases I'm practicing in the whole context and not just locked to the
measures before and after.

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