Should You Visualize the Score when Playing by Memory?

 

I've heard people say that they try to visualize the written score when playing by memory. And I've heard people advise doing that. I've also heard people say that you should even write out the piece, by memory, to help with visualization (Wow, that would be terribly time-consuming.) I don't believe that this will help with memory in the long term.

It seems like people who have photographic memories would have zero problems with memory slips when performing. I know someone who has a photographic memory, but he still has memory slips just due to nerves. It's possible to lose your place in the score while just visualizing it, and the fear of this causes the slips. More importantly, his playing is not very musical. I suspect that the involvement of the visual cortex of the brain to such a great degree detracts from the auditory and the emotional parts of the brain. 

I would imagine that trying to visualize just parts of the score, versus all of it, would be even worse, because you'd have to remember to jump to doing the visual in just those parts, and if you forgot to do that, you might have no back-up plan. I say I "imagine" because I never ever visualize the score. By the time I'm ready to play in performance, I have been playing by memory for months, and how the actual score looks is long forgotten.

Remember, the score is just a visual representation of the music, not the music itself! Before the composers set the music down in writing, they heard it all in their minds. Music notation is a wonderful thing, giving access to a whole world of music. But the goal should be to go past the notation and fully internalize the music. So how do you do that?

As you've heard me say in previous posts, the development of the ear is the number one job for the musician. The best musicians are the ones with the best ears. Even if you already have a good, or even great ear, there are ways to improve it. I've had students ask me if they should go to the internet for programs which, for example, play intervals and have you identify them. You can do that yourself, at the piano, just by playing two notes (one in each hand, so you can't feel the interval) with your eyes closed. That would just be for beginners who want to improve their ear. For the more advanced player, transposing the pieces you are working on, or simpler pieces if necessary, is the most powerful tool for making your ear work harder and thus get stronger. Transposing means you are moving the music to another place (another key), but keeping all the relationships the same. That is the essense of hearing and knowing a piece, to be able to hear all the relationships.

Remember, the transposing needs to be by ear, not by eye, which would mean just calculating each note's distance from the original one.

Another often-overlooked way to improve your ear is to sight-sing. Choirs often require that their members be able to sight sing. If you can see an interval and sing it, that means your ear knows it. To practice this, you'd need to take music with which you are not familiar, otherwise you'd already just sing it from memory.

Even if you try to visualize the score and are successful at it, you'd have to start again from scratch on every new piece. But if you develop your ear, it is there for you at all times, in everything you play.

So many people just focus on "learning the notes" of what they are playing, and perhaps mastering the physical techniques as well. But if you want to play by memory (which I hope you do), then you need to get the piece into the deep levels of the "wiring" in your brain. This means really knowing how it sounds. You may think, "of course I know how it sounds," but if you can't transpose it to another key, then you don't really know it. I believe ear and memory are essentially the same thing.