On Sunday, January 17, 2021 at 1:56:03 PM UTC-6, Bernie Cosell wrote:
> Any tips on memorizing? I have one work I'm playing that I have
> memorized.. except for *five*measures* [!]. I can't figure out why I have
> such a block with them and don't know how to fix that. On another I
> worker pretty hard to remember an eight measure chunk and I was doing
> great.. but when I tried it the next day it was pretty much gone.
>
> Thanks! /bernie\
> --
> Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
> ber...@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
> --> Too many people, too few sheep <--

I too had a lot of difficulty memorizing pieces until I learned to visualize. From a practical standpoint, there are two kinds of memory, nerve (finger) memory and conscious (visual) memory. I did a video on visual memory which might be of some help;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoaRVY7CeiM&list=PLCB27A1D7FA3F7B59&index=12

Learnwell, I haven't read the whole article you recommended, but from what I read, it sounds reasonable. i will finish it. I once taught from a algebra book by John Saxon that spread out concepts throughout the book instead of teaching in discrete chunks. It was very effective. It also used a system of constant review.

On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 01:23:07 UTC+1, Murdick wrote:
> I too had a lot of difficulty memorizing pieces until I learned to visualize. From a practical standpoint, there are two kinds of memory, nerve (finger) memory and conscious (visual) memory. I did a video on visual memory which might be of some help;
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoaRVY7CeiM&list=PLCB27A1D7FA3F7B59&index=12
>
> Learnwell, I haven't read the whole article you recommended, but from what I read, it sounds reasonable. i will finish it. I once taught from a algebra book by John Saxon that spread out concepts throughout the book instead of teaching in discrete chunks. It was very effective. It also used a system of constant review.

I used to attend poetry open mics and even on the rare occasion that I'd use a haiku I'd read it off paper. I was terror-stricken for the five year period of going to those nights and I can't imagine things being any different with music. The material was mine and lack of self-love came into this. The notion of playing others' music underscores the role of love of the material in all kinds of 'performance'.

Motivations for our enjoyment of music and the wish to play it come into this don't they? I have several classical guitar CDs but I'm not super-bothered by it, I like the instrument and its potential but I'm uninterested in overly busy music and not impressed with virtuoso skills. We have different motivations and different kinds of focus within our musical likes, but I would think these can be about displacement, can be vice-like or akin to addiction.

Maybe wanting to master some music is like vainly wanting to 'understand' a particular academic who might really be guilty of sophistry or having structured a neurosis into something that has the appearance of legitimate thought. There's vanity in this but also a lack of being centred - if I master this piece, I'm less empty. If I can hold a conversation about this philosopher, who killed himself after his fourth paperweight was published, I'm less empty...

Struggles of all kinds make life interesting, but we can invest badly, we can fail to become centred. I've met people for whom relationships are still a bit of a game, a playground to exercise childhood issues barely understood, because the person hasn't found a centre.

So a person might be very self-aware and rounded and still want to 'memorise' these pieces. I wonder how much of this music would exist if the composers were themselves not prone to displacement and musically invested dissembling. There are rock guitarists who have classical techniques but who in interviews are spectacularly foolish people, children really. They are all vice. They are the obvious end of the spectrum.

If you love the music, if it's properly connected with you, would memory be an issue? And if you can't 'memorise' it, is that necessarily your 'fault'?

On 5/2/2021 4:18 AM, Antony Grenney wrote:
> On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 01:23:07 UTC+1, Murdick wrote:
>> I too had a lot of difficulty memorizing pieces until I learned to visualize. From a practical standpoint, there are two kinds of memory, nerve (finger) memory and conscious (visual) memory. I did a video on visual memory which might be of some help;
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoaRVY7CeiM&list=PLCB27A1D7FA3F7B59&index=12
>>
>> Learnwell, I haven't read the whole article you recommended, but from what I read, it sounds reasonable. i will finish it. I once taught from a algebra book by John Saxon that spread out concepts throughout the book instead of teaching in discrete chunks. It was very effective. It also used a system of constant review.
>
>
>
> I used to attend poetry open mics and even on the rare occasion that I'd use a haiku I'd read it off paper. I was terror-stricken for the five year period of going to those nights and I can't imagine things being any different with music. The material was mine and lack of self-love came into this. The notion of playing others' music underscores the role of love of the material in all kinds of 'performance'.
>
> Motivations for our enjoyment of music and the wish to play it come into this don't they? I have several classical guitar CDs but I'm not super-bothered by it, I like the instrument and its potential but I'm uninterested in overly busy music and not impressed with virtuoso skills. We have different motivations and different kinds of focus within our musical likes, but I would think these can be about displacement, can be vice-like or akin to addiction.
>
> Maybe wanting to master some music is like vainly wanting to 'understand' a particular academic who might really be guilty of sophistry or having structured a neurosis into something that has the appearance of legitimate thought. There's vanity in this but also a lack of being centred - if I master this piece, I'm less empty. If I can hold a conversation about this philosopher, who killed himself after his fourth paperweight was published, I'm less empty...
>
> Struggles of all kinds make life interesting, but we can invest badly, we can fail to become centred. I've met people for whom relationships are still a bit of a game, a playground to exercise childhood issues barely understood, because the person hasn't found a centre.
>
> So a person might be very self-aware and rounded and still want to 'memorise' these pieces. I wonder how much of this music would exist if the composers were themselves not prone to displacement and musically invested dissembling. There are rock guitarists who have classical techniques but who in interviews are spectacularly foolish people, children really. They are all vice. They are the obvious end of the spectrum.
>
> If you love the music, if it's properly connected with you, would memory be an issue? And if you can't 'memorise' it, is that necessarily your 'fault'?
>

Wow--I think you're overthinking this. I'd like to be able to memorize
because I can't afford a professional page-turner and I'm not yet
committing my music to an i-pad. I've seen guitarists perform with and
without music; it's not something I spend much time focusing on.
Of course, getting a piece "under your fingers" involves memory as
well--whether or not you look at physical sheet music. That kind of
memory certainly does increase my engagement with a piece of music.
That's when the music is "connected" with me. The rest of it--I try not
to get all judgy about.

Steve

> Learnwell, I haven't read the whole article you recommended, but from what I read, it sounds reasonable. i will finish it. I once taught from a algebra book by John Saxon that spread out concepts throughout the book instead of teaching in discrete chunks. It was very effective. It also used a system of constant review.

OK, but without a full understanding of the process and the principles which underlie it you might not benefit, and it is not a quick study. Your best bet to begin is to try ‘spacing’ and you might want to follow the Leitner system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system You’ll also need a good deal of patience as you will get worse before you get better. That is exactly what will make you better. Very, very few people (at least on the user end) know this. Good luck.

I believe it is a similar paucity of knowledge that led you to ‘try’ dotted rhythms and find they did not work for you. The point of doing rhythms is not the rhythms (I run into this all of the time when I do my masterlcasses [Practiclasses] around the country). Folks say, “I practiced rhtthms already,” but that isn’t the point.

The point is to make it worse so that we struggle in the same way we did when we were first learning. We are resetting the practice curve which shows each succesive rep is less beneficial than the prevoius rep (the data either fits a power function, or an exponential one. Recent research makes a seemingly convincing argument for exponential).

This is done by introducing ‘contextual interference’ (the rhythm) to produce ‘desireable difficulty’. Perhaps having played jazz and other styles the dotted rhythym was easier for you because of past experience. Perhaps it was hard and you took that immediate feedback to mean it wasn’t working. According to Bjork and Bjork one of the worst things we can do when learning is judge progress in the moment. I agree.

Contextual interference works for all humans. If it didn’t work for you you didn’t do it right, and teaching is rife with these types of misunderstandings in all domains.

Here is a quickie before and after with multiple instruments (beginner and advanced guitarists, teacher/professional cellist and an advnaced sax player at an arts magnet school) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZXgniuj0u4 For the most part all we are doing is finding and applying desireable difficluty. The improvmemnt is so dramatic it cannot be missed. There are plenty of videos there showing the process and explaining the underlying science.

Do this stuff or not, but don’t be surprised at the results either way.

Good luck!