Week 3: Keep the Momentum

Juan Carlos Olite thanks so much Juan Carlos!

I am applying this idea of separate hand memorisation to other pieces.

my feeling is that not doing this could be the source of the dreaded memory slip. For example, if I take passages that I have memorised with both hands and then attempt to play the part with one hand , even the right hand   , more often than not it falls apart . So I believe that the combined  hand memorisation is very susceptible to being played largely by muscle memory which is high  risk!!  In the above passage from the Handel fugue  , as I said , it’s more secure for now because it’s largely played from muscle memory 

further , I think this problem particularly applies to pieces that have ‘layers’ such as these contrapuntal compositions , and similarly pieces by Brahms for example , and maybe less of a problem where there is a simpler left hand chordal accompaniment 

Mark Cooper Mark it's very impressive to see the disciplined approach you have taken to learning this piece and memorizing the two hands separately, both here and in your prior video. The results when you put your hands together speak for themselves:  such clarity of line and texture and security in execution!  So now this is kind of like Enhanced Muscle Memory, with 3 different interlocking sets supporting the performance. Do you find that sufficient to rely on in a performance, or are you also planning to invoke some of the other "modalities" of memorization (to use Noel Nguyen 's very apt term)?.

Peter Golemme thank you Peter. 
In addition to what I have shown in the videos, I also do a detailed chords/harmonic analysis. In this Handel piece , the changes are usually quite clear , so this is also helpful 

Mark Cooper What a great practice technique! Your playing sounds very secure!

Mark Cooper You're completely right. I should apply your approach to practicing more often.

Peter Golemme Mark Cooper 

I’ve always had trouble with this term “muscle memory” because muscles have no memory.

What we are doing is training the brain to fire small muscles in sequence to play the notes.

Larry K yes I agree 100%
Its basically the brain firing neurons in sequence to activate the muscles . By implication, the brain may not necessarily know the individual notes or understand the chord sequence at all . Therefore, if the sequence is interrupted in the middle , the brain will require you to start the sequence from the beginning. 
this is obviously problematic , but muscle memory is needed especially if there are long and rapid runs of music , where it would be very difficult to physically memorise each individual note , but knowledge of typical patterns helps enormously.

Mark Cooper Yes, we are in agreement. The muscles are controlled by the brain.

Musicians have been called “athletes of the small muscle groups.”

Patterns are memorized and then played back in chunks. Memorization is not perfect, though, and it fades without reinforcement.

And, yes, we may not be able to name every note we play but we can recognize when we play a wrong note in the pattern, if we have previously memorized the pattern.

Larry K yes, “muscle memory“ is a shorthand phrase, not intended to have precise accuracy from a biological standpoint, but anyone who has labored to memorize a piece knows instantly what you are talking about. Essentially, it is a very useful metaphor for talking about this phenomenon  

Biologically,, the motion is probably somewhere between an involuntary reflex and a voluntary, conscious placement of the fingers on each note. Your brain (or my brain anyway) and your muscles cannot operate quickly enough for there to be a conscious signal to the fingers to execute each specific note. Instead, a series of movements is learned, and they become more or less automatic, until those fateful moments when they are not! That’s when you need the conscious brain to rush in and remember the specific notes, in order to reinitiate the learned pattern of movement.
 

The more you have worked on consciously remembering the details underlying  the movements, the better prepared you are for your brain to jump in and bail out the muscle memory when it gets thrown off. Remembering the harmonies, the voicing, the scale patterns, or really anything specific about the passage can serve as a conscious  “hook“ into restarting the movements at one of those moments when your other option is to panic!

That’s where a knowledge of harmony, or other theoretical concepts is very useful. For example, if you remember that the passage starts with an A flat chord, you’ve just learned three notes for the price of one unit of memorization.

I like that phrase “athletes of the small muscles”

Peter Golemme It is a great phrase, and it is true, pianists are athletes, they are performing a physical feat.

So, what about the athletes of the large muscle groups?

When I was running seriously, I read a little bit on how the brain works with the muscles.

So, imagine yourself standing on the start line of a race, say a 5k.

How does the brain set a firing speed for the leg muscles for a course it has never seen? 

Well, the brain forward plans based on the paces you have run in practice.
 

The brain knows the distances you have practiced and the paces you have run, so, it sets a firing rate based on that information. 
 

I think something similar is happening when one sits down to play a piece at the piano. 

Larry K There is an excellent book about practice / playing instruments and the brain that has actually just been recently discussed in one of the threads: Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing by Molly Gebrian. It is quite insightful. The author discusses what I think many piano pedagogues would just call "deliberate practice" but she reinforces it with actual science about the brain and why things work and don't work when learning an instrument.  

Highly recommend. She has a very engaging writing style; you do not need to be professional musician or neuroscientist to follow at all. I've been giving copies out to students this year. I have asked students for many years to do the same things she discusses in the book but she 'backs me up' with hard brain science!  

Dustin Anderson I have sent a sample of that book to myself on my Kindle. That’s how I manage my To Be Read list.

Don’t worry, there are only 1500 books on the list. 

People on another piano forum have been taking her to task and saying she doesn’t have a deep neuroscience background. 

For a while, I dated a brain researcher. She messed with my head. She told me that all that calculus I learned in college is gone, that the structures have been repurposed for other knowledge. You can’t just recall that knowledge because it no longer exists. 

I assume this is the case for the knowledge I constructed from 10 years of violin lessons and 10 years of classical guitar lessons.

Mastering an instrument takes years because it requires physical changes in the brain, and that’s a slow process.