Playing by heart

[iViolin]

Well, I find playing by heart very much more convenient for me. It's like as if my fingers play automatically when a score is printed in my pictorial memory, I guess that's what the "muscle memory" is supposed to do.

It's like when you take for example, the people who can type without seeing the keyboard. They just know where to go next, since they find it more convenient. During the beginning of my musical education, I really got sucked into playing-by-heart to a point where my sight reading got very bad.

I always try to balance between both, but if I personally wanted to improve or maintain a steady play-by-heart skill, then probably the piece would be more like digested in my memory.

But playing by heart is a really fascinating way to enjoy music, when you really aren't in the mood of carrying all your sheets with you, or if you get caught up and be requested to perform all of a sudden. As what is said: "Necessity is the mother of Invention",

[VicDiesel]

Most people can remember the beginning of a piece, but then they get stuck in the middle.

Here's how I memorize music.

I play the last bar. And that's all for today. Tomorrow, I play the last two bars. And I make sure I can play them really well. The day after that, I play the last 3 bars, and again, practice really hard to get them as accurate as possible.

Et cetera. Every day add a bar, two at the most, working your way backwards.

This has big advantages: 1/ you always know the beginning. This way you get to focus on the later parts. 2/ if you start at the beginning, you get stranded somewhere; you go back a couple of measure, you get stranded again. This way, you get to start at the hard parts for at least a whole day!

Works like a charm for me.

Victor.