How to not forgetting a piece you have learned

[Christian Reno]

Originally Posted by mmmaak

ahhh, now I remember exactly what it was I heard:

"A good player practises till he gets it right; a great player, till he can't get it wrong."

So I stand corrected (by myself )

I like both versions. It illustrates the importance of practice. Now I will make an attempt at a quote and I will undoubtedly screw it up. Buster B. once said something along the lines of - "I hate practice, I just play my guitar a lot".

[Christian Reno]

Originally Posted by mmmaak

ahhh, now I remember exactly what it was I heard:

"A good player practises till he gets it right; a great player, till he can't get it wrong."

So I stand corrected (by myself )

I like both versions. It illustrates the importance of practice. Now I will make an attempt at a quote and I will undoubtedly screw it up. Buster B. once said something along the lines of - "I hate practice, I just play my guitar a lot".

[Christian Reno]

removed .....

[MRBABAR]

Video tape yourself playing it.

[Billy Memphis]

There really is no substitute for practicing the pieces you want to remember enough to actually remember them. I find one helpful tip is when you do play the piece, whether you are "practicing " or not; don't just play the parts you know and stop when you forget something. Look that something up and make sure you at least play it correctly all the time. This way you will be in fact practicing and remembering all at the same time.

[devellis]

I guess it depends in part on what kinds of stuff you play. There's a concept in cognitive psychology called "gist" (pronounced jisst). The term is also in informal usage, of course, and refers to the essential core meaning of something, as in, "well, I don't remember the whole movie, but the gist of it is these two guys both like the same girl and (etc.)". For most of the stuff I play, note-for-note exactitude from occasion to occasion isn't necessarily my goal. So, I don't need to remember a long sequence of exact notes but just the gist of the melody. The gist can then help me further refine my recollectiuons. I've found myself trying to recall a tune a couple of times and having to go into a fingering that just doesn't seem right to me, in order to get some of the notes. I'll then realize that I'm in a different key than the one I learned the tune in initially. From the gist perspective, when playing without accompaniment, the key isn't that relevant. The intervals are the same irrespective of key. Because I remember the gist (the "sound" or contour of the intervals in the melody), I can move through the melody for quite a while before I realize I'm in a different key.

Gist applies in lots of situations. Cognitive psychologists have studied oral traditions in which people (often specially-designated members of society) have responsibility for remembering and reciting very long oral histories that transmit valued cultural information. Early anthropologists often reported that these narratives, which could last several hours, were virtually identical from recitation to recitation, without a single word or inflection changing. Examinations of recordings revealed that this is not the case. The gist
of the stories never changes. That is, the characters, actions, points of drama, and plot development are consistent. But the words used to convey them do change a little. (Musical devices like rhythm, meter, andrhyming, by the way, are a key to how these long passages can be remembered.) By preserving the gist, the changes over time don't cause the story to drift the way stories drift when kids play "telephone." The gist acts as a centering force that causes variations in language to be self-correcting for the most part (although longer-term drift may well have occurred without detection). Folklorists who track the evolution of songs, from their origins centuries ago in England and elsewhere to their modern derivatives in American popular music forms, have observed a similar pattern, although the drift usually accelerates and the gist gets pretty well butchered as the music gets democratized (everybody sings it instead of just the community elders) and commercialized (singers want to increase relevance for appeal for their modern audiences).

I think gist can be used in the same way to help us remember how to play music. Gist is about context. If I have a feel for what a melody does, that really helps me remember it. I may not remember the exact notes or finger movements, but I can usually find them fairly quickly if I have the gist of the tune down. I might know, for example, tha the second section of the A part is sort of a "response" to the "call" of the first section of the A part. That really narrows the possibilities. If I get the gist, that's usually a doorway into the tune, even if I end up playing it just a bit differently than I did last time (which isn't such a bad thing for the music I play).

If I play a tune frequently, of course, it's smoother and, beyond the gist, I can easily remember the little variations I like, how to change a part the second time through to make it more interesting, etc. But when trying to dredge a lost tune back to memory, gist works quite well. Once I get the gist of it, I can usually remind myself exactly how I executed the various passages.

I've also found that sometimes if I can't remember how a tune starts, I can start the B part and play around. When I get to the A part, it's just there. Same when I can't remember how to finger something. If I keep trying that one phrase, I'll never remember it but if I start several phrases ahead of it and just play, the "momentum" of the melody helps me find the fingering.

While these little tricks help me, I certainly forget tunes and sometimes have to go dig out the music to find my way. And I do have a harder time remembering some things now at 62 than I did at 26. (Others my age will relate to the inability to recall names, like of a movie star, even when we can remember their films, can see their faces in our mind's eye, and can remember their co-stars and seemingly everything about them except their names. It's actually normal, trust me.) But the notion that our memories completely go down the drain as we age isn't true and I think my age-mates are just funnin' with folks a bit. Those of you in your 40s or 50s needn't panic.

Phew, sorry for the long post.

[OC1]

In my free time I had been working as a technical director on music concerts/festivals.
You would be surprised what different players and groups needs to remind them what they were supposed to play or sing.

Some will only put a note on the floor with the names of songs. Some will put a paper with words on it - a words from songs that they keep forgetting. Or things that they will spontaneously shout during concert.
Some will put whole lyrics for all the songs in horse letters on twenty sheets of paper so they can read it - songs they played hundred of times - then they need somebody to change all the papers before each song and when that person made mistake - you get a mix song - oh so many funny things go on concerts.

So it is not just you.

But the best players actually play from head - literally - they simply want to play certain melody or song and the fingers knows how to do it. Each time they play it bit differently and they don't have it written in tabs or notes.
In fact when they want to publish songs they need somebody to transcribe it from their playing.