How to Make Memorization Easier

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you how to make memorization easier. Memorizing piano in music is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do mentally. It takes all of your concentration. I’m going to show you how to approach this so that you can make it easier and more effective!

How much music should you learn at a time?

I will use, as an example, the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. I’m going to play the first phrase, and then I’m going to show you how to approach memorizing it to make it easier. Let’s say you sit down to learn this piece. You figure the first eight measures is a good amount to learn, so you play it over and over again until you kind of get it. But that is far too much material to take at a time! If you were to add up the sheer number of notes, it doesn’t seem like a lot of music. But there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of details when you consider that every note has its own fingering, phrasing, and expression. So there are four details to each note, not to mention the rhythm!

I’ve talked about how to memorize by taking small amounts of music at a time, playing hands separately, and then putting them together. Well, there is more to it than that. I’m going to show you some tips right now. First of all, if you analyze the score right at the beginning, you realize that the right hand is in chords. So learn it in chords first. Now, if I were learning this, I wouldn’t take eight measures at a time. Sometimes you can learn four measures of one hand, but when you put the hands together, chop it in half. Just do two measures when you’re putting the hands together, because:

The hardest part about memorization is putting the hands together.

I would suggest just learning the first two measures. Start with just the first two measures, but give yourself the extra note of the beginning of the third measure as a connection point. That’s plenty of material, believe it or not. How long will it take you to learn that? Not so long. Now, you might have gone through the first eight measures and played it over and over again for 30 minutes or an hour. But you know what? You’ll never quite get it because you don’t give yourself the opportunity to really study the infinitesimally small details that you can master in just a few minutes. Once you get the right hand memorized in chords, then you get the left hand memorized. Then you put hands together in chords. The next step would be to play the right hand alone the way it’s written. And then finally, put the hands together going extremely slowly at first. Then, if you like, you can reward yourself and play with the pedal, which is the last thing you do in your practice.

If you have trouble delineating the melody from the 16th notes in the right hand, you can practice with articulations.

Play with a light finger staccato on the 16th notes to train your hand which notes are accompaniment and which notes are melody. Better yet, put your hands together, and you have a duet between the soprano and the bass with the inner voice playing with a gentle finger staccato.

If you learn just two measures, or if you learn four measures, hands separately and then put together just two measures at a time, you’ll give yourself a fighting chance to really perfect the music as you go. Plus, since you’re not overwhelming yourself, you can sustain a longer, productive practice. So remember to cut things in half. Learn less at a time, and don’t use the pedal until the very end of the process so that you can hear what’s there and develop the best fingering in your playing. So those are some memorization tips for you! I hope this helps with your memorization. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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