March 1999: On Memorizing - Unit 3: Visualizing

This is one of the most important elements of memorization and yet the one that people mess up the most. If you learn a piece from written music, you become very dependent on seeing those little black dots. When I was a young musician I thought that visualization meant that when I played by memory I could "see" the music in my mind and play from that picture - boy was I wrong!! There are a few very rare people who can do this but most of us can't. Rather visualization means to see the patterns and configurations of notes ON THE HARP. Let's take this old American folk tune for an example. The letters are notes, the numbers are fingering:

If you place the first group on line 1 and look at what you are holding you will see a 2nd inversion C chord. That same configuration occurs also at the beginning of line 2. The second group of line 2 forms a simple C triad. Patterns 2, 6, 8, 11, 12 are all simple 3 note groups with no skips. Three of them are exactly the same notes. The end groups of lines 1 and 3 are the only "oddballs". Those you will simply have to master by note memory.

If you can learn to see the various configurations on the strings and remember them in proper order, you will have created yet another memorization technique.

More to come next month.

Stephanie

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