How to Maintain Repertoire

Maireen Hamilton Yes😀is true! I agree with you 👍.

Maireen Hamilton Yes, but six months to a year is probably too much time.

That’s my feeling, at least.

I’d like some guidance on the timing of practicing pieces to keep them in the brain. 

Linda Clover I feel the same way, and I’m not an advanced student. 
 

All of the decades of lessons and music I played on other instruments, violin and classical guitar, is gone.

I dated a brain researcher who told me that all of the calculus I learned in college was gone, that the structures had been repurposed.

That meant that I could not simply recall it because I once knew it. Unless something is reinforced, it will disappear.

The same seems to be true of relatively easy piano pieces I played on the piano a few years ago, like Bergmüller. I feel like I can grasp fragments, but, mostly, I have to reconstruct it from scratch. 
 

It is rather disappointing, to be honest.

John Whynot Prokofiev is no joke!  Playing one of sonatas is impressive!

KDS Well, I haven't quite gotten it! No joke is right but, what fun it is! Amazing, inventive, like nothing else.

"Hard to play" doesn't quite cover it!

Anita I too am amazed Anita! Dominic has a deep wellspring of knowledge that he pulls from for sure.

Anita Teaching is often a big part of this. Most serious teachers with performance backgrounds not only have the pieces they have played to draw on but those of their students as well. If you are teaching 50-100 pieces a year, over the years you become familiar with many pieces to the point they are essentially maintenance pieces even if you have not specifically performed them. Combine that with strong reading skills, a vast technical skillset, and a knowledge of composers / style, and you can assist a person with little to no preparation as it is either something you have played or similar to something you've played.

Dustin Anderson  😀 thank you for solving the mystery for me, it really does make sense now 

KDS it is amazing what a pianist can achieve, it’s almost like a super power in the brain and muscle memory 

Anita And “muscle memory” is all in the brain. The brain triggers muscle movement. Muscles have no memory. :)

Larry K that’s a big amazing brain! :)

Anita We all have amazing big brains. 

To learn a musical instrument, physical changes have to take place in the brain. New neural connections have to be created. This explains why it takes years, decades, to learn a musical instrument. 

Forty years ago, I was an intermediate violinist. I stopped playing. Now, all of the structures I built are gone, they’ve been repurposed.
 

I can’t recall that knowledge, it no longer exists. So said my brain researcher ex-girlfriend. Frankly, I have forgotten her name, lol.

What is reinforced, lasts, what is not, disappears. 
 

Larry K thanks for sharing your story! Violinist that turned into a pianist, that’s very impressive 🤩

Anita I wouldn’t call myself a violinist or a pianist, to be honest.

I studied hard for a decade with a violin teacher, and not quite so long on the piano. 

I also spent a decade studying the classical guitar with a wonderful teacher who studied with Sharon Isbin. 

Something happens at the ten year mark, when the hours are long and the gains are small. Usually, I move somewhere, lose my teacher, and stop playing. 

I am trying to hold onto the piano and the recorder, which I just started.