You work hard on a piece for 4months. You master it. You're happy and then you now
move on to your next piece. Three months later you attempt to play your old piece and you're
dumb struck. You completely forgotten how to play it. You feel sad and you wonder if perhaps you
learned the piece without a deep understanding of what was going on. It's like on the surface,
you're able to churn out and play the piece. But it's like you don't really feel like you know
what you're doing. In this video I want to address this problem of how to keep pieces in your hands
and how to have this deep understanding and security for your pieces. [Music]
As a piano player over time you learn different pieces but how do we keep them in our hands now
of course we must be reasonable if we haven't played a piece for let's say several months or
a year it's likely we have forgotten some parts of it but in my current experience it doesn't
take me that long to sort of recover it all I need is about one to two days maximum a week
and I can basically get back my pieces to kind of concert level for example the pieces that
I just played for you I don't practice these pieces on a daily basis but I can kind of pull
them out at will because of certain things that I've worked on in the past and we're
going to talk about that today which is how people actually learn a piece let's discuss
this problem and then we can get into some tools and strategies for how you can actually relearn
and revive the piece and have them kind of in your brain in your fingers forever we need to
First chat about how people actually learn turn the pieces and I believe they're three broad
categories about how people learn number one is muscle memory number two is understanding
the music theory behind it and number three is orally let's start with muscle memory with a lot
of my online students that I see and also with the comments that we see here on our YouTube
channel I can see that a lot of people here are self-taught Learners and with people that
are self-taught especially if they are in their first or second year they are very likely to be
relying on muscle memory to kind of memorize the piece and how they think about the piece
this means they're reliant on the execution of movements to play their piece number two
on the list of how people learn a piece is through understanding the music theory part so if you want
to have this sense of security in Remembering your piece for the long term you need to do
some analysis of it things like understanding the structure right is it an ABA form or a B form and
understanding perhaps some of the chords and the harmonies behind it for example [Music]
when most people learn this Prelude in C they're of course learning about okay which notes do I
press which fingers do I use I recommend you to go a little bit deeper into it by studying what
chords are actually in here so for example in this first shape this is a chord one in the key of C
major okay so this piece is set in C major this is Chord one the next block of notes are these
now it's not my intention to teach music theory here but I just want to help you
to see what I am seeing in this music so you can hopefully do your own research do
your own study so that you have different ways of kind of remembering your piece this block
here is actually a type of chord two it's two seven and the next one this block these block
of notes here this is a chord five is a type of chord five before it then goes back to chord one
so as you could see there if you have the kind of muscle memory of which notes to press plus
you have this theoretical understanding of let's say the chords and the harmony you're
able to remember how to play this piece from two different ways and that's a lot more secure than
just relying on muscle memory one of the quickest ways I can often tell when students are over
reliant on muscle memory is when I ask them to start at a random part of the piece so instead
of starting at the iconic start or some kind of start of a phrase if I ask them to start right
in the middle of a phrase and they're completely unable to do it it usually means they're currently
a bit reliant on their muscle memory they must start the piece at certain points or they are
not able to play it at all the last way that people learn a piece is orally so for example
so in this part here I could tell let's say with this block
and the next block of Court the next block of notes this part here my ears because over the
years of playing I've played different uh pieces I've been exposed to different chords my notes
could tell that the next block of nodes it was likely going to be a d right so in my ears it's
kind of like it could tell it was underneath e so in from an oral perspective I could tell
that the next note after C was going to be D so as you can see here I have currently three ways
of memorizing this piece I have the literal muscle memory I have some kind of theoretical
understanding of it in terms of chords and Harmony and also have the oral skills so I
could tell how high or how low the notes are and this helps me to have a deeper and a more more
secure and more robust way of thinking about the piece now that we've discussed about how
people actually learn pieces I want to give you three tips on how you can not be over reliant on
muscle memory to build a deeper understanding for your pieces number one instead of just
playing the piece with your memory I want you to go back to reading and playing at the same time
thank you
when you go back to reading the sheet music you inevitably start to analyze the piece again
you start to look at things like the fingerings the phrases the chords the structures so try to
achieve that same Act of playing but now instead of using a memory try to try to read it try to
achieve the same outcome but with a different method I promise you that's going to help to
develop some security around your playing and also your memorization of it tip number two is to start
practicing your pieces from random places so let's say you're playing Fur Elise don't always start
from thank you foreign you might want to start from for example or for example [Music] try to
pick very random places in your pieces to start and it will help you to not be so reliant on
always starting at the same place which will then develop this sense of security in your playing tip
number three is to learn some music theory so you want to do some research some study yourself learn
things like chords like Harmony like structures like the fingerings by analyzing any of these
things that I just talked about you inevitably will build a deeper understanding of the piece
which will help you to revive and relearn it and to never forget them it's also important for me
to say here that all these skills take time so in your first year or two of playing if you ever get
this feeling of I don't really know what I'm doing it's kind of like I'm just playing but
I don't really understand what's happening this is a very normal feeling just stick with it at
about the third fourth and fifth year you're really going to start to develop kind of some
deeper understanding to music that there actually is some kind of system some kind of set system in
the music world that you can use to understand the music more deeply it's a little bit like
the language English right English is not just a bunch of really random words there's some kind of
set rules and structure things like grammar things like adjectives they're rules within
the language that help to govern it and help to give it structure and it's the same in music hope
this tutorial has helped you let me know in the comments how you found it if you have any piano
questions please ask below 90 of our content comes from your questions catch you in the next tutorial
[Music]