Muscle Memory

For years I have played strictly by 'muscle memory', having found out in stressful situations that I don't really know the piece, and then having a catastrophe. Sort of like the Roadrunner when he realizes he's running on air over the precipice. I have read that the pro's are usually thinking one or more bars ahead of the notes being played as a way of controlling the action. What are these people doing, visualizing ahead the printed notes, positions of hands on keyboard or what? Any ideas on how to train the mind to be able to do this? Thanks for any help.

There are many aspects of memory, collado, and each one requires a different method of training. The muscle memory you are referring to can be trained away from the piano - for instance by drumming fingers on a desk top from the begining of the piece to the end of it.. Aural memory (remembering the sound of the piece from beginning to end) is also best practiced away from the keyboard - by singing the piece from beginning to end, in the shower or wherever. Structural memory involves knowing lots of technical details about a piece - its harmonic structure, its phrase structure, its form, where things are repeated exactly, where there are variations, what keys do the themes occur in and how do the themes relate to one another. Photographic memory is also practiced away from the piano in bed just before going to sleep, when you can write the music in your brain on an imaginary piece of music paper. It can also be trained by using a blindfold at the piano while you play, so that you can visualize the score that you are not seeing. Any kind of memory gap in any one of these kinds of memory training moments should be checked against the score as soon as possible. A gap always means that a person doesn't know that one detail as well as he/she believed. Blindfold playing is also very good for reinforcing the sense of touch and measuring distances between intervals using the tiniest clues (the brush of fingers against black keys for instance). If a person practices all of these ways before a performance, he/she has a pretty good shot at getting through the performance securely, able to concentrate on the projection of the musical ideas instead of praying that the floor will swallow him/her up following a disastrous memory slip.......

I find that what Greg refers to as 'photographic memory' works best for me. I posted about this some time ago but I am happy to share it with you again. For years I too played mostly out of muscle memory until I had a teacher who had me sit in the library with the score of Rach 1 and try to picture evey single note, every rest, every dynamic marking and phrasing in my head. Since I was used to following a piece by moving my hands I realized that I had a hard time seeing the notes. All I could picture in my head were my hands moving on the keyboard . I had to play a little mental game with myself of picturing myself in front of a piano with my hands tied behind my back and *that* me was the one visualizing the score. However you manage to do it, be very deliberate. Start doing it measure by measure and then looking at the score to see what you missed. At first it will take you a long time and a surprising amount of mental effort but your mind catches on pretty quickly and in a few of days you'll be able to do entire movements without tiring or having to look at the score. Obviously this is helped if you know anything about harmonic analysis so that you can follow the structure of the work.

I cannot begin to describe the peace security I felt performing the work for the first time in public. It was all there in my head, I knew it, and that gave me a peace of mind I had never felt before while performing. I urge you to give it a try, do a little every day. Good luck.

Elena www.concertpianist.com

I had the same problem until a teacher understood that the problem was that I only used my muscle memory. It is much easier if you divide each piece into smaller sections. Break randomly and continue playing from where you stopped as if it was at the beginning of the piece,(Not the natural breaks that occurs in a piece e g end of a phrase)then you will find your weak bars.

If you play Bach it is important to remember which notes that are played together and how each melody is sounded (I don't know the right term for it, but in piano pieces there are sometimes four melodies like when people sing; bass, tenor, alt, sopran) and not only the main melody. This makes you confident with the piece.

Then you will be able to 'come back' into the piece if you have a temporary black out.

I hope I have not written in a very confusing way! Good luck!

I thought muscle memory was the memory created by the actual playing of the piece over and over. I therefore wonder how it can be achieved away from the

Many thanks to all who replied. It's very useful to know how professional artists do it and I will certainly try this out.

It seems to me that visualizing your hands tied would be counter-productive to performance, even though it helps develop memory of the *score*.

I'd rather visualize the performance. If I can see myself playing every note and every phrase, that's much closer to a successful performance than just knowing the score. The score is just a map, but the keyboard is the territory.

I'm not sure that anyone knows what muscle memory is, Bonnie. We know that it is not stored in the muscles. Obviously, since memory is composed of chemical signals that fire in some sort of sequence, it's clear that a person wants those signals to fire in exactly the same sequence every time to reinforce the chemical/electrical pathways. 'Muscle memory' is the memory of a series of physical movements performed in a strict sequence. The movements of finger and arm are independent of the medium - that is, if the idea is that I'm moving fingers 2 3 and 4 in that order, I don't need to be at the piano to reinforce that sequence of muscular events - I can do it in the air, on a desktop, anywhere my fingers can wriggle in strict rhythm. Obviously, this doesn't replace practice at a piano - but it supports it and the memory of it, so that the brain is better able to store it reliably. We constantly lose brain cells, so it's a good idea to have a lot of back-ups, in my opinion.

Now I'm frightened: I only have ONE left.

We know that it is talked about when referring to the memory that is created in the body of repetitive actions. Because I cannot perfectly reproduce an imaginary keyboard on the dining room table where I might 'play' a piece, I cannot create the kind of muscle memory that comes from playing the piano. The whole point of muscle memory is that it is created when playing the piano.

Obviously, since memory is composed of

Well, if you're talking about muscle memory in general, perhaps. But for the kind of muscle memory that allows your fingers to remember a piece without your conscious awareness of it, I must still disagree. I cannot create that sort of memory away from the piano. That's the DEFINITION of muscle memory. It's the memory of the movements of playing the piano, and unless you can perfectly imagine a keyboard (and presume that you are playing the correct imaginary keys), you cannot possibly create an accurate memory of an accurate performance unless you are AT the piano.

IIRC, there is some scientific evidence (no, I don't have a reference) that muscle memory resides in the spinal cord, or at least a portion of it.

Ah, but we really don't want unconscious muscle memory - that happens on its own, through the process of practicing the piano in our daily routine, and is, moreover, notoriously unreliable. What we want is to 'consciousize' our muscle memories, so that that aspect of memory is also capable of being reinforced. I disagree with the notion that only the movements we make at the piano are valid for making muscle memories of piano music. It is easy for me to both visualize the keys and their distance from one another even when I'm playing a table top. I can control the amount of movement in my wrists and arms to simulate what I need to do to get different dynamics and other nuances. It is how most instrumentalists, not just pianists, warm up off-stage - as I did myself tonight, before my performance of the Poulenc Aubade - (concerto for piano and 18 instruments). It is also (and you can check many diaries of famous performers to verify this) how pianists have sometimes had to learn repertory, on the way from one recital to another, on trains, boats or other transport with no piano to practice on. I would not recommend it as the preferred method, but it is entirely possible to learn a piece of piano music this way, and I have done it myself..