Memory

Memorizing at the keyboard.  As a young classical pianist I didn’t think too much about it.  I just did it.  And I clearly could do it, in one way or another.  I gave many recitals, even before going to college, and memory was not an issue.

But at the keyboard, memory is a complex issue.  We don’t just have a single capacity to remember.  Instead, we have many abilities which are called on in various proportions.  Different strokes for different folks.

Sentamentalists to the contrary, it all seems to come down to brain chemistry.   There are multiple mechanisms for what we cavalierly call ‘memory’.  What’s your mix?

Imagine yourself as a classical pianist onstage at Carnegie Hall giving a solo recital.  You  walk onstage, bow.  You sit at the keyboard.  What neural mechanisms will allow you to perform?

In my experience, there are at least three distinct types of memory at the keyboard.  There’s visual memory, aural memory, and muscle memory. We all have all three types, but in various proportions.

The pianist with a predominantly visual memory is essentially reading from a photographically-induced imaged of the score.  That pianist is in a permanent sight-reading mode.  It’s not a bad spot to be in.  When things get spotty, just slow down.  You can always read more carefully. You can sight-read it at a slower tempo. Squint a little, squirm a little.

For a pianist with dominant muscle memory the situation is just the opposite.  The connection between one muscle memory movement and the next is tenuous.  Slowed down, those connections disintegrate into chaos.  Instead, we speed up in an effort to minimize those intolerable spaces in time between muscle movements.  Keep them connected at all costs.  Sometimes, that gets us through. But other times, it’s a rushing disaster.  Well learned passages go out the window in an effort to just get to the next phrase before it all falls apart.

And then there’s an aural memory.  We remember exactly what it sounds like.  And if our musical training has been exacting enough (solfege, dictation, score reading, etc.), we know what to do at the keyboard to create the sound in our mind.

So our musical memory is multifaceted.  Like other areas of our lives, we tend to rely on our strengths, and neglect our weaknesses.  At our own peril.  There’s nothing that will increase empathy more for our fellow man than attention to our own weaknesses.

Nothing.

How do we promote that?