Week 3 Thread: Galant Style for Galant People 
Welcome to the Main Thread for the third week of "Mozart & Haydn - Music from the 18th Century" challenge!
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the kickoff livestream! (<- click)
This week, we will talk about the several strategies you can implement in your memorization as a general learning habit. What strategies can you use to memorize a piece of music better and faster?
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Think about how you memorize things different than music and about how you would remember something: what does usually work for you?
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What changes could you implement?
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Try to challenge yourself and use one of the strategies to memorize at least one section of the piece you are studying and if, you are brave, post a video clip of the results.
Pick a piece from the suggested repertoire according to your level or share any piece written during the 18th century that you have been working on!
If you want to describe your process, feel free to use the following template.
- Piece(s) you have been working on:
- Things you found easy:
- Things you found difficult:
Happy sharing 
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I will show some courage here and be the first to upload a video of my struggle to memorize a piece. Thank you very much for making me do this, Antonella! I always thought I’m just too stupid, too old or whatever. But I think what I was lacking was mostly intention. I was just hoping for memorization to happen as a side effect of my practice! So like many of you I was learning all three movements of my sonata (Mozart K 332) simultaneously during this challenge. Here is how far I got with memorizing the third movement.
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Andrea Buckland That is a lot of memorised notes Andrea! Certainly not too old or stupid!
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Angela Fogg thank you, Angela!
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Gail Starr thank you, dear Gail!
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My week 3 update. Inspired by Andrea Buckland and others to memorize the piece. Hoping to do a complete recording without any memory slips for the next post.
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Vidhya Bashyam oh Vidhya, this is fantastic! You are doing sooo well!
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Andrea Buckland Thanks Andrea!
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Vidhya Bashyam Very beautiful and great memorization!
How did you memorize this piece?
If memory slips happen, it is usually because some of the elements in the music are not completely clear. You just need to figure out what these elements are.
From the musical aspect, I think the phrases are very very beautiful and shaped with grace. What you could do better:
1) I would pay attention to some of the ending notes in the phrases. Some of the endings in the recording sound staccato. The end of a phrase should just close the phrase, and not become a "jump" to the next phrase.
2) many teachers never teach these things... and so, this is a very common mistake even some professionals make. Repeated notes do not necessarily have to sound staccato :) If you have repeated notes that are supposed to be somehow connected, think of your fingers as an eraser and then use this eraser to "clean" an imaginary dot on a key. That is the movement we need when notes are repeated and we would like them to sound more connected to each other.
I hope you do not mind these very small suggestions :)
It sounds gorgeous anyway!
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Antonella Di Giulio Thanks so much for the advice Antonella! Your quick and detailed feedback is much appreciated and incentivizes me to post videos.
While I did go through an intentional memorization process, I agree that the memory slips are indicative of underlying weak areas. I was thinking yesterday that I need to do some hands separate practice to work through weak areas and really memorize it well.
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Vidhya Bashyam Awesome!! Yes, that is the way to go...:)
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Vidhya Bashyam this is a polished and elegant rendition of this piece. I can feel your appreciation for the sonata in the way you play!
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Monika Tusnady Thank you Monika! Hope you are feeling better and back to normal!
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Vidhya Bashyam Lovely playing, Vidhya! And you're memorization is going great! It seems to me that you have a deep connection to the piece in your playing.
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Sindre Skarelven Thanks Sindre!
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Vidhya Bashyam So melodic and graceful! And I'm SUPER impressed with your memorization. That's what scares me to try!
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Gail Starr Thank you Gail! With your super sight reading skills, not sure you need to memorize anything!
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Vidhya Bashyam very elegant playing from the heart! And from memory too!
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Vidhya Bashyam This is sounding so beautiful! Congratulations with the memorisation as well. As you’ll see I decided to focus on a Mozart sonata I hadn’t played before but I have been playing some of the Galuppi as well and think that this one is particularly lovely!
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Natalie Peh Thank you!
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Angela Fogg Thanks Angela!
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Vidhya Bashyam beautiful playing and solid memory
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Susan Rogers thanks Susan!
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Vidhya Bashyam What a beautiful playing, Vidhya! Very sweet and elegant sound.
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Well I know it’s not perfect, but if I don’t upload something soon nobody will think I’m actually doing this challenge! It has been a challenge to memorise the first two pages of the sonata, I am working on memorising the whole movement but as I said I felt I needed to upload something.
Very impressed with other peoples work!
Mine is far from perfect and listening back oh Deary me what a lot of work there is to do! So, I’m hoping at this stage next week to upload the entire movt from memory in a more polished form. Something that really made me think is Antonella’s idea about meditating before practice, and so starting with a clearer mind.
I always dash in and get going so I am trying this different approach, even if only for a few minutes.
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Angela Fogg so inspiring and impressive that you are playing from memory
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Natalie Peh such hard work for me!!! Thank you for your supportive comments!
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