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Post by ukpacker on Sept 1, 2018 18:55:40 GMT
Hello all I am wondering how people go about memorizing pieces learnt from the printed page. My technique is just to go phrase by phrase literally one note at a time and not moving on to the next note till I can play from start without looking at the page, as you can imagine I find this very laborious and not a lot of fun. As a child I had piano lessons and just played from the page all the time but I don't remember that resulting in me memorizing any thing.
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Phil Taylor
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Post by Phil Taylor on Sept 1, 2018 20:36:40 GMT
Hi
At first I will spend a couple of hours going through the piece bar by bar to see if there is anything that I would find impossible to play. Once I have decided to carry on with it rather that work through a bar and try to memorize it I go through a part in full over and over whilst reading the tab. Then after a few days I can tell when it begins to sink in so I try it without tab and so on until it sinks in. Whilst working on the first part I dip in the second part with the same process etc etc until it's finished.
This process can take a couple of weeks or months depending on the piece. As you say it can be laborious but once the muscle memory has begun to grasp then the enjoyment kicks in.
This is how I do it, hope it helps.
Phil
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Sept 1, 2018 21:13:21 GMT
Best plan is not to use the printed page at all, or as little as possible anyway. Attempt as much as you can by ear, and fill in the gaps/refine what you have with sneaky peaks at the page. Please don't feel, as many do, that you can't do that - it does take effort, but will stand you in v good stead when it comes to remembering what you have worked out, and will help in getting better at working out more things as you go on. You'll end up with a flowing performance a lot quicker using this method. The thought of learning a piece up to a specific note before proceeding sounds very odd - by the time you get to the end, you'll be amazingly super good at the first few bars because you've played them a zillion times, wheres the end will have only had a little work. Result will be a lumpy performance and it's unlikely you'll get to the stage of feeling comfortable enough with the whole piece to play it with expression and feeling all through as the piece will inevitably be less and less rehearsed as you play through it. If you want to take a picemeal approach as Phil suggested, then do a musical section at a time, but do try to maintain a grasp on the piece as a whole. It really helps to have the end result firmly in your head before you begin. Someone much more cleverer than what I am said something about learning the notes, then you can start to learn the music. I agree, but I also think you need a feel for the music before you begin (from listening carefully to recordings of the piece over and over again), which then allows you to start putting some feeling into it early on. Oh, and a warm welcome to the Forum ukpacker - well done leaping in on a v interesting subject. Also a v personal one, and not every method works for eveyone. And, when it comes to memory, it'll probably only get worse - mine certainly has. So much so that i can barely remember my own compositions unless I play them at least weekly. Which I tend not to do, therefore I play them weakly.... Good luck - let us know how you're getting onfrom time to time - what sort of stuff do you like to play? Keith
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Post by ukpacker on Sept 2, 2018 10:22:50 GMT
Thanks Phil and Keith think I shall focus more on playing a section until it is memorized, certainly having the music in my head as it is supposed to sound seems like good advice. From Tab at the moment I mostly play ragtime, Stephen Grossman arrangements that sort of thing, which I find just too difficult to get by ear, I might get the chord progression if it's nothing too wacky but with bass lines it's just too much for me, I learn one line melodies by ear though and refer to printed music to make sure I have it right then add some chords and bass notes or harmonizing with intervals, but I could never learn my own arrangements by ear if some else had done them!
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Sept 2, 2018 13:56:11 GMT
Aha, ragtime - fab. In that case, although you may find it hard, you're half-way there with the chord progressions. Well almost! The melodies are often syncopated and harder to get the timing right unless you have a solid regular bass line to work them out against. The bass notes will be mostly there in your chords, and tend to keep a regular pulse going. The bass runs in between the chords are only melodies but lower down if you see what I mean.
I only mention this because timing is the thing I find hardest on the odd occasion where I try to learn something from a page, and ragtime is something where I might well get the flow right by getting the bottom parts right first, then add the melody - the reverse of what I usually do. I agree entirely with your final phrase - I'm the same. I often have to refer to my recordings of my own pieces to relearn them. A good friend did tab and notate some out for me to produce a book, but I certainly couldn't play from those pages - they make something intrinsically simple look menacingly fiendishly impossible!
Keith
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David Hutton
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Post by David Hutton on Sept 3, 2018 12:59:10 GMT
The thought of learning a piece up to a specific note before proceeding sounds very odd - by the time you get to the end, you'll be amazingly super good at the first few bars because you've played them a zillion times, wheres the end will have only had a little work. Result will be a lumpy performance and it's unlikely you'll get to the stage of feeling comfortable enough with the whole piece to play it with expression and feeling all through as the piece will inevitably be less and less rehearsed as you play through it. That perfectly describes all tunes I have learnt from tab! Still have not attempted to do it by ear yet, seems almost impossible to me but prompted by this thread, I will give it a go.
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Post by creamburmese on Sept 3, 2018 21:21:16 GMT
One thing I haven't seen mentioned (maybe it's a classical thing) is to use visualization - the same as pro-athletes do (only in minature ) A very excellent teacher told me - (after figuring out the phrases and whether it's impossible, etc) to first play a short section from the score - several bars, a bar, a figure - whatever you can keep in your head - then play from the score and look at your left hand, then read the score and visualize what your left hand is doing without touching the guitar, and when you can do that you should be able to play it from memory. I am fine until I get to the visualization bit - that takes me an age - so unless I am getting stuck I tend to pick sections and just repeat them until I can do them without looking! Sometimes I start from the end, to avoid the problem Keith mentioned of knowing the beginning really well and falling apart later ...
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Post by ukpacker on Sept 3, 2018 21:44:39 GMT
- then play from the score and look at your left hand, then read the score and visualize what your left hand is doing without touching the guitar, and when you can do that you should be able to play it from memory. Sounds interesting i shall give it a go. thanks.
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Post by dangad on Sept 24, 2018 16:09:52 GMT
I'll find the main "hooks" of the piece and run through them - sometimes those are the bits that make the rest of the piece click. And then run through the whole song reading the tab and playing...Repeat againa and again... Working up the speed, until eventually I can stop looking at the tab and the fingers are just doing it by magic!
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Post by NikGnashers on Sept 29, 2018 8:35:29 GMT
Note by note here, and just plough through slowly. Like a dog chasing a stick.
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