To Memorize or Not to Memorize?

200 years ago, pianists NEVER memorized their music... those who did were considered "super-human." Today, even children studying piano are required to memorize. In this video, we dive into a bit of history and also a journey through pros and cons of memorizing your music. What will you choose?
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Charles Szczepanek is an international prize-winning pianist, has collaborated with GRAMMY Award winners, and has taught music for over 20 years to everyone from his next-door neighbor to finalists on NBC's America's Got Talent. Through Pianist Academy, he now brings that wealth of knowledge to you: the beginner, the intermediate, the professional, or the fellow music teacher.
Chapters:
00:00 - To Memorize or Not To Memorize?
00:37 - A Bit of History
02:28 - Practical Benefit of Memorizing
02:52 - The 4 Types of Memory
03:29 - More Benefits of Memorization
04:08 - Benefits of NOT Memorizing
04:40 - The Memorization PYRAMID
06:07 - Easy vs Difficult Memory Spots
06:27 - Should you memorize?
06:58 - My own thoughts on memorization in my career
07:36 - Plz Like and Subscribe!
#pianopractice
#pianolessons
#memorization
#musichistory
#musiceducation
#pianistacademy
#charlesszczepanek
#pianist
#classicalmusic

[@DouggieDinosaur]

Great video! Read lots of music and memorize a few pieces. Let the two different skills grow and hopefully, they'll meet in the middle somewhere 😄

[@langleygratuito620]

I definitely agree. You don't have to choose. Both are essential.

[@PianistAcademy1]

➡➡ Check out all of the in-depth Masterclasses from Charles and Pianist Academy ➡➡ pianist-academy.thinkific.com/collections

[@zackstaboy]

Thank you!!! This is the first time I’ve heard a professional pianist suggest that under some conditions it might be justifiable to essentially ignore the horribly time-consuming task of memorization and instead pursue excellence in sight reading. For myself, I am not interested in performance for others, only the intense personal enjoyment of more or less competently playing (albeit far from “perfectly”) the majority of the great piano literature at will(!) - like most all Bach keyboard works, any and all Beethoven sonatas, etc. People do occasionally by accident hear my playing and enjoy it, but I sure wouldn’t give a concert. Of course, if one wants to intentionally play select pieces at a high level in front of people, memorization can be very helpful to say the least. But not all of us have that as a priority and in this case validation of the “reading not memorization” route is nice to hear.

[@lovaaaa2451]

That's great to hear. I think the value of music for just playing is so important and sometimes neglected. I think it should be nice for you however to engage the process with others still, not necerally concerts, maybe small intimate ones, but I think maybe you would enjoy the process of collaborative playing? Find an amateur violinist or such and it might become a great friendship!

[@michaelungar3405]

I’ve been tending towards memorization lately. Having some vision issues, I find it difficult to follow or find my place on the page. thus, it’s memorize or don’t play at all. Especially when I’m playing for personal pleasure, having memorized helps me get into a flow whereas I rarely achieve a flow state when depending on a score, though it's nice to have in case I get lost.

[@jimh1487]

Very informative. Thank you..

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thanks for watching, Jim! I'm glad you found it interesting.

[@jimh1487]

Your welcome. And this is coming from someone who has been playing since 1959, (I was 9.)

[@RUT812]

I was trained to keep my eyes on the music & not look down at my hands. I am an excellent sight reader, I can do the jumps, etc. easily & without looking. These abilities have allowed me to work as an accompanist, memorize the music to give solo performances, & to teach piano. I have great muscle memory, but it does take me longer to memorize a piece. That said, I can analyze a piece to make memorization easier.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Absolutely yes. Accompanists always benefit from great sight reading abilities. It's so great to have the choice between the two "styles" of performing (memorized or not) and it's super interesting how different it feels depending on which side you choose.

[@RUT812]

@@PianistAcademy1 oh yes! It just so happened in my life that the opportunities that came my way paved the way for me to be an accompanist rather than a classical pianist.

[@JoeLinux2000]

@@RUT812 I;m still working on my reading skills at nearly 80. I wish I had put more into that than into high speed scales.

[@scarlettdarlin2]

It has been my observation over the past 65 years as a pianist and piano teacher that people are either fabulous sight readers who struggle to memorize or who are weak sight readers who must dig out the music they play but by the time they have mastered the music, they realize that the music is memorized. Rarely is anyone proficient in both sight reading and memorization. Both skills can be developed, however.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@scarlettdarlin2 I agree in that some students can show a talent more towards one or the other, but that a high level, even professional level, of proficiency can be gained by working the muscle that is less developed. Sometimes this comes in doses of things we may not love or be comfortable with, but that hugely help our trajectories. In my own life, I was ‘thrown’ into choral accompanying when I was only 14. I could kind of sight-read solo piano music prior to that… well enough to score highly on any of the exams I had taken… but all of a sudden I not only had to read the piano part, but also sight-read (with the pressure of perfection since the singers were learning their notes from me) all the vocal parts as well. Literally daily practice in that environment led me to be one of the best sight-readers in my class when I started my undergraduate program. That would have never happened had I not been put into that environment. And I definitely wouldn’t have chosen to practice sight-reading daily! The same goes for giving performances from memory as well. The more often it’s a “required” part of life, the better we all become at it, no matter where we have started. But if we only stick with the aspects that come more easily to us and practice those most, it’s going to take a very very long time to get better at the opposite, whatever that happens to be.

[@Cj.M9]

Wonderful video! Im loving your channel! I never memorize full pieces, but memorize the difficult parts of them to help with muscle memory. Id rather be really good at reading notes so I can play more music. Love the Liebestraum in the background, wonderfully played :)

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thanks for checking out the channel and subbing! Looking forward to continuing to see you in the comments :-) Memorizing in full is a large task that really only begins to pay dividends if you are recording or performing a lot. I like your perspective!

[@ImagoPiano]

I must say that I do enjoy the way you narrate and reference musical history (an area I am not familiar with)…you not only can sing, but have a fantastic “podcast” voice as well! 😁. After 5 years of playing, that’s when I started learning to play by ear, which subsequently helped to learn pieces by reading and memory, too. Maybe that’s the aural level you referenced, where that building block helps tremendously in memorizing.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Haha, thanks Imago! Yes, that's a big part of the aural level. Usually we start with just being able to identify the right pitches and rhythms from the wrong ones (after we have learned a piece), but eventually we also branch into using the aural skills to directly supplement both our note reading and our understanding of theory. Ie, we can "hear" what a piece sounds like by reading the notes on the page and NOT playing anything. And we can use an understanding of harmony, coordinated with our listening, to play "by ear." Beyond that there's also the skill of matching pitch without any reference as well, but that's much harder to develop for most people. If you are born with perfect pitch it isn't... but otherwise we end up using relative pitch to inform the ear's decisions, which actually requires quite a bit of conscious or subconscious knowledge about theory and intervals!

[@bonjovi1612]

Hi, and firstly thank you for your videos and time. Interesting, I’m 63, played guitar from 13 and only took up serious piano a year ago. I love it. So what’s different? I never, ever learned any music skills except chord charts and tablature. I always felt lacking, however I was a blues/rock player so ‘feel’ was everything to me. Strict time keeping etc wasn’t relevant. But, I always wanted that to change and by starting at scratch with the piano I was able to ‘go back’ and learn and play by sight. I love being able to do that, to pick up a new piece of music and play straight away even if it’s clunky and slow. I sometimes play by memory it I want to add my emotions and feelings but mostly I like the discipline of using written music. My two cents. Thanks

[@PianistAcademy1]

Absolutely! It's great to experience both sides. I'm kind of the opposite of you... I learned piano from a very young age and chose to study it and now work professionally, but I picked up both guitar and bass on my own and play those instruments nearly completely by ear and feel. I don't really play those other instruments except on my own fun projects and sometimes if I'm doing some songwriting or scoring.

[@RUT812]

I taught piano to my daughter for 6 years, after which she bought a nice guitar & learned to play it on her own. She sight reads well & now has her own piano. 😊

[@pamcrewey4248]

I like to memorize just for the challenge, like working a puzzle. Nice to hear though that simpler pieces are more difficult to memorize, very enlightening!!

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thanks for watching, Pam!

[@Twentythousandlps]

I have lately begun memorizing standard pieces I have been reading for many years. It is a totally different experience to play them by memory. In fact when you make memorization the first step rather than the last - going eight bars slowly, phrase by phrase, you will find that the slow repetition makes the hand "learn" most technically difficult phrases along with the memorization. Of course this is a rather lengthy process but I am embedding the music in a mental space and I "own" the piece in a way I didn't before.

[@PianistAcademy1]

When I have time to really sit and learn something, I prefer the method you describe here of memorizing as you go.

[@christopherzimmer]

Charles- hi! Building on what one or two others mention in their comments, for a very long time, I could not figure out why I was having so much difficulty memorizing passages. I traced the root cause to my teachers’ frequent admonition (as a kid/student) to “never look down” while playing! So, instead, I developed the horrible practice of staring hypnotically at the notes and mindlessly “torturing” the passage until I beat it in to my fingers! In other words there was a brick wall immediately prior to the graduated step to “visual memory”. Scraping myself off of this horrible legacy practice has been very difficult- imagine now *forcing* myself to look down and realizing one *must* look down in order to play from memory! I just wanted to bring this to your attention as a little “wrinkle” in the memorization process for some! BTW I like those glasses! 😊

[@PianistAcademy1]

I actually have a current private student who also was "scolded" as a child student for looking down! I'm always astounded when I hear such things. When I was young there were moments when looking down was considered "bad" but only during sight reading practice... which today I wouldn't fully agree with either. I first encountered the power of visual memory when I found myself making mistakes because of it: I would practice on a piano with a high gloss finish and would regularly stare at the reflection of my hands in the fallboard during practice. When I'd have a lesson or an audition, it would almost always be on a piano with a matte finish and... no reflection. I'll start playing, and start looking for that reflection I was used to watching and... all of a sudden it was like a part of my knowledge was missing and would immediately cause problems I'd never had during practice. All due to what the eyes were used to seeing being changed!

[@shawnf375]

My first video in a while, and a hot button topic of my past. You nailed it for me though. I'm a pretty darn good sight reader and love it. I enjoy picking up a piece and doing pretty well first go-round, then fine tuning...without any added pressure of having (nor wanting) to memorize in total. This has made for lots of fun on occasions where I've told people just to pick something for me to play, and voila. ...then again, I admit my capacity to memorize, especially as I age, has never been good. But, I never wanted that as a goal, to the irritation of teachers past. And as for playing something any time, anywhere....I just go with the creative flow. That's where theory knowledge really comes in hand on the fly, outside of using it for analytical purposes to aid in memorization. Boring as theory may have been to some, I loved it, and the practical uses when applied impromptu can be a crowd pleaser.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Love it, thanks for sharing! And great to see you again! It's crazy how theory knowledge can benefit both memory and also improv and sight-reading. One of my final degree recitals I was having a horrible time keeping things memorized. I was playing Beethoven's Les Adieux Sonata on the first half (along with a few other preludes and the Liszt Petrarch set), and the second half was the Liszt b minor Sonata. The two Sonatas were making my brain explode and I was having slips everywhere during the month prior to the recital. My saving grace was doing harmonic analysis of the Sonatas and understanding all of the theoretical relationships. I had built up so much anxiety around the memory that it still wasn't a perfect performance, BUT, I got through it with only a handful of missed notes... a far cry from the weeks prior where I'd stop and have literally no idea how to continue on!

[@MarkHopewell]

Personally speaking I'm finding that my piano journey is benefitting from memorization. I'm trying to move to memorising a piece I'm learning through sihlght reading initially but to progressively build the scaffold leading to memorization. This requires determined effort, concentration and a willingness to persist against frustration. Memorization frees me up from the cognitive load I'd otherwise have to keep undertaking when relying on reading the score in order to play it. Eventually the score will be nothing more than an aide memoir. I've no idea if I'm right or wrong taking this approach but something in the way my piano learning is drawing me that way.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Mark, what you describe is great! It's possible to memorize quickly this way and have a very intimate understanding of the music sooner, although the process of learning the notes for the first time is likely lengthened.

[@haydarkhattar2773]

Well Charles, since I have not been successful in sight reading I decided to memorize pieces and my latest is the first movement of moonlight sonata which Im now in it's final measures, I'll send you a video once I'm done with it

[@PianistAcademy1]

Great! Looking forward to hearing you play, Haydar! Once you start exploring music notation more, I think it'll be a very interesting comparison for you!

[@DouggieDinosaur]

Haydar, play the "Barn Tutors" website music note identification game and you'll learn to read notes fast - I started when I was 43 and I can sight read pretty decent now - good luck!

[@JoeLinux2000]

That's now read the music as you play the piece. Memorization gets harder as you get older.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@JoeLinux2000 Haha I'm already feeling that and I'm only 36!

[@justinvidad-menezes2364]

I’m for memorizing and sight reading. Develop both and it will make you a better musician. Memorization is the key to having a good ear and improvise and compose your own music and not just be tied to the notes.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Both are absolutely vital to become a well-rounded musician, yes

[@66oggy]

I can't sight read, but i can read music very basically. I have to learn a piece bar by bar until I have memorized it all. I can pick up tunes by ear, but I still have to memorize them a section at a time. Once in my head, they tend to stay there, as long as I go back to them now and again.

[@juliejackson7061]

I memorize every piece that I want “performance”ready even if the performance is for one person. I feel more connected to the music without the intermediary reading step. I can step up to any piano and “play something”on request. Memorization forces me to iron out difficult passages to the point where they flow naturally.

[@BarnieSnyman]

In addition to all the very valid considerations for and against memorization you mention, there is one that tends to tip the scale towards memorization for me: Having to read music is detrimental to my technique. In my case at least. I have bad eyes. So I have to lean forward to read the score. This messes up my posture and technique. So to get this problem out of the way I try to memorize as quickly as possible. But even if I read the score from a normal distance without leaning forward, my head/neck is always "locked" in looking at the score (its a bit hard to put into words). The end result is that my torso can't really move around as freely and comfortably as it ideally should be able to.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Barnie, I know what you mean. This happens to me as well but its limited to performances only, especially if I haven't been in front of an audience in a while. Things get "locked up." Since switching to reading off an iPad 3 or 4 years ago (and most of the time reading it in landscape showing 2 pages at a tiny magnification) having the score in front of me is less about reading the notes and more about little reminders here and there. In fact, I'd probably not be able to sight-read it at all because the print is so small. So while I can't say I'm performing from memory since the music is still up there and I check in with it, I'm definitely not "reading" it. I'm glad you seem to have found a method that works for you! It's so important to maintain fluidity, and working toward memorization quickly is a small price to pay to keep the body working in the most efficient ways possible for playing.

[@BarnieSnyman]

​@@PianistAcademy1 The little reminders definitely is an advantage of having the score in front of you, now that you mention it. With difficult music, I sometimes find myself concentrating so hard in the moment, that, when something different comes up next in the music, I can get thrown off, even if I'm well prepared and have the music memorized. So, seeing the little reminders ahead of time helps to prepare for the transition into the next part of the music.

[@AverageJoeDoh]

When performing anywhere else but my home, it's a crapshoot with the lighting and the distance of the music from my 61-year-old eyes will be sufficient for me to perform the music accurately. This is causing me to consider memorizing much more seriously. At the same time, I am trying to combine an IPad for the music together with a very adjustable IPad stand to see whether I can make the musical easily readable wherever I am.

[@ginabisaillon2894]

I wish I had a choice but as a semibeginner at age 80 my brain just doesn't work that way. Now all I hope is to be able to read the same piece over and over and even that is proving difficult. I will work on a particularly difficult passage several times until I get it, and the next day it feels like I've never seen it before! Yet in other areas my recent memory is amazing. What a mystery that is. In the end I have concluded that I may have to stay at a level lower than my real potential in order to avoid frustration.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thanks for chiming in, Gina! Good to see you back in the comments!

[@brendamengeling4653]

I’ve been playing piano for about six months, although I already knew how to read music and plunk out my voice part for singing, when I started. I’ve been trying to memorize a few favorite pieces, so that for those pieces I don’t need to be tied to the sheet music.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Great to hear! Coming from a singer's perspective, how challenging has it been to learn to read bass clef?

[@brendamengeling4653]

@@PianistAcademy1 Learning the bass clef hasn't been bad. I sat next to a bass in choir in school, and I used to follow his part, so I could rib him when he screwed up (he did the same to me). That's come in handy for piano! Ledger lines are my nemesis--more than two and I'm lost.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@brendamengeling4653 This is great, love it! Best way to read ledger lines is through interval recognition. If you are more than 2 lines deep, use some surrounding notes and read the interval size and shape to find the note that's way outside of the clef. For example, if you can recognize a 5th below the C that's 2 lines down in bass clef, you'll know that the bottom note (4 lines down) will be an F, but you'll never have to actually be able to read note names 4 lines down! Most all professional pianists will read all notation this way, inside *and* outside the clef.

[@JoeLinux2000]

Yeah that's good too. It's tragic to always be tied to sheet music, but as you get older memorization gets harder.

[@ami2846]

Great topic. After practicing the same piece many times I naturally memorize it and no longer follow along on the page. I can’t help it. But, it also means I can only work on one thing at a time. When I start another piece the prior memorized one pretty much goes out the window. Sight reading is my biggest weakness.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Both sight-reading and memory only get better when practiced, just like everything else. If you add more than the muscle memory built from playing a piece repeatedly, it'll stick with you longer!

[@ami2846]

@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you Charles! In time I hope this will be true for me.

[@JoeLinux2000]

There are basicly three types of pianists. Exclusively ear players. People who improvise easily, and a very few who are excellent sight readers. The advent of tablets has helped the reading world a lot I think. Now you can have a tremendous amount of written music stored in a small space for easy recall.

[@DouggieDinosaur]

I've never heard anyone say complicated music is easier to memorize than simple music but I believe you because everything else you said in this video is absolutely true @6:07 - SUBSCRIBED !! ^_^

[@PianistAcademy1]

Thanks! The bit of music I show at that point is 2 bars from the 6th Liszt Paganini Etude... it was the first example that popped in my head of obviously difficult music so I took that screen grab. In that passage (and a whole bunch of others throughout the repertoire), by the time you learn all of the notes (runs, patterns, jumps, fingering etc) ... even at around 50% of tempo... it's pretty much memorized. By the time you increase tempo to 70% or higher, it's definitely memorized... and when you need to play it full performance tempo, there's literally not even an opportunity to look anywhere but at your hands! For reference, this passage should be performed at about Eighth Note=110bpm

[@bunnyhollowcrafts]

Funny you said you do memorize the page turns. That's about all I memorize. Coming late to the game so no time to memorize. Played as a child, raised my family, now I'm back at it with a passion.

[@PianistAcademy1]

It's never too late! I'm glad you're back at music!

[@bunnyhollowcrafts]

@@PianistAcademy1 always played but was stagnant for a while; 5 kids! But wow, let the learnings continue!! So fun!

[@SeanMcVail]

Time to memorize? Work for memorizing? I have no choice! As soon as I can play a piece kind of fluently from score, it's in my memory and I have difficulties to "stay" at the score. After days of playing by memory the score looks strange, nearly new for me. That's not really funny, but I can manage this way. But I'll always stay a bad, bad sightreader! 😮‍💨

[@PianistAcademy1]

Yup, I know what you mean by all of this, including the score not looking familiar anymore if you haven't looked at it in a while. Usually, this kind of practice and "necessary" memorizing means that the repertoire is pushing your technique to its limit. If you'd like to get better at sight reading, it takes just as much dedicated practice as you do without the score in front of you already. Also, sightreading material should be around at least 3 levels *below* the current level of your repertoire. If the rep is always pushing your technique and also always pushing your reading ability, it's not exercising the sightreading part of the brain at all... which is why you aren't making progress with that. Strip the difficulty away and plan some regular time to practice it, and you *will* become a better sightreader!

[@SeanMcVail]

@@PianistAcademy1 " the repertoire is pushing your technique to its limit." Exactly! And I work with material below that level to sightread. Take both ways. But time is running out, so that prefered music is in first place for the last years. Thank you for your analysis and advice.

[@rbcm1]

For all it’s worth: I think memorizing is the way to go because I want to have a reportoire ready to play wherever I am. Also, my teacher always wants me to me memorize everything. At the beginning I was not very keen on this idea but I have to admit I believe it’s brought me further in my journey. :)

[@PianistAcademy1]

I'd agree, if you have the time and can focus on memorizing, it really can increase your abilities quickly. Throughout most of my time studying, everything had to be memorized, even before just having lessons on the materials... teachers wouldn't hear me play unless it was finished being memorized. And at the same time, while working on that solo rep, I also had a large number of accompanying jobs, which gave me hours daily to practice sight reading. These days, I've developed both sides of those skills and I rarely need to have anything memorized for professional purposes, but I still choose to exercise that aspect of learning here and there for the benefits.

[@rbcm1]

@@PianistAcademy1 interesting reply. Thanks for your opinion and insights. I could already tell from the live sessions you are amazing at sight reading. I think you are a truly outstanding musician! BTW: videos of my “finished” pieces are on my KZbin channel, feel free to use any of them in future live sessions ;)

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@rbcm1 Thanks! I will! Point me to any in particular that you'd like talked about, and I'd be happy to feature them!

[@lovaaaa2451]

Good take! I believe it should be a mixture. The bredth of the great sight reader is maybe more impressive than the great concert pianist with a small standard repertoire but not as valued. But there is no reason not to memorize repertoire that you need to practice alot, like Chopin etudes or something like Rach 2. I feel very virtuosic or free-spirited music loses something when you look at the score, there is a certain gestural freedom that comes when you don't have to look and ''follow a line''. So I memorize pieces that are very important to me and thus that I have played alot, but also sight read alot for that depth of knowledge of the tradition and play lots of easier repertoire from the music. And there is of course lots of music that is too complicated to memorize, eg I play sections of Messiaen's vingt regards sur l'infant-Jésus, there I memorize certain technically challenging short sections to be more stable, but then return to the music. So, I think both.

[@PianistAcademy1]

100% agree with this! By the time difficult passages in rep like you've mentioned are actually learned, they are definitely memorized. And the feeling of memorization is truly wonderful... you have literally embodied the music and it flows from you. The thing I've been finding is that the greater your ability to sight read and perform at a very high technical level, the more difficult it seems to be to memorize. For example, let's say you can read or mostly read a piece at performance tempo... an hour later you have your interpretation devised and you love it. The sheer lack of practice time needed to get the music to "performance standard" is so short that there's practically no muscle memory built because repetition was never needed. It's an interesting conundrum. Of course the answer would simply be to play with the score... but what if you just don't want to, for any reason you have? I'm currently learning all of Mendelssohn's Op 19 for the first time, and Nos 1, 2, 4, and 6 absolutely fall into this category for me.

[@lovaaaa2451]

​@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you for this observation! I love your channel and particularly the recent one about composition. We need to renew that pianist-composer-improviser I think. Given that you are a concert pianist with great sight reading abilities and lots of wisdom and method, would you consider talking about some actual high level sight reading topics? It's very rare I think to find actual tips for very high level pianists to develop these high level skills. My favourite past-time is to casually read through big volumes of work by the greats, like reading novels and gaining all that crucial cultural context, but even though I do it a lot, my skills are slow to develop. I've tried things like training short term memory by stopping and quickly memorizing one bar at a time before playing it, lots of music theory including learning all the schemas and improvising, composing simple things and training through partimento method, sight singing. harmonizing chorales on the spot, live-transposing music to all sorts of keys. I am looking to read more multi-staff things like string quartets at the pian but haven't done so yet. Do you think these approaches are useful? I'm not sure why I'm not developing more quickly, the main problem seems to be speed, but my level is where I have at least played all Chopin etudes at speed. Have a lovely day!

[@PianistAcademy1]

​@@lovaaaa2451 I'll definitely put this topic on my list of things to cover this year! One of the most beneficial things in my own life, that I only realized far after the fact, was learning to sight read choral multi-staff scores when I was a teenager. I was the rehearsal pianist for 3 groups between the ages of 14 and 17 and a great deal of the time I was responsible for teaching parts to the singers, so there was also pressure to get it perfect, live and in front of everyone... every single day of the week. Sometimes it was basic 4 part writing, and other times there would be divisi into full 8 parts. I never had a need to do any piano work from an orchestral score, so while I can read the strings or the winds etc, I can't transpose on the spot any of the instruments not written in concert pitch. I also enjoy a whole lot of pop music from the 60s and 70s, and I learned on my own how to combine the vocal line with the piano line and also add to both by reading the chord changes for guitar. I think taking in all of that extra "data" beyond just a grand staff piano part really helped me to see music from a higher perspective... more forest, less trees, therefore I can read and retain more information faster. I should probably save this reply to you because I think I just outlined my main points for a video on this topic! To me, sight reading all boils down to pattern recognition and pairing that recognition with what the patterns feel like to play at the piano. That approach doesn't help when playing atonal or other more contemporary styles, but it sure speeds up reading the rest of the tonal canon.

[@lovaaaa2451]

@@PianistAcademy1 Wow thanks alot for that response. That's very interesting. I've started organ as well some 2 years ago and am looking to become a church musician, so at least I read 3 staves now and have done a little bit of choral accompaniment as well, it is indeed difficult. One more question about this experience: When you have many staves, how do you go about reading it? So you actually keep track of each line in detail or is it more useful to have a sort of fake figured bass approach where you see the harmony over the bass as well as specific voice leading patterns? I very much look forward to that video! Thanks.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@lovaaaa2451 I think I could sum up in general by saying that reading multiple staves is a lot like good reading of just the piano grand staff: we need to become experts at recognizing patterns very quickly. I'll look through any way that I can see different parts relating to one another... parallel movement, oblique movement, diatonic movement... who is complimenting who... and group those notes together. If it's tonal (hopefully it is haha) are parts functioning in the same harmony and if so I can very quickly read inversion and voicing etc. And of course, also look for scalar pattens.

[@PianoJules]

I have tried to memorise but find it impossible. I constantly doubt myself. I don’t find reading music difficult and enjoy the challenge of sight reading a new piece. The problem I have, is that after the initial sight read though, I take forever to improve it.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Really committing something to memory takes a very conscious decision to beginning to look away from the music once it starts to feel comfortable in the hands. Some people claim that simply playing something repeatedly will eventually turn into memory, but this is really only half true. If you're interested, I do offer free masterclasses during my bi-weekly livestreams here on the channel... all you need to do is submit a video of you playing something you are working on, and I'll slot it in and talk about it with some tips! Maybe that could be a great way to help get you some ideas about how to continue to improve after the initial sight read?

[@serwoolsley]

Personally i find really easy to just read the score a couple of times and memorize it, it just comes natural to me that after a little time i know it in my memory, to keep reading it, sounds to me you still don't know the piece, of course this is probably like this because i still haven't finished my first year of piano studies, and the pieces are fairly simple, and i also suck like very bad at sightreading so, by memorizing i can play some decent music, and i'm not stuck at things like twinkle twinkle little star and such, and also if i chose to start a piece it means i really like it and i want to play it very good and with my interpretation so if i had to read it everytime i would not be able to perform it good enough. Having said that, i know this way of thinking is not that great, but really i play the piano, just because i like hearing myself play, i'm not gonna be a concert pianist, so the little time i can spare after work and all life things in genaral, i'd play something i like, rather then doing sightreading excercises on pieces i could not give a damn. I can say, right now i know by memory 6 pieces, i knew 4 more, but i just went on studying other pieces and i forgot them.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Yes, this is one of the great things about music... especially when you play for your own enjoyment! You get to choose exactly the path that you want to follow and enjoy the most. I'd probably do a whole lot more memorizing if I didn't have a plethora of professional playing obligations... for example, right now I'm preparing around 3 hours of music (around 40 selections of pieces) that I'll perform next month and also in December. The sheer scale of what I need to learn (and only having 1 to 2 hours a day to practice) means that I simply don't have the time to devote to memorizing it... so I'm stuck needing to perfect the other aspects of learning. But I do miss the days when I had more music at my fingertips that I could just sit down and play anywhere.

[@serwoolsley]

@@PianistAcademy1 well, like this it makes sense lol, 3 hours of music to remeber it would be very hard in the little time you probably have

[@MrTubeman007]

I have real trouble reading anything, so I have to learn everything. I have been struggling all my life with reading now at 68 I have thrown the towel in and accepted the fact that I just memorise.

[@PianistAcademy1]

What does the process look like for you? Do you take one or two measures, really focus, and then commit those to memory as quickly as possible? And then how often to you need to revisit those measures you've already learned to be sure they stay memorized? Thanks for sharing!

[@bentaye]

Memorize the ones you like to play and want to play often. Sight read the rest.

[@kjwong4730]

I always envy the people who don’t have to memorize. As an adult beginner starting at the age of 40 from absolutely zero, reading music is not an option, so I have to memorize. But your brain can only fit so much. So when I learn a new piece I forget old ones

[@PianistAcademy1]

I'd argue that you can still learn the read more fluently! It's much like learning any other language in regards to the time spent immersing yourself in it to begin to get an understanding. I think the struggle is that the older we are, the less patience we have with ourselves to learn something completely new and foreign. But learning to read any language even semi fluently will take months to years of intense daily study, and if we remember that, then we can slowly but surely chip away at learning music notation as well.

[@backtoschool1611]

I HAVE to memorize EVERYTHING. I cannot see well to read the printed notes. It is very time consuming, and after the piece is "memorized", it must be played many times to move it firmly to the long term memory.

[@Xanadu2025]

I can’t learn a piece well enough to play it without completely memorizing it. I am a bad sight reader. Is this unusual?

[@PianistAcademy1]

Both memorizing and sight-reading are skills that only improve with dedicated practice. Sight-reading also usually lags many levels of difficulty behind the repertoire we can currently call a "challenge." For example, with practice, one should be able to reasonably sight-read level 3 music once they are playing level 6 or level 7 music. "Reasonably" doesn't necessarily mean perfect and extremely musical, but close enough to performance tempo that the piece is recognizable. On the other side of things, it's very common to need to completely memorize any spots in music that push us to the limit of our ability. Let's say your typical level is level 5, but you attempt a level 7 piece... it's very likely that most or all of it will need to be memorized before you can play it reasonably well. The higher in level that music gets, the more of it that needs to be memorized, even for a professional pianist. One last thing... for many pianists, those that are very good at memorizing tend to be poor sight-readers, and those that are great sight-readers tend to be poor memorizers. This isn't because they "can't" do the opposite task, but because the opposite task is so much more difficult they simply don't spend or can't spend the time working on to improve.

[@Xanadu2025]

@@PianistAcademy1 thanks for the detailed response. Wish I new what the levels were. I’m mostly self taught.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@Xanadu2025 can you give me a few books or names of pieces you’re playing? I could give you a frame of reference and also a place to look for more repertoire ideas that would fit where you are.

[@Xanadu2025]

@@PianistAcademy1 well, I learned your wonderful arrangement of Over the Rainbow kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJK7aZSsgL-tnrcsi=NEi-2yEOdzLBn-JW And I’m working on Can’t Help Falling in Love. What levels are they?

[@giannottister]

If memorizing music is so important, why is it that in chamber music and orchestra we play with the score?

[@PianistAcademy1]

I don't necessarily advocate for one being more important than the other, but I do think there are a whole variety of reasons TO use music and also TO NOT use music. Orchestra is pretty clear cut; many of the lines are not soloistic or melodic, for strings, bowings are very important, and many other things... I'm sure there are still moments where players need to memorize measures here and there, like when all eyes need to be on the conductor for a specific moment. But one memory slip from one player would/could cause a massive train-wreck in an ensemble like that. In chamber music, sure it's common to use the score, and mostly again for the same reasons as in orchestra. That said, I've seen some of the premiere quartets play entire programs from memory. So why memorize ever? Even in collaborative situations, there are plenty of times I'll memorize bars or passages or even entire pages of the score. There were moments when I played with the Grammy-winning Phoenix Chorale that I couldn't take the luxury of checking in with the score... the rubato was so great and so controlled by the conductor that I was permanently looking to the side of the music rack for measures on end in one particular piece. Not even a moment to glance down at the hands. When I work with instrumental and vocal soloists, all of their difficult entrances and endings usually require memorization from me if I'm truly checking in with them well enough at those moments to be *perfectly* in sync with their interpretive choice. Extrapolating that to solo music, and especially piano solos, the main reason to memorize would be to enable true artistry and interpretive freedom. For most players, its difficult to impossible to achieve that freedom with a score in front of them. Those that do achieve it are usually combining a pretty decent amount of memorization (at least of the kinesthetic kind) with the score as a reminder only here and there. I stopped performing fully from memory around 10 years ago. I haven't played anything without score, solo or collab, in that time... yet there are still plenty of times in performance where I look down at the hands in full focus on particular passages. For me, I feel I know how to be free, expressive, compelling, and moving in performance with a score in front of me... and in fact removing the score causes so much added anxiety about memory slips that it removes expression from my performance rather than adding to my freedom.

[@giannottister]

@@PianistAcademy1Exactly, that's the point, I agree; it is not proven that playing from memory in classical music is better than doing it with the score. For some it is better, for others it is just a source of unnecessary stress leading to a bad performance. It is entirely subjective. What I can't stand is that you are often forced to play from memory (especially in competitions but also in concerts) by virtue only of why "it has always been done that way" and not for any specific reason. The artistic quality of a performance is independent of whether or not you play from memory.

[@PianistAcademy1]

@@giannottisterYeah the "always been that way" is simply wrong because it's *only* been that way since the mid 19th century. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms... they never would have played from memory. Chopin would have improvised a new version of a piece haha. I think there's a risk that teachers would stop teaching memorization if competitions and auditions didn't require it... and I do think the skill is important and valid. But it's not more important than every thing else. Instead of excluding memorization teaching OR only teaching memorization it would be far better to teach the theory behind composition so that the student has a depth of knowledge that goes far beyond the notes on the page. The great composers didn't need to memorize because they understood this, and the vast majority of pianists today, even A-listers, don't. And I don't mean just roman numeral analysis. I don't know of any composers that write by roman numerals. It's great as a tool to analyze, but it doesn't dive into the true nature of composition.

[@giannottister]

@@PianistAcademy1I agree, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc did not play from memory because it did not make sense. They were extraordinary composers and improvisers and could create universes of music based on more or less defined structures. When the art of improvisation died out in classical music it was replaced by forced memorization. We should go back to the origins.

[@man0sticks]

How does one perform music without music? Or how does one perform music without sheets? To a Brit, the first question seems perplexing. To an American, the second equally perplexing. Sheets connotes bed sheets. And music without music seems like an absurdity. I think everyone should simply refer to sheet music as the score.

[@PianistAcademy1]

Meaning of words is always a source of confusion. Many beginner and intermediate pianists, especially self taught ones, would never have heard the word “score” to refer to music, but sports or perhaps the passing of time, yes. So there’s an inherent problem with really every word choice for someone out there. I was never introduced to the word score until some 8 years into study myself.

[@alvodin6197]

Memorization isn't something you consciously do, just like you don't memorize vocabulary when you learn a languages. It's something that happens by itself through exposure, not some tedious task that you have to use willpower in order to learn.. Also, it's completely unrealistic to be able to sight read some of very advanced classical music. Its more like people have become so obsessed with abstractions and symbols, they forget that the reason you read sheet music, is to able to play without the tedious task of reading it again and again that's why we have NOTATION. Westerners have of course turned reading music into a fetish. You'll see people making videos, turning the pages, pretending like they are sightreading music that we KNOW that they aren't, because people are somehow obsessed by the idea of sightreading. That's how brainwashed people are. No one in classical thinks their own thoughts, all conformists. Also, those people are afraid to to improvise and compose their own music. We all know why