June 1999: On Memorizing - Unit 6: When do I really "know" my music?

Unfortunately, most people think that if you simply repeat a piece a few thousand times, you will "know" it. Although repetition is the primary form of practice it will not, of itself, afford you complete command of your music. "Really knowing a piece" involves discovery of structures and patterns, learning to hear, feel, and see it on the strings (see previous units on memory) and, most important, PLAYING IT WITHOUT ERRORS CONSISTENTLY. The last is the hardest.

Practice to most people means that you play your music, err, stop, back up, correct it and go on. Do that a few times and you have now "learned" the error,the stop, and the correction in that order. The more you do it, the more ingrained the procedure becomes and you end up frustrated no end.

Rather, what you must do is to take a small section at a time. Play it VERY SLOWLY thinking specifically of what notes and with what fingers you wish to play. You must INTERCEPT errors even if you have to hesitate to do
so. In this way you PREVENT errors from happening altogether. As you repeat this process over and over you then try to play evenly, i.e. without hesitation but still error free.

Once you have mastered a few small sections, you then - again, very slowly and without errors - combine neighboring sections until eventually you have an entire piece. It is painstaking work which will, at first, take forever to achieve. But after you master the ability to work this way it will afford you the ability to learn at an incredibly faster rate and with fewer problems.

See you next month.

Stephanie

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