Piano Basics: Memorization Techniques.

As the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung Heidelberger described, “Shijun Wang is a fascinating, serious and sensitive musician” As a solo pianist and orchestral soloist, Shijun Wang has performed in California, New York, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, Utah, Connecticut, New Jersey, Indiana, Idaho, as well as Germany, Spain, France, Norway, China, Mexico, and Japan. Under one of the most prestigious artists management, 100 arte, he plays concerts in most of the major cities in China each summer, and he also gave masterclasses, lectures, and recitals in more than half of the major Chinese conservatories include Shenyang Conservatory, Xi’an Conservatory, Harbin Conservatory, Sichuan Conservatory and Jilin College of Arts. He was appointed as the youngest ever visiting professor of Xi’an Conservatory where he would give concerts and masterclasses for two months each summer. He serves as piano faculty in the East/West International Piano Festival in South Korea and piano faculty at The Puigcerda Music Festival in Spain each summer.
Dr. Wang currently teaches as an Assistant Professor of Piano at Weber State University. He received the Bachelor of Music and Masters of Music degrees at The Juilliard School studied with Oxana Yablonskaya and Joseph Kalichstein and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree at Eastman school of music studied with Nelita True. His mentors have included Thomas Schumacher, Dan-Wen Wei, Alfred Brendel, Emanuel Ax, and Richard Goode.

[@GRMS_Ian]

I’m a drummer and you have inspired me thank you.

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

Glad to hear. That’s great!

[@sirdicaudore]

Big truths!!! Thanks very much

[@jacoaction]

Thank you, this is somehow one of the most encouraging videos I have watched on the subject, thank you for your honesty, your humility, and all the anecdotes. First I thought, here is another teacher who beats around the bush and doesn't get to the point, this is a again waste of my time, but the more I watched, the more I liked it.

[@scottderrick8166]

Excellent thoughts on this subject. It is reassuring to know that pros can have a slip too. Solid ideas on how to hold your memory. Thanks.

[@dq30001]

王老师用别人和自己生动的例子讲解了如何记谱的技巧。让我想得我刚开始工作的时候，我们的主任是全国著名专家。在他给我们讲课的时候从来都不避讳承认自己的弱点和偶尔失误。非常谦虚和诚恳。大家都非常尊重他。王老师也是这样，非常接地气！必须赞一下！

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

谢谢！ 人人都有弱点和失误。 想要进步还是要敢于正视自己的弱点。

[@kecelibu]

Enjoyed a lot while listening. You gave really meaningful examples, which made it easier to understand. Your students must be lucky 👏👏

[@etudeando]

When I was a kid I have had a geography professor who forced us to memorize all capitals of country's in the entire world. That was overwhelming and exhausting sensation. But it teach me that the memorization procedure on the brain is basically subdivided by "from where are you memorizing A to B" and the "differences between these parts. And in music I do that! I just divided the entire piece into small parts and memorize them and then just arm the whole "puzzle" while playing. Works 100% of times.

[@nicolasvanpoucke.pianist]

Great video.

[@ToughLuck808]

Amazing lesson, for free on YT... What a time to be alive!

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

Indeed!

[@derekchen5148]

很喜歡王老師的講解

[@thebopshop9689]

Fantastic thank you!!

[@user-ys8lv9nv1f]

Thank you!!!

[@LiliVG]

Excellent advice. Keep the videos coming!! Thank you

[@rosechen5978]

Wonderful topic and story telling! I have a student who “look” at the music and memorize it….. which is totally amazing to me! I use my ears a lot when memorizing a piece. So I think different person has different strengths/ways of how to memorize a piece. Nevertheless, I totally agree with you that knowing the harmonic progression will defiantly help the memorization of some complicated pieces! Thank you again for this wonderful video and reassuring us that we are all human! 🤣🤣

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

Totally agree on your point of view that different person has different ways of memorizing a piece. And yet, to memorize the harmonic structure is proven to be the more effective way for many people!

[@sueg.russell7719]

So enjoyed, so reassuring, You are a gift to us all. Thank-you

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

Thank you!

[@hollyavillella554]

Thank you so much! Very helpful and interesting stories too. 🙏🧡🎶🎹

[@marillenmus6141]

Great Video! Thank you for sharing your skills!

[@yoonchun6945]

Very informative!! Bravo !!

[@jeffh5388]

Thank you

[@chenwu9867]

Excellent DIRECTION❤️❤️❤️

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

thanks!

[@michaelsmith697]

Excellent tutorial! I’m memorising piano music we must use the conscious memory. The sub conscious memory where we “think” we know it is unreliable. Then once In the performance, our minds go into the performance mode, which is different to the mode of thinking we are in when practising.

[@peterelliott5720]

Thanks again for another fantastic tutorial Shijun! The story about the importance of knowing the harmonic progression was very illuminating - an extremely impressive feet on that pianist's part! I, and I'm sure others would be extremely interested to hear your thoughts on learning, interpreting, and performing fugues at some point in the future if possible please. I just finished learning the C# minor fugue from book 1 of the WTC and am somewhat at a loss of making interpretational decisions - it's such an incredible piece that one wants to do everything at once; play it quickly, play it slowly, legato or with some staccato... whether or not to add rubato. I know the more traditional approach would reject this last idea (Sokolov and Richter's approaches are to keep the tempo very steady and I love both) but I believe that some of Trifonov's performances from The Art of Fugue (contrapuncti 8 and 11 specifically), and HJ Lim's performance of the C# minor fugue pull it off quite convincingly (at least to me). I know that you've covered many of these points in other videos but the fugue is quite a specific/polarising subject, and there aren't currently that many videos relating to their interpretation on youtube, so any of your thoughts would be invaluable. Many thanks, Peter

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

Good suggestion! But it’s so vast that will take so much preparation. But I can’t call myself a qualified piano professor without teaching Bach, right?

[@peterelliott5720]

@@ShijunWangPianoChannel thanks! Any of your thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated :)

[@chuckrandall1116]

Mid 30's and you have memorization issues? Wait till your my age (72)!😊

[@20praxis21]

Professor Wang, thanks again for sharing insights from your teaching. Lucky are your students--a teacher with a sense of humor (or irony!) makes the struggle easier. There are so many approaches to solfege. Do you recommend a particular version?

[@ShijunWangPianoChannel]

To be honest, only students in the U.S. don’t learn solfège when they start music training. And if you learned it when you were 4 years old, there’s no particular version.

[@petertarsio7168]

Do jazz musicians memorize anything at all and I rarely see them have what is called a memory slip. It seems the classical player has the onus on them to memorize for whatever reason because it's demanded of them by a 19th century convention that Liszt was responsible for and before that the score was used. You need to explain more what you do specifically Dr. 🎉❤😅

[@franceshuang6160]

i created two terms "finger distance and finger landscape" to help the muscle memory