Memorizing Music

Not a single one of my teachers ever bothered to force, admonish or even suggest that I memorize my music.  Surely I would be a better musician today had they inculcated that discipline into me at an early age.  I am not the apotheosis of technical perfection even now but I do believe that the aggregate of my life experiences have made me aware of some elusive elemental thing on how to memorize music and be a better musician.  It is really quite simple and totally up to you to discern the ingredients of the glorious melange I will offer up.  At worse, you may not learn anything or you may not even bother to take the time to grow and apply what I have to share; At the most, it will be clear from a glance that you will be entering a new realm of magnificent and challenge with an astonishing new range of awareness for your music.

First, let's start by discussing a few of the benefits to memorizing music, the greatest being that it will reduce nervousness.  If you know what you are doing, there is significantly less chance for performance errors.  Any of us can tell the story of the three bears with little hesitation because we know the story so well.  Even if we never told it before, we could improvise the story and touch upon all the key points.  We could even loop back around if we miss an important fact.  Music is the same.  If we were to deliver a speech in front of a crowd of people and we didn't know very much about our topic, we may stumble and stutter a lot, but, if it is a topic we are passionate about and have familiarized ourselves with, chances are we will be successful at getting our point across.  No matter how good our technique is, if we don't intimately know the score we are weaving to the listening ear, our tone will belie the the perception that we know what we are doing because it is easy to hear nervousness in someones tone or their lack of articulation.

When our notes are committed to memory, it frees us to be aware of the dynamics of the room or the listeners.  I have often found myself playing out a transparent charade of pretending I was taking no notice of the room because I was feigning to be absorbed in the music.  In truth, I was running on motor memory and had no idea what I was doing and I was hoping not to hit any bumps in the road.

If you are playing a hymn for a church service where a congregation is singing, you are more in tune with what they are doing and how what you are doing affects them if you know the hymn well.  You are more apt to be creative with registration, dynamics, embellishment, re-harmonization, controlling the tempo, breathing and controlling the ritard of the congregation.  We know when this happens, likewise, we know when it doesn't.  As an organist I am better able to execute registration changes on the fly and with confidence when I know my score from memory.

Being unencumbered by the page frees you in technical ways, too.  It frees the eyes to watch the hands so you can better execute fast passages, leaps or grabbing stops.  When you are arriving upon a fiesta of notes or a  patently impassible passage and you are besieged with nerves, a staccato of thoughts or worse - total thoughtlessness, you may be sitting there consciously hoping not to interrupt the luck of rote memory.  Having a score properly memorized will eliminate most of those barriers.

There are many different methods of memorization which people employ.  None are better than others and some of us are better at one method more than another but, combined, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.  Here are mine:

1) Repetition, automatic pilot, rote, muscle memory.  I consider this method a shortcut to disaster, an unrivaled opportunity for making a fool of self.  Consider tying your shoe; You don't have to think about under, over, through; you just do it and can even carry on a conversation at the same time.  Any time you have played a piece over a hundred times to the point where you can just play it from "memory" is convenient.  You may think you know the piece but when you get nervous or if you slip up, it is often impossible to recover especially if it sends a nascent wave of panic through our thought process, dooming the rest of the performance.  Too many things can distract our minds which will mess up what the muscle memory of the hands are doing.  It can even be a simple miss-fingering of a passage.  Most often it is our own mind getting in the way and we will be judged by a brace of listeners that our musicianship is lacking or called into question when all along it was muscle memory derailed enough to open the door to increasing thought.

2)  Memorizing away from the keyboard.  This is the first thing I do with all scores, new and old.  First I analyze the structural features of the music, taking note of modulations and chord progressions.  I focus on difficult passages and landmarks of the piece. I try to hear it in my mind's ear before I play it with my hands.

3)  Having a good ear.  Not simply playing by ear, but knowing  intervals.  Knowing what a fifth sounds like and its relation to other pitches, knowing how common arpeggios sound - intimately.  Having a few years of solfege study can help tremendously.  I know that "Blue Moon" starts on the 5th and my ear tells me the next pitch is a 3rd.  Back up to the 5th, a drop down to the 4th, then 5 6 5 5 4 5, etcetera.  In classical music, say you are studying a fugue and memorizing it away from the keyboard, you know that the theme may start on a third, then when the second voice comes in, it starts a fifth higher in a new key on the third, then the third voice comes in a fourth above that on the third. You don't necessarily have to memorize every single note, but if your ear hears it and your solfege skills can tell you what the pitch is, you will know where to go or be able to pick up the piece at any point in the score.

4) Understanding chord progressions and sequences of chords.  We all know the most common progression in standard repertoire is the I vi ii V.  There are thousands of songs which have that progression (such as Blue Moon or Heart and Soul). In most music, ii usually leads to a V7 and V7 usually leads to a I.  In classical music it is much the same but  sometimes the ii V sequence ascends or descends in whole steps or maybe a V7 may not even head home to a I.  Maybe we will land on a I but the composer, Bach for instance, will turn that I into a V7 or a i, starting an episode in a whole new key.  Paying attention to the landmarks as I mentioned before is important here.  Some composers will throw in a diminished chord out of nowhere while other times the composer will add a few bars of modulation to set up the next sequence.  It is important to know where these surprises and deviations are and what they follow.  The same thing with difficult passages.  If you don't know where you are coming from, you could miss where you are going.  There was a leap in a Chopin piece which I consistently missed.  The reason was because I was so concerned about hitting that leap, I threw away the scale and arpeggio which lead up to it.  By the time I reached for the leap, I had no momentum or control of the notes nor even my hand.  Consider a high diver.  The most important part of his dive is the set up.  He finds the proper position on the board and he executes a few jumps in place to gain both momentum and to establish his balance so that he has power and alignment, then he makes his leap.

5) Part of number 2 and 3 is to memorize the intervals and how the melody is built over the chords.  You don't have to memorize the entire piece note for note.  Having a good grasp up upper and lower neighbors, passing tones, scales, patterns and arpeggios will allow your ear to be able to hear what is going on and translate your vision to the notes on the keyboard or a page in your mind's eye. It is truly liberating when you can envision the sheet music and read from it in your head.  This is not the same as having a photographic memory.  It is a combination of ear, sight, motor, analysis and knowledge;  all coming together.

Even by utilizing all the aforementioned techniques, a performer may still experience memory slips but they will be better equipped to handle the situation and recover.   I was playing a Bach Toccata once where every two bars the music repeated the same phrase but in a new key because the one chord  either became a V7 or a ii or i.  I got lost and subsequently trapped in sequence after sequence of wandering aimlessly with the same pattern.  Luckily I knew what the beginning notes of each section was and when I got back to a one chord I picked up the theme and continued.  Most of the people in the audience didn't know that I was jumping all over the score but a few organists commented that they knew that that was not how the piece was written.  To my credit, they didn't know what was wrong because I was seamless in my wandering around the keyboard.  Everything sounded like it was woven together and what I intended.

Additionally, once I have a good grasp of a piece, I may fool around with it.  I will play certain sequences in different keys, throw in arpeggios and scales, re-harmonize it, jazz it up, throw in some blues; In other words, make it mine.   After that, I will make a lead sheet version of the music.   I can reduce five or six pages of music down to a single sheet.  I will then learn the piece bar by bar and use the original score for reference only.  I learned Widor's Fifth Toccata off of a lead sheet.  The chord progression is very simple and predictable and the pedal line is easy to remember.  I simply wrote in the first note of every beat and the accompanying chords.  Since the right hand arpeggios are based upon the chord, I didn't need to write them out.  Attached is an example of what I wrote up.

The other beautiful aspect of employing all these methods of memorization is that the piece can become your own and you may be less apt to play it the same way twice.  You can recover from flubs, play with more expression or musicality and probably most important of all, not sound like everyone else.  After all, how excited do we get when we hear somebody do something different to a piece that we've heard exactly the same a hundred times before.

Storytelling

My mother, of Cherokee descent, was a great storyteller.  Although she didn't employ the use of character voices, she instinctively knew when to go into head voice, chest voice or rumble from the diaphragm. She was an artist at knowing when to pause, rush, or look left then right.  Storytelling is becoming a lost art form.  Today, the purpose of a campfire is for making smores or burning stuff up so we don't have to carry it out.  We don't gather around it to tell tall tales, to remember our history, our culture or heritage.  Most of us don't even realize that many of our greatest bible stories were passed down from generation to generation beside the warmth of a campfire.  Here is a "true" Adirondack story my mother told me which I turned into a poem. 

Tall Tale of a Shelter Seeker

With setting sun, the shadows claim
and black bats dart and tumble
the mountain campers seek the flame
lest specters claim the humble

With reckless breath the zephyr flings
the frisky spark up with the smoke
‘neath leafy arch, near flames that wink
legends are often spoke....

A wandering scout, off course was blown
as the lengthening shadows grew
he wandered round in woods unknown
aware that night ensued

A tempest crashed out her mighty chords
the scout, determined, remained staid
with the faithful compass trail, bereft
he sought for sheltering, vaulted cave

Wandering in the wildest most
impenetrable forest
where axe or saw had never rung
in tune with nature’s chorus

A crag sprung forth above a lair
whose shadowy claim held shelter
he lit a torch to enter there
to leave the untamed welter

He saw a gun against the wall
beneath some writing there
with illumined torch he read the scrawl
“Today I shot my very first bea...”

-Malcolm Kogut.

Contrast Bath

For sufferers of sprained ankles, forearm or wrist tendonitis, I suggest trying to ameliorate your symptoms with a contrast bath.  If you don't have a double sink in your kitchen, you can use buckets.

Fill one side of your kitchen sink with HOT water.  Make it as hot as you can tolerate because it will cool down fast.  Usually the temperature out of the hot tap is fine depending on the temperature settings you have on your hot water boiler.  Then fill the other side with ice cold water.  Dumping a bowl of ice cubes in the cold side will work nicely. 

Soak your arms for one minute in one side, then plunge your arms into the other side for one minute.  Do this going back and forth about seven times in each basin.  Initially the hot or cold may seem unbearable but you will get used to it quickly. 

The hot water will promote circulation in your arms and the cold will reduce inflammation.   This is not a cure but may help in the recovery process or at least alleviate some of the discomfort you may have. 

Circulation is important for healing because the increased blood flow helps to rebuild damaged tissue and will also carry away toxins and damaged cells.

Remember, inflammation is nature's cast.  It is your body's way of warning you not to use the injured body part until it can heal.   Eliminating the discomfort doesn't resolve the problem.  Don't fix symptoms.

I also suggest that you consider washing dishes by hand rather than using a dish washer.  The warm soapy water is beneficial and can be a relaxing therapy session for sore hands.

Plotterkill Creek, Rotterdam, NY

Feral Cats

Make a turn down my road any sunny day and you may see several cats lying on the warm surface of the asphalt, soaking up the sun.  I counted up to 15 different cats around my house last summer.  Half of them were feral and the other half were cats which were let out by their owners to roam the neighborhood with impunity. 

Domestic cats should not be let outdoors for a variety of reasons.  A friend of mine had a cat which was never allowed outdoors and lived to be 23 years old.  Cats who are allowed to roam the outdoors can contract diseases, parasites, fleas and ticks making their life miserable.  They can get in fights with other cats over territory resulting in injury, disease, pain or even death.  They can and do get hit by cars.  They kill garden plants, flowers and grass as they urinate and defecate in prepared soil.  They hunt and kill indigenous wildlife such as chipmunks, squirrels and birds.  I stopped putting bird seed in my feeder because I was attracting cats and was regularly finding dead birds beneath my deck.  One day I noticed that my 15 foot tall Rose of Sharon was vibrating intermittently.  I walked up to it to inspect the source of the agitation and there was a cat struggling to climb toward a bird's nest way up in the tenderest of branches.  Of course, the number one reason not to let a cat outdoors is that they procreate.  Hence, fifteen cats.

I can report that I no longer have 15 cats roaming my neighborhood.  One local fluffy was hit by a car and another contracted feline AIDS.   Another reason for the wipe out is the increased fox and hawk population (see the attached video I took looking out my back door).  It should also be noted that many predators love cat-meat. 

There was also a drought this past summer.  When people let their cats outside and don't provide a drinking bowl for them, the cat will seek water where they can find it.  In the case of two of my neighbors, their pools. 

One neighbor found a cat drowned in her pool but she wasn't very lucky a few weeks later when she found the second one.  The second cat clawed the lining in an attempt to get out, but failed.  My neighbor had to purchase a new and expensive lining for the pool.  That cat was her own so she couldn't sue anyone for the damages.  Another neighbor found two dead cats in his pool within two days.  One of them managed to climb upon a round blowup life preserver but must have popped it with its claws and due to exhaustion eventually sank to its doom expending all nine lives in one evening. 

There is an apartment complex near me and I know that the owner was getting complaints of rats and mice around his dumpster.  His solution was to put out rat poison.  I am not entirely sure what would happen to a cat who consumed a poisoned mouse but, I bet it can't be good.

I was very saddened when I came home one day in June to find a flyer on my door with the picture of a beautiful kitty named "Einstein."  He has been missing for a few weeks and the neighbor, two blocks up, wrote "He is very much missed!!!!!  Please call." 

Any veterinarian will tell you that an indoor car will live much longer and healthier than an outdoor cat.  I wonder why.  I bet that Einstein knows the fate which befalls frisky, footloose and unfettered fancy free feline. 

Stone and the GED

Stone was another convicted felon I tutored for the procurement of the elusive GED.  He actually graduated from high school but illegally managed to change his name and identity so he consequently had no record of receiving his diploma.  He was of high rank within a formidable gang and for whatever reason, wanted his GED.  Most likely it would simply serve as another form of identification which he could use down the road with one of his many identities.  He was also a very funny guy with a big heart and I loved spending time with him and hearing his stories.   His body was riddled with tattoos, most likely to obfuscate the important ones which delineated rank and meaning within the gang culture.  Despite having endured horrors as a child, his current estate was happy, fun loving and very respectful.

Stone told me about how he was in collusion with a jewelry store owner and Stone was to rob the owner's store.  Stone would get the goods, the store owner would get the insurance money, then five years later, Stone would sell the jewelry back to the owner at a discount and the shop owner would resell the merchandise under the table.  Stone of course would get a commission.  The plan went off without a hitch except Stone was arrested on some unrelated and fake charge because the police knew they didn't have any evidence regarding the jewelry store robbery but, they wanted him off the street at any cost, even if they had to arrest him on a fake charge with phony evidence planted on him.  He was sentenced to prison for ten years.  He chuckled and said that nobody believed him when he professed to be innocent. 

After two years, he was granted parole but he suspected that it was because the police were hoping that he would lead them to the stolen merchandise. Stone said that he could patiently wait out the eight years of parole or have someone else retrieve the booty from its hiding spot.  He then jokingly asked me if I wanted to make twenty thousand.  I held my fingers up in a cross formation and said “Get behind me, Satan.”  Despite having millions of dollars at his disposal, he patiently took advantage of all the social services, shelters, welfare stamps and food pantries he could in order to keep up the appearance that he had no money. 

A somewhat humorous story that Stone told me was about another big heist they made.  Their getaway van had the shocks removed so that the vehicle would ride low to the ground.  They also took out a small section of the floor.  They were being chased by the police when they stopped the van in the middle of the road.  The police surrounded the van and barked instructions through a bullhorn to give up and step out of the vehicle.  Little did the police know, the van was parked over a manhole and Stone's gang removed the cover from inside the van and escaped through the sewers.  A few years later some mob type movie used the exact same scenario for the antagonist's escape plot.  Taking full credit, Stone was ecstatic that his idea made it into a movie.  He bought out a movie theater and invited all his friends to attend a showing.  At the aforementioned escape scene, the theater erupted into thunderous applause.  The few people who were actual patrons to the showing were probably very confused. 

Stone aced the GED on his first try. 

I Wonder As I Wander