Memorizing Previously Read Tunes

[Rhomylly]

last night was the first time since my busking attempts that I was able to get to the weekly Irish slow jam session here.

 

something very interesting happened.

 

I've learned, or at least partly learned, all the tunes I know (we have a *gasp!* book) from sight-reading, even the tunes I was already familiar with from other venues.

 

But I've gotten familiar enough with some of the tunes that I can play them while busking sans sheet music. I've memorized them.

 

So last night, we got to a couple of those tunes, and I flipped to that page and quickly realized that seeing the notes messed me up. But when I just looked away or closed my eyes and played, I did fine.

 

What happened? Why does looking at the notes now mess me up?

[Mark Evans]

I can only guess what might have happened to you and can certainly relate.

 

I sing with music in hand quite often (Oratorio). By the time a performance of even a work new to me comes along, I've "internalized it." The music is now a part of me and my focus is on expressing it outward with my colleagues and audience. The score in my hand is simply a dramatic prop and of course convention. I avoid looking down at the music because it can break my concentration. I've actually had panic attacks when my eyes have strayed upon the score long enough to get caught up in what measure and beat I'm in and on. It steals the momentary magic we all long to find in free music making.

 

Maybe something like this happened to you?

 

Learning music, sight reading, or reworking a familiar tune comes from a part of my brain that doesn't communicate very well with the part that performs.

 

I'm affraid the busking has turned it up a notch for you. Congradultations!

[Stephen Mills]

An experienced note-reader is not mechanically visualizing and processing notes, not even the first time through. Instead, experience causes a more chunky processing of groups of notes and the relationships between them. On repeated playing, many cognitive links are built up and the chunks are constantly changing. One example is simply knowing where you need to look at any given time; despite your perception, you have not really been rigidly following the notes.

 

Naturally, time away from reading combined with memorization will disrupt your previous strategy and you will be temorarily worse. New repetitions will incorporate both cognitive processing modes into a new synthetic way of dealing with the notes, probably better, but temporary just like its predecessor. Ultimately, you want to get away from the notes altogether, but have the components, including chord structure, somewhere in your subconscious memory.

 

Two old experiments:

(1) Chess amateurs and grandmasters were each presented with random and midgame chessboards. The grandmasters could remember scarcely more than the amateurs of the random positions, but exactly recreate the meaningful positions. (The amateurs of course could not.) Musicians similarly process music based on their experience.

 

(2) Some idiots savant (Please excuse the term; I can't remember the modern substitute) can tell you what day of the week any day in the future will fall on. Normal persons can be taught the very complicated algorithm, but perform far, far more slowly than the savants. Then, one day, they suddenly perform equally well, but they can no longer verbalize or easily remember how they do it.

 

These observations may seem peripheral, but the human brain is an astonishing processing machine, and even simple processing (like note-reading) is never as simple as it first appears.

 

Just my opinion.

[Mark Evans]

Not peripheral at all Stephen! I visited your website last night and was duely impressed. Now I more than a bit astounded. You've got your chops together.

 

A clear look at the whole process may have saved me years of self-doubt and agony. Where were you then?

[Steven]

Rhomylly--

The same thing happens to me. I also generally learn from sheet music, but then try to memorize the tune as soon as possible. Once I've gotten it into my muscle memory, I think of it more as a combination of the sound of the tune and where my fingers need to go. The sheet music (and the names of the notes I'm playing) are no longer really part of it unless I really think about it, in which case I'm no longer concentrating on playing the tune. You've probably just moved the tunes from the visual part of the brain (reading notes) into the auditory (hearing notes) and movement (placing your fingers) parts of the brain. I think this is very probably a good thing.

 

Steven

[bellowbelle]

Instead, experience causes a more chunky processing of groups of notes and the relationships between them.

Since I played the piano-accordion, with it's 'fifthy' arrangement of bass buttons, before other instruments (voice, guitar, concertina, etc.) -- AND played mainly by ear, not with much printed music -- I believe I learned to use fifths as reference points for sounds. (Oh, and singing traditional hymns in church helped, too, I guess.)

 

I still do that, I think!

 

 

(from Rhomylly's post) So last night, we got to a couple of those tunes, and I flipped to that page and quickly realized that seeing the notes messed me up. But when I just looked away or closed my eyes and played, I did fine.

 

What happened? Why does looking at the notes now mess me up?

 

I've struggled with this one, too! I used to think that, if I ever became adept at reading music (still getting there) that it would be a smooth extension of my ear-playing. Not so. It seems that they're two different things.

 

So, as it is, my ear comes first. Must be able to play the song 'by ear,' even if I do use the music at first. If I can't remember a section of the printed music, then, I won't play it that way...it shall be adapted, eventually, to my ear.

 

That's just my personal choice, of course!

 

And, I am not actively playing out anywhere nor do I expect to, just for myself and the birds and whatever. At least for now!

[Robin Madge]

My wife, Anne, has two distinct classifications of tunes; those learnt by ear and those played from the dots. If she's learnt a tune from the dots she has real difficulty in playing it by ear no matter how often she has played it, and we're talking about 40 years of English concertina playing here. It's something to do with a direct link from the eyes to the fingers without being "heard in the head" on the way.

 

I cannot read music for playing but can for singing, as in a West Gallery choir. I soon learn the tune and don't need the score for that except to remind myself when we have'nt done the item for a while. The words are another matter. If I read them to sing from I always have to read them to sing from as I can't remember anything after the first few, and perhaps not even them. Learn a set of words by ear and I don't need the words in print unless my memory fails (more likely on the songs I write myself).

 

Robin Madge

[Jay Lamsa]

There is such a difference in how you read a piece you have heard before, versus one that you are just picking up from from the "dots on the page". Another interesting thing is the way we subconciously process music even when we are not playing. I find that with difficult pieces I am better off stopping before the point of frustration and leaving it alone for a few days. When I come back, my fingers seem to "know" where to go, and I play much better than if I had beaten the music to death in practice.

 

I am curious about people's suggestions for memorizing pieces. I find myself TOO tied to written music, and end up using it as a crutch. I got in this habit from piano and it has transferred to my english concertina and PA playing. I haven't had the opportunity to play concertina or PA with others - does the group setting encourage memorization?

 

Jay

[Mark Evans]

I found myself bobbing my head up and down as I read Robin's last two sentances.

The songs and tunes I've learned by ear have been memorized in the process of learning them. They mostly remain intact and very free feeling.

 

Songs or tunes I've learned from a score are a different matter. I can find myself stuck, worried about making mistakes even in a genre were improvisation and ornamentation are the norm. A little talk with myself, and I let go, mostly.

 

I've been away from any contact with the concertina and it's related music for 20 years and now that I'm playing again there's been a continuous flood of long forgotten tunes jumping back in my fingers. Can't remember but a fraction of the titles, but there they are. It almost seems as if they're laughing at me saying "where have you been?"

[JimLucas]

A suggestion to you all: When you read a tune, try to consciously listen to yourself playing. That way you'll be learning by ear as you're reading. You'll proably stumble at first, and take a while to get used to it, but eventually it could even become second nature, and you'll find yourself learning the things you read without even trying.

 

This might also help Rhomylly with her problem, since she will learn to see/hear/feel the connection between (where she is in) the written music and (where she is in) the music she hears.

[Alan Day]

Playing by ear for the first time is a similar thrill to finding that you can split your mind in half and play a tune with the right hand and chords on the left.I cannot sing and play at the same time which would be in three, but I must confess that I have great difficulty in concentrating on stage without my mind wandering to other things while I am playing.I do it also when reciting,I even have a conversation with myself,"Now come on Alan concentrate" etc anyone else have this problem?

I think it is another element which cannot be taken into concideration whilst practicing.Someone coughing ,talking etc.

Al

[Mark Evans]

Alan, I too can become distracted on stage. It can be someone in the audience or something different by one of my colleagues, the lighting, the change in the sound of a hall now filled with people, and boy howdy did I talk to myself! In the past I've waited with grim anticipation of that first moment of distraction and for me the subsiquent mistake(s) it always caused. Then I would think about the mistake and make another!

 

In the last few years I've come up with a remedy that works for me...focus. I focus on being a part of the ensemble I'm creating with. Never allowing myself to loose emotional contact with them and together us with the audience. Sounds very granola, but it works. The audience knows your are there with them, and they react to it. Dosen't matter what instrument or part you play in any given ensemble, that focus pays off.

 

That focus also takes away the feeling for me that I am alone. I can feel very isolated playing or singing. Allowing that thought stream to continue can cut me off from my colleagues and diminsih what is projected to the audience. Performing can bring out the fight or flight reflex in all of us. This is just my little cheat to go around it.

[JimLucas]

In the last few years I've come up with a remedy that works for me...focus. ... Sounds very granola, but it works.

Far too simplistic -- call it "granola" if you like -- for me.

You can actually decide to focus, and suddenly be focused as a result? I wish I could!

... The very act of deciding distracts me.

[Mark Evans]

Ah Jim, it is that simple. You have simply to choose. Don't think about it for heaven's sake! Your body will follow. A phrase that is used a lot by singers and instrumentalist I have most enjoyed working with is "living within the moment." Take it any way you want, but an analitical approach will not get you there. "I will make it so, all the other distraction around me will not divert my purpose." The body knows what to do (much better than you or I). Give it the permission to do what it longs to do anyway. If you want a little starter exercise, breeth deeply for about 5 minutes in a quite place before going on stage. It'll bring your heart rate down and help your get to that place where the rush of stepping out under those lights dosen't blow you out of the water.

 

I struggled with many techniques and resultant spotty success with concentration and projection of my voice until I took my teacher Elena Nikolaidi's advice to heart. "Sing for the cheap set boy, they always come back. Stop all the (word not printable here) American analization and just do it now!" She had to make me angry to do it for the first time, but I remembered. Dosen't feel good at first because you don't feel in control. You then realize you don't have to "control" anymore than you Jim would have to think twice about transposing say "Off To California" from G to D. In fact if you thought about it, there might even be a problem. Don't ask why you would do it just try it. Instrumentalist or singer it's the same process. I know you've experienced having your 'tina seem like it was playing itself.

 

Staying focused on your colleagues on the stage comes from the same place. When it's good, you can do anything even with folks you've just picked up a gig with. The magic is created, if only for a moment. Is it not why you need to play music, for that magic fix?

 

Sorry for going on.

[bellowbelle]

A suggestion to you all: When you read a tune, try to consciously listen to yourself playing.

Yup, as I mentioned in another thread not too long ago, I sometimes make a cassette of my concertina practice time and then play it back later in the day. (It's usually got a lot of mistakes in it, but, I play on until there's at least one acceptable copy!)

 

Then, I just erase over it and move on to the next piece.

[JimLucas]

A suggestion to you all:  When you read a tune, try to consciously listen to yourself playing.

...I sometimes make a cassette of my concertina practice time and then play it back later in the day.

That is also very useful, but I really meant paying attention to the sound of the music while you are producing it.

 

Listening to yourself later and trying to play along without looking at the music is another useful technique, but if you aren't aware of the music as you're making it, it will be difficult to really learn it... or to play expressively.

[Alan Day]

There are three factors to take into consideration with this discussion.

The first is when playing for dancing it is advisable to watch the dancers,this I have no trouble with I enjoy people dancing to our music and rarely get put off even if the person(s) I am watching shoot off in the wrong direction etc.

In sessions no problems I am completely relaxed ,trying out new things and It`s not the end of the world if I make a mistake.The third is much more difficult playing in concert,people sitting in rows watching and listening closely to everything you do.That`s where my problem is concentrating fully on what I am doing.The worse thing is to look at the audience,focus on a point over their head at the end of the hall.I know the theory but I find it difficult and my mind wanders to other things and I have to talk myself back to concentrating again.At this point I usually make a mistake.It is lucky that I have enough experiance to get over it, until the next one, but many players who have the same problems fall apart at this point.

Al

[RustyBits]

My only stage experience iswith singing. Before a solo I had to keep saying "Don't Faint! Don't Faint. . . " Needless to say I cut my choral career short because the anxiety was too much! I don't know how you people do it! Maybe I needed more beer!