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Practice, learning and memory, part III
And a few more practice strategies to ensure effective learning and memory: 5) Practice extremely slowly. There has been a controversy for some time about whether slow practice is beneficial for learning fast music. Many of us were told early in our musical lives that in order to play a passage of music that is very fast,…
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Practice, learning and memory, part II
Almost everyone who plays the piano has, at some point in his/her study, learned Chopin’s Prelude in A Major, Op. 28. Only 16 bars and lasting a bit less to a bit more than a minute (depending on the performer), the Prelude is deceptively simple. A few repetitions and it feels as though we have it…
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Practice, learning and memory, part I
None of my teachers ever spoke with me about how to practice. They didn’t suggest strategies or give me tips. I guess they assumed, since I memorized so easily, that I didn’t need any help. I had what’s called a “good ear,” and I could hear the piece in my mind. By the time I had…
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From sight-reading to memorized performance
If you have performed from memory, you no doubt have had the experience of an audience member coming up after a concert and saying in amazement “How did you learn so many notes?” In the last few posts about memory, we’ve talked about learning and memory as two sides of the same coin, about the many…
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Memory and falling dominoes
The Starry Night is regarded as one of Vincent Van Gogh’s best works and is probably one of the most well-known images in art, having been appropriated for everything from mugs to mouse pads to desktop wallpaper. I recently happened upon a very unusual version of Starry Night – a video of the iconic image created by falling dominoes. As I…
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The many kinds of memory in music
In music we often talk about auditory, visual, and motor memory. But outside of the music world, we encounter a dizzying array of memory terms. We read about short-term vs. long-term, explicit vs. implicit, declarative vs. procedural, semantic vs. episodic – and more. So what do all of these terms mean in relationship to memory…