Can't remember my piano pieces?
Okay so I've been playing piano for about a year now and I take great pride in being able to learn pieces quickly and being able to remember them. I learned the first movement of Moonlight Sonata, Nocturne #20 in C sharp minor, Nocturne in B flat op9 no1, Raindrop Prelude, etc. All being able to learn them and remember them easily. Now, whenever I go to work on a new piece, I can't remember any of what I've learned. I'm learning Nocturne in E flat right now and I will work on it for an hour a day and not remember a single measure!Is there any reason as to why this is hhappening? If so, what can I do to fix it?
Update:Virtuoso definition for you:.
a person highly skilled in music or another artistic pursuit.
It seems you were having some trouble. Some of the above pieces are virtuoso pieces.
Comments
I thought you "played virtuoso piano" -
- https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140... -
-- now you ask a question like this?
Did your teacher tell you to learn those pieces? I don't think so, and I doubt you have a teacher. Find one. He/she will tell you how to "fix it".
Edit.
@Stephen -- "Meanwhile see if you can switch hemispheres when struggling to play what you've learned". --
-- That is utter nonsense. Can *you* voluntarily "switch hemispheres"? No, you can't; and don't even try to tell me you can.
I've seen your other answers to questions like this, and can only conclude that both your hemispheres are seriously malfunctioning.
Added. @Elisabeth: Thank you. Believe it or not, I do actually know what "virtuoso" means, and I know it applies to other pursuits; but I was quoting directly from you, and you said: ´"I play virtuoso piano". You might think they're "virtuoso pieces" - I don't. Besides, it's not the pieces themselves, but how well you play them. We don't know how well you play them because we haven't heard you.
"It seems you were having some trouble" -- No trouble at all...but I think Stephen is having some trouble, and that's putting it mildly☺
Edit - “I’m onto you Willem. You’re that outer space robot..."
Take me to your leader, Earthman.
"no humans ever really read what I post..." -
- then why bother?
I was an accomplished pianist by age 16, and I can tell you, by my experience, the best way to remember pieces you have learned, is still play them, even though you are actively working on a new piece to learn. I practiced at least two or three hours a day on week days, and even though it's been many many years, I can still remember some of the recital pieces I played as a kid (I'm 50 now).
The old cliche of "practice, practice, practice" holds very true. Once you have done this, it will become almost automatic. Just like riding a bike or driving a car, you will be able to play pieces without even really thinking of the music not being in front of you. I hope this helps. I know it's not the easy way to do things, but things that really are worth accomplishing well, are not always easy.
Honestly you just have to practice reading music. You just have to do it and keep doing it. Actually, what you could try is writing your own song. Maybe working backwards like that would help you. And scales would help you a lot, so make sure you are practicing those. Practice playing chords by READING them. This will help you associate hand positions on the keyboard with the note positions on the staff. I give you credit for practicing an hour and a half a day! Don't practice for more than an hour at once, though, because you won't actually be making any progress.
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Post 2:
What you are experiencing is the aphasia-like thing that happens to angry mothers.
There’s a bunch of kids; she gets ticked off at one of them and she starts rattling off names until she gets to the right one or finally screams, “You…you there… stop doing that!”
A similar thing is going on when you’re ready to leave for work and get the feeling you’re forgetting something. You go through your usual checklist, leave and then… you’re driving along and it pops into your head, “The dry-cleaning slip… I need that to pick up my stuff.”
In the first example the mother is angry and in a right-brainy mode; she grabs the nearest name pattern list and shouts out the memorized pattern of names. Right-brain stuff.
The nagging feeling in the work example is the way the right-brain communicates without words. Spoken language is a left-brainy thing. So when you’re running through your checklist you’re speaking or thinking the words; looking for info in left-brain mode. Driving the car on your well known route you slip into right-brain mode because driving is spatial and then… it turns out the nagging feeling was correct.
Think of what’s happening when you’re trying to play as being something like searching on your laptop for different kinds of files. Search for a black and white bitmap file using a jpeg or video extension and you’ll come up blank.
Music notation is mathy and left-brainy, playing a piece with feeling and emotion is more right-brainy.
Talented piano players who can’t read music often fear that learning to read music will harm their creativity. Talented players who can read music often say that they only use sheet music during practice because using it in a performance interferes with their creativity. Two ways of communicating the same thing; that sheet music is left-brain stuff.
The music info is stored in your head someplace. Try putting a piece of sheet music of something you play well next to the new stuff and try jumping back and forth between them and note what happens.
Another simple trick is to close one eye and try to play from the sheet music and then switch eyes. Left eye = right brain. Right eye = left-brain.
It’s the simplest way known to human science to try and switch brain modes… which brings me to Willem…
“I’m onto you Willem. You’re that outer space robot that’s been stalking me since the 70’s! Every human being in the Yahoo answers virtual world knows that no humans ever really read what I post! You’re a friggin’ robot sent here to abduct me again. I’m wise to you!!!”
Post 1:
It sounds like a brain hemisphere storage/access problem.
When you started out you were storing the playing info using one brain hemisphere and then using the same hemisphere for playback. Now it sounds like you're storing with one hemisphere and trying to playback from the other.
The music info is likely in your head someplace the trick is finding the way to access it. I'll have to sleep on this one to see if I can come up with a solution.
Meanwhile see if you can switch hemispheres when struggling to play what you've learned.
Left brain is step by step, one thing at a time, methodical, logical, math and symbols. Right brain is creative, many things at once, intuitive, spatial, patterns.
Try to play the stuff focusing on the symbols, what they mean, the letter names. If the info doesn't seem to be there go to the right brain. Then don't worry about the meaning of the symbols, it's like looking at sound, the music moves up and down like a picture, think about the sound of the music; how your fingers moved through space.