People often tell me that a source of frustration in their playing is that the music they have learned doesn't "stick." They spend weeks or months learning it, and feel they have gotten the piece to a place where it is solid -- they may even feel they played it really well -- but then after not practicing it for a short time, it's just gone -- they can no longer play it. You'd never really be able to develop a repertoire of pieces you can just sit down and play, because it would be terribly time-consuming to try to learn new material while also having to constantly play the music you learned previously, just to keep it from fading away.
I call this "superficial learning." There are, I believe, four main contributors to superficial learning.
First is an almost total reliance on muscle memory. As you are aware, when you hands/arms/fingers perform the same physical movements over and over, neural pathways in the brain are formed, and the impulses travel down these same pathways every time you play, enabling you to play almost on auto-pilot. However, the brain, finding it no longer needs these pathways when you stop playing that piece for a period of time, will let them dissolve, so to speak. (I realize my language is not very scientific, but I think it describes what's happening.) When the pathways are gone, you can't play the piece, at least not nearly as reliably as you did at one time. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing and we couldn't really play without it. But it's not the only thing.
Second is reliance on "thinking." It's akin to talking yourself through the piece. Your mind is trying to remember specific notes, specific chords, even specific fingering, saying to yourself things like "put 3rd finger on this E." There would be hundreds of these little "thoughts" even in a short piece and you can't possibly remember them all, even when actively practicing, and certainly not if you've taken a break from the piece. I have several posts about "thinking" while playing. It just doesn't work.
Third is trying to rely on visual cues. The keyboard looks the same 100% of the time! No key is going to jump out and say "play me next!" to help you know where to put your fingers. This sounds so silly and so obvious, but people often unconsciously do this. They are staring at the keys as a means of finding their way around, but it's absolutely pointless. If you've learned to play the correct way, which is not looking at your hands as close to 100% of the time as you can manage, then your muscle memory will guide your hands where to go. Looking at the keys will slow you down, at best, and throw a wrench into muscle memory, at worst.
Fourth is not playing with emotional engagement, or with "expression." Many recent studies of the brain have shown that it works differently when the emotions are involved, and not only differently, but better. It stands to reason that you will remember something better if it is meaningful to you. You may love music, but if you play in a perfunctory way, as many do when they think they are just "learning the notes," the music will never become as ingrained in you as it will if you are giving it your all, emotionally.
You can see from these four items that a very important one is missing. That is the ear.
The auditory capabilities of the human brain never cease to amaze me. I believe humans are uniquely "wired" for music. To really know music at a deep level is to know how it sounds. You may say, "of course I know how it sounds!" But if you can't reproduce it, without looking at the written score, then you don't really know how it sounds. It's really as simple as that. Take a piece of music you are working on currently, but don't have memorized yet, and just play the top melody line for a phrase or two, by ear (without reading it). Of course, much music has multiple melody lines, but just take the most prominent one. Can you do it? Does it come easily? If not, you don't know how it sounds. Then you could move on to the bass line and do the same. Put the melody and bass together and do it by ear. Move on to more of the inner voices and/or harmonies. This is hugely challenging for most people but it can be done. The great news is that every time you do this, your ear will improve and you will be better at it the next time. And voila! When you can do it all this way, the piece is memorized! Ear = memory.
I recently had some friends over and played several Christmas carols. I play them all by ear, in interesting arrangments with full harmonies. I have never looked at a written score for these. I have been playing them by ear all my life. Since I only play them at Christmas time, I go all year without playing them yet they do not fade at all. So it can't be attributed to muscle memory. The ear informs the hands and fingers where to go. One friend said "how to do remember all those??" I replied "I don't remember them. I just know how they sound." Not being a musician, she may not have understood the difference. I didn't learn from the written score and then commit them to memory. I just heard them enough in my early years that their sound became permanent wiring in my brain. I am fortunate to have been born with a very good ear, but I have also worked to improve it even more. I am not going to lie and say everyone can learn to do what I do. But the key to making music more permanent in your brain is to drive it into your ear. I have many posts on ways to do this.
The ear needs to be the driving force. If you are mostly doing the four things that keep it at a superficial level and not spending practice time on ear development, you probably will find things don't "stick."
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