Musician Matters

In my lessons with the undergraduate students here at Yale I find myself repeating a few core ideas many times. Perhaps one of the most common suggestions I make to students is to… slow down.

Young musicians seem to have a fascination with playing things fast. I must admit that I too went through my phase… ok. several phases, of obsessing over my speed. However, I have found in my teaching and my own studies that the best way to improve control, accuracy and even speed is to slow everything down.

There are three types of slowing down that I would like to talk about here. (I do admit, the titles don’t sound promising but the ideas are!)

1. Slowing down the tempo
2. Slowing down your practice
3. Slowing down your performance

Slowing Down the Tempo

When you slow down the tempo of a section that needs work then, and only then, can you see what isn’t working and how you can fix it. Slowing down allows us to understand the very complex movements of both hands that are involved in a passage of music. Once we understand the movements we have more control of the movements. With more control comes accuracy and speed. It also aides in the speed at which we learn a piece and perhaps, eventually memorize it. Once you start slowing down the tempo of passages to work on them you will find out that you are saving a ton of time by slowing down.
Slowing Down your Practice

In a similar way slowing down your overall practice means that you work more efficiently and productively. By slowing down your practice I mean that you do not try to learn the piece in one sitting or even ten. Take your time. Map out all of the fingering, try different fingerings, analyze the form, the structure, the harmony, the phrasing… etc. There are many facets to each piece yet most of us jump straight in the deep end and start playing a piece from beginning to end… at full speed. By doing this you are making the entire learning process stretch out over a much longer period of time than it needs to be.
Slowing Down your Performance

So, after a coffee and a good warm up you can play that overture at a blistering pace of MM. 120 all the way through with only a few slips… (congrats!)… but when the performance comes around half of the notes were missing and the other half may have been in another key! Does this sound familiar? It is all too common to hear the phrase “but I played it much better last night at home” following a less than spectacular performance. So why do we always try to play at the very extreme of our capabilities when the situation is at its toughest?

Well, the answer to that question can be left for someone else to answer but I am here to say that if you shift down a couple of gears in your performance and take things at a more manageable pace you will be a happy chappy.

and here’s why…

The positive reinforcement you feel after being on stage and feeling more in control is worth its weight in gold and the positive side effects filter through all of your playing. (can you imagine how good you would feel if you were always in control on stage!)
We naturally speed up tempi on stage and in other high stress scenarios. If you think you are taking it at your top speed you are probably taking it a few notches more thanks to all the adrenaline.
When notes are played cleanly and rhythmically on the guitar a listener perceives the music as much faster than sloppy playing taken at a faster tempo.

So. Slow down everyone. O.K?

These days it is more common than not to see a classical musician perform from memory. It has become almost par for the course to have an entire recital memorized and performed without mistakes (if our job wasn’t already hard enough!). Before going on to talk about methods of memorization I would like you to first give some thought to why we perform from memory?

Why memorize?

Memorizing music definitely has its advantages. Often musicians feel more ‘free’ and able to express themselves when the music has been memorized and the score is absent from the stage. It also may come across to some people as an impressive feat of virtuosity having memorized the thousands of notes that are played in a concert. The 19th century idea of the music virtuoso first brought around this idea and it has endured to our time. These advantages do have their worth but personally I think the advantages of having a score during performance outweigh those of memorization. Having the score during performance does not mean you have to have your eyes glued to the page for the entire time, in fact you may not even use it for large portions of a piece. Psychologically, however, having the score provides a great sense of safety and therefore reduces the stress of performance which can adversely affect music making.

The Four Memories

Normally we only use one or two types of memory in a piece and in doing so we are not preparing as thoroughly as we could for the memory slip that’s around the corner and trust me, it is around the corner. Let me be clear, a memory slip is not what you think it is. It is not that you have forgotten something or you don’t know it rather it is an interruption in the stream of consciousness, a distraction, a break of concentration. These things happen to everyone all the time. So the process of memorizing a piece of music is not so much stopping the breaks of concentration it is building a support network of memories to catch you when you fall.

The more types of memory that you employ, the better. It is equivalent to looking at a 3D object from different perspectives. From different angles you will have a fuller understanding of what the object is and also a more comprehensive memory of it.

Kinesthetic

Kinesthetic memory is more commonly referred to as ‘muscle memory’. It is by far the most common kind of memory that we employ whilst playing an instrument. The best way of describing it is the feeling of being on auto pilot. We use this for many actions we do every day: opening doors, turning on a tap, walking, riding a bike etc. This type of memory is built up through repetition and is probably the most common type of memory simply because its the easiest. If you learn a piece by repeating passages over and over you are walking a very fine line. The big problem with this memory is that if your steam of consciousness is broken during a performance and you actually have to think about what your hands are doing you get completely lost. This is the all too common ‘memory slip’ and it happens to the best of us. Your concentration can be broken by a myriad of distractions in a concert. Coughing, traffic noise, even your own thoughts and fears running around in your head can cause the most ardent memorizer to have a ‘slip’. The best way to protect yourself from these inevitable moments is to incorporate the following types of memory.

Aural

Aural memory (‘aural’ from auditory not ‘oral’ from mouth) is your memory of how a piece sounds. The usability of this memory depends on how well you have trained your aural skills. If you can hear and recognize complex harmonic relationships and intervallic relationships then this type of memory can greatly aid your overall memory. Aural memory can be developed through solfege, critical listening to works (i.e. listening to a work with the score several times) and transcribing music by ear. Aural skill is not an innate skill that everyone has but it can be obtained by anyone who puts in the effort. It requires many dedicated hours but its rewards are great.

Visual

The visual memory of the score and where the notation is placed can obviously be a huge aid in performance and if you are fortunate enough to have a photographic memory, then, I’m jealous. For the rest of us the process of visualization can be of great value. Visualization is thinking of an action in your minds eye. For many of us it is easy to visualize walking down a street or answering a phone, however, to visualize the performance of an entire work is quite a skill and it can a wonderful tool for working on pieces away from the instrument. This technique can be developed by anyone and combined with a strong kinesthetic memory it will give your memory a strong foundation. Visualization can be used for many other benefits such as developing stage confidence and working on technique, these issues will be discussed in a later article.

Harmonic (analysis)

Harmonic memory is a title that is bit misleading, it refers to the overall knowledge of the score so perhaps memory of analysis would be more appropriate. Knowledge of the score includes knowing the harmony, form, stylistic features, phenomena markings (articulation, dynamics etc.) and any other important characteristics. It is quite obvious that a thorough knowledge of what is going on in the music will aid your memory. For instance knowing that a cadence in C minor is approaching will tell you what notes will be involved. At best this will trigger your memory for what’s written and at worst you can fake the notes by playing the right harmony. I have done this more times than I care to remember and nobody every notices!