Performing from memory can be a pretty liberating experience… But it can be an awfully stressful and anxiety-inducing experience too! Especially if you’ve had a memory slip – or even a near-memory slip – in the past.
So you may have wondered how some folks seem to be able to memorize so much music so easily and effectively.
Well, for what it’s worth, it’s probably not as efforless as it might appear from the outside.
For instance, as a kid, I never thought about memorizing music. It just kind of happened on its own.
Of course, I later began to discover (and usually at the worst possible times), that my memory wasn’t nearly as reliable as I thought!
Eventually, I started being more intentional about memorizing much earlier in the learning process. But it was never very clear to me when the optimal time for starting the memorization process might be.
Like, was a month out from the performance enough? Or should it begin once the notes are learned? Or once we can play things up to tempo? Or maybe much sooner, even before we learn the notes…?
What does the research say about this? At what point during the learning process should we start memorizing a piece?
Have we misunderstood tests?
Before we explore that question, let’s take a step back to take a quick look at the literature on testing.
Because our tendency is to think of tests as an assessment tool. A necessary evil that we all have to endure, so teachers can see if we’ve learned anything. Kind of like going to the dentist to see if you’ve been brushing and flossing regularly (btw, does it really matter if we floss?).
So naturally, we have a tendency to avoid anything that feels like a test.
But what if we’re wrong about tests? What if they actually serve a different role than we think?
A pair of Washington University researchers wanted to explore tests from a different perspective. They were interested in finding out if tests could actually help enhance learning, rather than just assess it.
Three study groups
So in a 2006 study (Roediger & Karpicke), researchers recruited 180 undergraduate students to read and study a short passage from the reading comprehension section of a test-prep book.
Everyone was randomly assigned to one of three study groups.
The study-study-study-study (SSSS) group received four 5-minute study periods to study the passage.
The study-study-study-test (SSST) group received three study periods, and then took a practice test where they had 10 minutes to recall as much of the passage as they could.
And the study-test-test-test (STTT) group received one study period, followed by three practice tests.
And then everyone took a final test to see how much learning took place. But there was an important twist!
Immediate vs. delayed recall
Half of the participants took the final test shortly after completing their last study session or practice test.
The other half of the participants didn’t take the final test right away. They were asked to come back to the lab a full week later for their test, to see how much of the material actually stuck.
And which group did the best?
Immediate recall
Well, when tested right after studying, the SSSS group did the best, recalling 83% of the passage.
The SSST group did second-best, recalling 78%.
And the STTT group did the worst, with a recall score of 71%.
So at first glance, studying more seems to lead to better recall than taking a bunch of practice tests. But the problem of course is that how much you can remember right after studying is not as important as how much you can remember days or weeks later, right?
Delayed recall
Indeed, when tested 7 days later, the participants’ performance totally flipped.
This time, the STTT group did best, recalling 61% of the passage, while the SSST group recalled 56%, and the SSSS group only recalled 40%.
So how could we apply the “test-enhanced learning” phenomenon to learning (and memorizing) music?
13 singers
British researcher Jane Ginsborg (2002) recruited 13 classically trained singers1.
They were asked to memorize a 90-second song within 2 weeks, and allowed six 15-minute practice sessions (no more than one per day) to do so.
Each singer recorded their practice sessions, which were then analyzed to see which approaches led to the fastest and most secure memory.
There were several factors that separated the “fast, accurate” memorizers from the “slow, inaccurate” memorizers, but one of the main ones was…wait for it…testing! 😁
How so?
The early bird…
Essentially, the best memorizers began testing their memory much sooner, by trying to sing at least a few bars of the song from memory in their very first practice session. And this self-testing ramped up even more in their second practice session.
The worst memorizers sang almost nothing from memory in the first practice session, and didn’t really begin testing their memory until their third practice session.
The fast memorizers did make many more memory errors in their early practice sessions, but they fixed them, and made fewer and fewer errors toward the latter practice sessions.
The slow memorizers avoided errors early on by singing from the score, but they experienced more and more memory issues as they began testing themselves in the latter practice sessions. And ultimately, they ended up making a ton of errors in their final session as they tried to cram the piece into memory at the last minute.
So what’s the big takeaway?
Takeaways
Testing your memory is uncomfortable – especially early on, when the details are unclear or all jumbled up in your head. And you certainly don’t want to learn the wrong notes or miss important articulation or phrase markings either. So it’s easy to rationalize putting this kind of memory testing off until you feel like you’ve got the piece in your muscles and know the piece well.
But studies like the ones we looked at today suggest that self-quizzing is a key part of the memorization process. And if you don’t have a lot of time to prepare, it’s probably extra important to start testing yourself much sooner in the process than you might otherwise. As Ginsborg explains in her paper, “recall requires practice and…experts began practicing recall earlier.”
After all, at the end of the day, it’s way better to suffer through that lost feeling in the practice room than on stage!
And honestly, if we’re memorizing music the right way, it actually makes practicing much more interesting. Even fun.
Heh? How’s that now?
Memorizing can be…fun?
For much of my life, I thought memorizing meant playing a piece over and over until it stuck. If you’ve put yourself through this brute force method, you know that it’s not a lot of fun. And for me, it also made the music feel increasingly stale, such that I was completely done with the piece and couldn’t wait to move on to something new by the time it was time to perform it.
Of course, the process of memorizing music more deeply and intentionally, by coming up with meaningful performance cues for instance, or creating a “memory palace” to organize these cues can make the experience quite a creative and engaging process. One that not only makes practicing more interesting, but can help you be more deeply immersed in the music and perform more expressively when that time comes as well!
If you’d like to try a more active approach to memorization and take a piece of music through the three phases of effective memorization – encoding, consolidation, and retrieval – with step-by-step strategies from the research literature on memorization and real examples from learners, educators, and professionals, now might be the perfect time, as the official public release of the Bulletproof Memory course is now available.
If you’ve always wanted to perform more confidently from memory, and even enjoy the process of memorizing music, I think you’ll really like the course! You can sign up here:
References
Ginsborg, J. (2002b). Classical Singers Learning and Memorising a New Song: An observational study. Psychology of Music, 30(1), 58–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735602301007
Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-Enhanced learning. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
I have found that testing memory and having an error that must be repaired will solidify the repaired portion of the piece and make the memory solid. Since we prefer to be accurate, once an inaccuracy is corrected it is ingrained in our memory. Also, Teaching with Accoustical Guidance (TAG) teaching will enhance learning and make trouble spots accurate faster.
So many emotions and anxieties revolve around taking tests. Could part of the effect be that, if one takes many tests instead of one on a given amount of material, one becomes more accustomed to the test-taking process, reduces anxiety, and thus generally performs better on that material? There are both cognitive and emotional factors at work, no?
This is a great article, but what is missing is a sensitivity to the study methods the participants used- how did they approach actually learning and digesting the music? A musicianship teacher I once had who herself was a student of Nadia Boulangier. She said Boulangier required her students to memorize their music _before_ they tried to practice it, and to do so _photographically_. Though it sounds insane, it’s a brilliant approach, even for people who don’t have photographic memories (I certainly don’t!). The concept: STUDY the music exhaustively a few bars at a time, perhaps 4-8 bars (study the harmony, counterpoint, expression, etc); then SOLFGE (or whatever system you want to use) the music from memory; then WRITE the music from memory exactly the way it was printed. After you do this, you’re more than ready to play it. Generally, it’s VERY accurate, and while the time spent studying is substantial, it’s not any more lengthy and certainly far more accurate than ‘taking a stab’ at it. I recommend this approach- is there any research that studies methods like this?
Not so insane! Though I’m really a pianist, I studied/played viola through college. (I was not especially accomplished, but I enjoyed it immensely.) My viola teacher, a student of famed violin pedagogue Kato Havas, made me memorize all of my music BEFORE I picked up the viola. We memorized with solfège (fixed do), and after I could sing the piece fluently from memory with solfège, she had me mime fingerings and bowings. Many of my lessons consisted of me singing and miming away and never once picking up the instrument! Crazy, huh? But when I finally did pick up the viola, I could actually play the piece rather well. And I remember that music to this day, though I haven’t picked up a viola in more than 30 years. I don’t go through this process systematically as a pianist—I can’t imagine the time it would take for the massive things we play!—but my memory suffers for it.
This works fine for me: I start slow and, as I repeat one phrase or chunk, try myself SLOW. Sometimes I try playing one time looking at the score and other by memory, to see what am I missing. So, I memorize the chunk I need while speeding up.
This is quite meaningless from my point of view. Memorization is not knowledge, it’s a common shortcut for pretending to have knowledge. And tests designed to test memorization are per definition poorly designed. There is simply no point in spending time to fool your own brain. For me memories are a by-product of knowledge, not a means to an end.
Just curious, are you talking about memorizing music? It sounds like you’re talking about memorization in other areas than music. At what point is it best to start practicing a piece without the score? That’s not like memorizing dates for a history test, is it?
I do agree with what you say, but the point of the article was to find out whether or not forcing yourself to turn away from the score while still learning notes and details reinforces this process overall. From my experience, this is a very powerful principle if you figure out when and how to use it. You basically want to trigger your brain as much as possible.
I’m fascinated by what memorizing music reveals about how my brain encodes data. Initially, the memory is a triggered sequence. A triggers B, B triggers C. So without A, the brain cannot access B, etc.
It’s not that I’ve ‘forgotten’ B. The memory only exists as a triggered response to A. Sometimes I can’t recall a left hand part separately, only hands together. So I play it together to ‘refresh’ my memory, and yet I still can’t ‘remember’ the left hand part – it’s been encoded in the brain as a data packet (both hands) and the left hand data, so to speak, can’t be accessed separately — it’s just not there! The problem is that, if anything interrupts the sequence (the long line), like a mistake or loss of concentration, then I’m totally blank. I have to jump to the next ‘data packet’. Just learning the long lines by themselves creates a fragile illusion of knowing a piece in practice, that falls apart playing in front of people.
So for me, memorization means both learning the long line (the code widget, if you will), but also encoding all the inner fragments of the long line as supplementary memories. I play from the long line memory, for flow and spontaneity. But if I ever lose the sequence, I just access the backup file. That’s when I feel confident that I know a piece inside out. So I do feel it’s best to get stated on that process ASAP.
It also cures my stage anxiety to know that those backup files are stored. I discovered that I wasn’t afraid of playing badly (I already know I’m going to play badly, compared to a good pianist). What I was really afraid of was drawing a blank in front of people.
I use the digital analogies deliberately. I was surprised to discover the counter-intuitive similarities between how my memory actually works and how a computer stores and accesses data.
I really appreciate your work, your writing, and the regular posts. I was wondering if you have conducted a study or written an article about the use of journaling in practicing.
Lyn Helding, in her book “The Musician’s Mind”, includes a journal suggestion that grew out of teaching voice during the pandemic. I was wondering if you had discovered or created something similar for practicing an instrument other than voice.
Hi Kathleen – I haven’t looked into the research on journaling in this sense, but I do often encourage students to experiment with writing down problems/solutions when practicing. So not a journal per se, but forcing themselves to verbally articulate what it is they’re trying to problem-solve, so that it’s clear to them what they’re striving for, and how they’re doing relative to that goal. Though perhaps this is ultimately very similar to what one would write in a practice journal, so maybe it’s essentially the same thing?
I think its pretty basic… learning sticks best when accompanied by an emotion. Often that’s the joy of first hearing or accomplishing something, but the stress or fear that any sort if testing engenders is nonetheless an emotion and that’s the glue that helps it stick.
Speaking as a jazz musician, when learning a complex transcribed solo (pretty common), I’ve found that jazzers are more prone than perhaps classical musicians to pull out the old theory and analyze the functional movement of the piece, and I apply this to classical pieces as well. Understanding that that arpeggio is not only a ‘Dm’ but also likely to be a ii with G coming soon really makes pieces easier to memorize.
Its easy to get lost just looking at the trees, but your theory lets you zoom out and see the paths.
I highly recommend the book “Make It Stick”. It’s all about memorizing and I’ve heard some of the concepts discussed here before.
Noa, since musicians also play music that we don’t memorize (orchestral, chamber music), how do we test our recall of music we practiced when we don’t have to look away from the sheet music? Does this process involve similar encoding-storage-retrieval processes? Will we have to practice differently in this case since we are not having to recall the music in the same way?
Hi Nile – if we are learning music that doesn’t have to be memorized (i.e. orchestral and chamber music as you mention), it might not really be all that necessary to test your recall of the music. I mean, if you’re always going to have the music in front of you, you’re not going to have to worry about recall, as you can refer to it as needed. And the time you would otherwise devote to memorizing the music might be better spent on other things (working on other music, other aspects of your playing, etc.). Of course, there are many aspects of the “memorization” process that are still worth engaging in of course, even if it’s music that doesn’t have to be memorized, as these elements are just part of getting to know the music better (analysis of some kind, making choices about mood/character, etc.).