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  #16  
Old 10-05-2015, 09:09 AM
Trillian Trillian is offline
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It's a pie with many slices, the importance of each varies by person and learning style.

I think that what people mean by 'visualizing' in many cases is really 'auralize' (I don't know the real word), or to have an aural concept. I view that as a kind of corner stone to music, which makes sense really. Other facets such as visual pictures, muscle memory, theoretical knowledge, are all in service of that aural concept, and I say use what works best for you, but of course be open to trying new techniques. I find myself visualizing how things land on the instrument, but I don't think I've ever visually memorized so much as a measure of a score. This could be part of why yes I do find that trying to find my place in a score mid performance can be a disaster. I find that making obnoxious marks on the score at key places helps out. Walter Gieseking was a pianist with an incredible visual memory, he used to memorize entire scores verbatim while riding the train (and be able to play the piece after that), and could write the score out to any piece he knew, sitting away from the instrument. Must be nice to be a genius...

I am the 'Mr. Magoo' of sight reading too, I tend to miss important road signs, I'll start reading someone else's part at page turns thinking "Well THAT'S a silly thing to put there"... One time when I still studied classical guitar I was playing a Carcassi study in a lesson and the teacher pointed out that I wasn't playing any of the half note inner voices. I told her "Oh wow I didn't even see those, I guess cause they're hollow??"
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  #17  
Old 10-05-2015, 09:19 AM
kevets kevets is offline
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IMO, it's only truly memorized if you can, without a guitar, name the left hand fingerings. And practicing this visualization and naming can really help in the memorization process.

Muscle memory (that comes from repetition) is the first thing to flee me when under the pressure of a public performance.
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  #18  
Old 10-15-2015, 07:19 PM
Michael D Bryce Michael D Bryce is offline
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I very much dislike memorization and avoid it unless really necessary. Instead, i seek to understand the music. Then I know the music instead of memorizing it. I analyze the music for chords and scales. So instead of memorizing "cdefg" I would understand it as "start on c (the tonic note) and ascend stepwise to g (the 5th scale step). Now I know this part instead of memorizing it. Then I repeat it a bunch of times as musically as I can. This process appears to many people as slower than "memorizing" and they won't do it. It is actually much faster than memorizing.
Also, take only small sections and repeat them many times, playing musically.
Once, I had a two-page piece I wanted to know by heart (I never say "memorize"!). I planned to learn 2 measures per day, so I would know the piece by heart in two weeks. However, once I learned the 2 measures, I went on to 2 more. I wouldn't go on until I knew those 2 measures well - which really didn't take much time. So I learned the whole piece in 2 days instead of 2 weeks. If I had tried to "memorize" the whole work all at once, it would have taken much longer.
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  #19  
Old 10-15-2015, 07:26 PM
HHP HHP is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kevets View Post
IMO, it's only truly memorized if you can, without a guitar, name the left hand fingerings. And practicing this visualization and naming can really help in the memorization process.

Muscle memory (that comes from repetition) is the first thing to flee me when under the pressure of a public performance.
Opposite for me. When I can reliably play the piece, I find I can't visualize the mechanics of playing it. I almost never look at my left hand when playing so visual cues would hurt more than help.
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  #20  
Old 10-16-2015, 07:39 AM
Trillian Trillian is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael D Bryce View Post
I very much dislike memorization and avoid it unless really necessary. Instead, i seek to understand the music. Then I know the music instead of memorizing it. I analyze the music for chords and scales. So instead of memorizing "cdefg" I would understand it as "start on c (the tonic note) and ascend stepwise to g (the 5th scale step). Now I know this part instead of memorizing it. Then I repeat it a bunch of times as musically as I can. This process appears to many people as slower than "memorizing" and they won't do it. It is actually much faster than memorizing.
Also, take only small sections and repeat them many times, playing musically.
Once, I had a two-page piece I wanted to know by heart (I never say "memorize"!). I planned to learn 2 measures per day, so I would know the piece by heart in two weeks. However, once I learned the 2 measures, I went on to 2 more. I wouldn't go on until I knew those 2 measures well - which really didn't take much time. So I learned the whole piece in 2 days instead of 2 weeks. If I had tried to "memorize" the whole work all at once, it would have taken much longer.
I think what you mean by 'memorize' is memorizing by rote without understanding anything about the music. It's like trying to learn a speech simply by memorizing the words in order without addressing the broader context not only in structure but meaning. I think a lot of us would argue that that's not really memorizing at all, at least not effective memorizing. I think we're really saying the same thing.
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