Lois Svard

Tag: encoding

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Dance, sing, draw

    A few years ago one of my students, who usually played with a great deal of musicality, found herself struggling with a Chopin Mazurka that just didn’t seem to “click.”  All of the notes and rhythms were there, but it sounded stodgy – not at all like a dance.  One day, I suggested that we…

  • Patterns in the Brain

    This wonderful image is not your brain on music.  It’s from Stephen Malinowski’s animated graphical score of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps:  Part I and Part II.  A few months ago, at the time I was thinking about starting this blog, a lot of media attention was being directed to the 100th anniversary of…