 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: CarlT
Date: 2010-09-19 00:03
Early intermediate player here.
When practicing a relatively difficult measure (or measures for that matter), is it best to actually memorize that passage, especially if it has a fast tempo, a lot of 1/16th notes, accidentals, etc.; or is it best to try to read that passage (ahead a bit of the music none the less)?
I, myself, seem to find it easier to actually memorize it, but if that's the wrong way, I want to stop it now before the habit is hard to break.
I seem to be able to actually play it well slowly, but if I try to "read" it during fast tempo, many times I mess up.
I have searched several archieve BB threads on "practice techniques", but I didn't see that specifically mentioned about whether, or not, to memorze. Maybe I just missed it?
Thanks,
CarlT
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Author: Bob Bernardo
Date: 2010-09-19 00:12
Interesting question. I think the more you practice a passage thats hard to play subconsciously it becomes memorized. This is a good thing. You should always try to look ahead a measure or 2. So, to answer your question I think both techniques go together hand and hand.
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2010-09-19 00:59
many of the best soloists in the world, when performing, perform by memory. So go for it. You do want to practice so that as years go by it takes less and less time/repetitions to learn those hard licks. But don't worry about memorizing it. I end up memorizing lots of parts to my music as I play. And it's a GOOD thing.
Alexi
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-09-19 01:24
I agree with Bob. I always have suggested that a person practice a difficult section to get it in your fingers and then close your eyes and play it, so you're doing it right already. ESP www.clarinetconcepts.com
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2010-09-19 04:03
Eventually, the shape of the difficult passage on the page will become the muscle memory in your fingers. Memorize it first, but then try watching it go by as an entirety while your fingers perform their memorized routine. After some time if you see a similar or identical passage in a new piece, your fingers should just perform as practiced!
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Author: Fishamble
Date: 2010-09-19 13:23
I find a handy fringe benefit of memorising a passage I'm trying to get good at is that you can run through it any time without having to root out the music.
Often I'll turn to a phrase I'm learning while I'm taking a mental break from working on something else, or maybe when I'm warming up, or when I've a few idle moments and my instrument is to-hand. I find this especially useful when it's a solo, because playing it in lots of different contexts improves my confidence for when the dreaded moment in front of an audience arrives.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2010-09-19 13:51
In my experience, fast passages are difficult to sight read, at least for us mere mortals, just because the way from sheet to eyes, then brain to muscles down to finger tips is too long.
"Practicing" means to store the phrase into muscle memory, and you only need the music on the stand as a cheat sheet.
When in doubt about accuracy or rhythm, click yourself through say MuseScore and have the computer play the lick for you until you "got it".
--
Ben
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Author: kdk
Date: 2010-09-19 13:53
One of the reasons for memorizing scales, arpeggios, thirds, etc. is to get a certain amount of "vocabulary" under your fingers and into "muscle memory," whence it can be retrieved when the player comes across passages in real music that use the patterns. Sometimes (at least in tonal repertoire) a passage is basically a scale or arpeggio or a piece of some of those basic patterns and learning the passage becomes a matter of learning where it differs (notes left out or passing notes added, changes of direction at unexpected places, etc.) from the pattern - the basic pattern already _is_ memorized and can be used as a starting point.
For passages that don't fit the usual patterns I agree with Bob B and Ed - there's a combination of processes going on as you practice that almost certainly will lead to your having memorized the passage by the time you've learned it securely.
Karl
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Author: job_man
Date: 2010-09-20 20:19
As of now, no-one seems to have mentioned the undoubted advantage gained from playing by memory, and that is the musical one. While one is peering at the part, deciphering accidentals and other markings, it is much more difficult to 'hear' the overall effect of what one is doing. As soon as the printed notes are taken out of the equation, the mind concentrates on two things: the fingers, and the sound: all my pupils agree on this. Focusing on the fingers has the advantage that it is the practical exchanges of fingers which are more evident, and focusing on the sound makes one much more aware of the potential effect on an audience. Overall musical performance is thereby enhanced.
The person who plays with their head buried in the part is in danger of playing with 'cloth ears and blinkers'!
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-09-21 12:12
>>"Practicing" means to store the phrase into muscle memory, and you only need the music on the stand as a cheat sheet.
>>
And sometimes the operative word in that sentence is "need" -- better the cheat sheet than the sheet to hide under while crawling away to die after a major memory lapse in public. I've just been reading Rimsky-Korsakov's autobiography, "My Musical Life." (Btw, he loved the clarinet and, though it was never his primary instrument, he learned to play it without a teacher so well that he substituted for a missing second violinist in a chamber music session at a friend's house.) He describes a near-debacle at one of his earliest professional performances as a conductor in St. Petersburg. Conducting from memory in completely familiar music, he lost his place. He didn't know how many bars remained before a crucial cue. He gave the concertmaster a panic-stricken signal and that alert violinist gave the vital cue to keep the orchestra and the conductor together. Thereafter, Rimsky-Korsakov abandoned the pose of all-knowingness and conducted from a score for the rest of his life.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: William
Date: 2010-09-21 17:53
I usually have found that if I learn to play something to the extent that I can think more about how it's supposed to sound and techically execute it correctly every time, I have also committed it to memory. I do not try to memorize, it just comes easy--always has. For me, notes or a specific motif will act as a cue for the following note or phrase and this seems to happen over and over. I also think I "play by ear" meaning that after learning a work, I hear it in my mind and play it the way I hear it. Probably a process of one not cueing the next, "muscle" memorization and playing by ear. Nonetheless, I think that you really have'nt adequately learned to play something unless it is pretty much memorized, one way or the other.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2010-09-22 16:04
Since this discussion has wandered off onto a tangent about *performing* from memory, there is a whole range of difference between having a difficult passage memorized so that it's "under the fingers" without having to read it note by note in real time, or even having an entire solo piece memorized in the practice studio, and performing from memory. Memorization is a useful tool at the level of specific passage work, and nearly mandatory if you're preparing a solo work for performance.
But whether or not you actually perform without music in front of you is, I think, a different issue. Lelia's Rimsky example is instructive, and I've seen enough conductors get lost in familiar music during performances that I was part of. But if a conductor gets lost, usually no one but the orchestra knows. It just makes the players work harder. Orchestra players don't generally perform without music on the stand, even if major solos have been memorized through a lifetime of practicing them. Stokie's attempts to have his orchestra play from memory in the dark (with a lighted baton in his hand) failed, and his players were excellent musicians.
If you go to enough concerts where soloists perform from memory, sooner or later you will see a major soloist suffer a memory lapse. I saw it happen to Isaac Stern once in the 1960s and at least twice to pianists whose identities I can't right now remember (although I have a nagging feeling one of them was Emanuel Ax). Full-time soloists - usually pianists, violinists or cellists - get used to the pressure of playing from memory and, I guess, take occasional lapses in stride. Most of the wind soloists I've seen - usually principal players in the orchestra, who don't make their living soloing - use music during the performance, even though I'm certain they have mostly memorized the pieces. That's a question of comfort.
Karl
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-09-24 15:21
Geting back to the original question -- When I practice a difficult passage over and over, I do find that it memorizes itself, and therein lies a danger. If I memorize that passage, but not what's around it, I can have trouble getting into it and out of it cleanly, with a big risk of a memory lapse right there at the edges of the passage, even if the surrounding music is technically simple. My piano teacher, in days when dinosaurs walked the earth, taught me to learn difficult passages by mixing up the places where I start and stop each run-through. Start a bar before the rough bit one time, at the previous rehearsal mark another time, a few notes into the middle of a bar another time, etc.. That way the passage doesn't memorize itself in a sealed container. I've found that practice technique enormously helpful.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
Post Edited (2010-09-24 19:04)
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2010-09-28 18:48
I had this very strange experience a few years ago when the orchestra I'm in were doing Shostakovich's first symphony. If you don't know it there is a passage near the beginning of the finale where the two clarinets have to "dovetail" quite tricky bits (mostly semiquavers (sixteenth notes)). Coupled with this, the second has a very swift change of clarinet to cope with. I was not familiar with the piece before we started rehearsing it and I kept really struggling and making a fool of myself in rehearsal. I looked at it at home, of course, practising it and practising it every way I could think of and it was still not right. Meanwhile, the performance was getting nearer and nearer.
Well, I knew exactly how it should sound and one evening about two weeks before the concert when I was practising I just played it without looking at the music and it came out pretty near as perfect as anything I'd ever played had. From then on I consciously did not look at the music at that particular point and it was always fine.
Whether not having the music enabled me to concentrate on fingers or something or whether my conquering the passage just happened to coincide with my abandoning looking at the music I don't know. At any rate I would say that sometimes playing without the music can actually help. However, particularly in any kind of ensemble situation you must be very sure of the pulse and your cues. Playing without music does not mean playing imprecisely.
Vanessa
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