The Real Reason to Memorize Your Music - PHH 228

Now, I know you've had that same experience when you're playing some music in front of you and you kind of go on autopilot, right? Same idea. The information's going in, but it doesn't really connect with our brain. And this is where the process of memorization is so helpful. It connects with our brain. It connects with a thing. It's not just, you know, data in, data out. It's actually something that we begin to know and understand. So it forces us to think about what we're playing and not just play it. Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started. First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success, whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us. Just go to harpmastery.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. Here's today's question. Do you have to memorize your music? Well, of course not. How's that for an easy answer? Okay, podcast is over. We can call it a day. But of course, the answer isn't that simple. Now. No, you don't have to memorize your music. But the fact that you're asking the question tells me that you're almost certainly thinking about memorization the wrong way, or at least very differently from how I have learned to think of it. What I want to help you understand today is the role that memorization can play in your musical growth. How it can make you a better musician, how it can help you learn music faster. Not necessarily because you are memorizing, but because the act of memorizing brings your focus to the music in a different way. But not if you're trying to memorize the way you may have when you were young. The kind of effortless assimilation that came so easily to me when I was younger, and perhaps to you, too, doesn't happen with my aging brain. I still memorize, but I use a process that is more conscious, less automatic. And I can tell you that the conscious process is easier, more secure, and more interesting. But when I memorize this way, I know I know my music, and that's practically confidence in a bottle. What I'm going to help you understand today is the true value of memorization, whether or not you ever play without your music, and how you can develop your powers of memorization, even if you can't remember where you left your glasses. Memorization isn't about remembering. It's about learning and knowing, done purposefully. And it's not as hard or as scary as you may think. If you're already a confident memorizer, then that idea won't be new to you. But keep listening, because there will be a few important ideas and strategies in this episode that will help you, too. Memorization is a big topic, and of course I won't be able to cover everything I want to cover about memorization here with you on the podcast today. So I want to recommend a couple of resources in case you want to follow up and do a little bit more work with this. First, there are a couple of other podcast episodes that I have done that talk about memorization, and one of them in particular might be really helpful to you. So I have put the link to that episode in the show, the show notes for this episode, and of course you can always go to the podcast page on the website and you can go to the podcast and search through it and search for memorization and you'll come up with those resources. But the one I'm thinking about in particular is episode 158, which is called Memorization how to Make It Stick. And you will likely find some really helpful tips in there that will help you a little bit beyond this discussion here today. So that's thing one. Now, if you're a My Harp Mastery member, our October theme, which is coming up in just a couple short weeks, will be on memorization and we'll be going through four weeks worth of different ways to look at memorizing, the whys, the hows, the why nots, all those kinds of things. We will look at all of that through the month of October in My Heart Mastery. If you are not a My Heart Mastery member and memorization is a topic for you, this might be the perfect moment to join the membership. Just go to our harpmastery.com page, look under our programs and take a look at My Harp Mastery. There is a lot there and I've just posted a brand new video that will help you see what's in the website and see everything that is there for you. It's a monthly subscription and our members find that it is totally worth it and I hope you will too. And as I said, if memorization is something you want to learn more about, this is the month that you join. Get in there now. All right then there's a third thing that may be of help to you. Remember, if you have specific questions that you would like me to answer, well, of course you can always send me an email right here at the podcast and I'll see what I can do about incorporating that into a future episode. But you can actually ask me. There is an Ask Anne anything. There's an amazing answer bot that is part of the My Heart Mastery membership. It's included there, but it's a separate course that you can purchase right in our app. It's and for $2.99. I mean it's kind of a bargain. You can access what is essentially an online library of everything I have ever spoken or written about and you can just ask me a question. Type it in and the an Intelligence as I like to call this AI tool. This tool searches through all my writings and my podcasts, my blogs, my books, everything that I have uploaded and comes up with what I would probably tell you the answer would be if I were speaking to you in person. This answer bot is pretty cool because it's not searching the whole world Wide web, so you don't have to worry about those answers coming from unreliable sources. It's just my teachings. It's everything I have fed into it. It's my knowledge, it's my success, it's what I teach my students and it's right there for you. You can type in your question, you can spe question and have me speak it the answer back to you. You can even use the video version, although that's a little wonky at the moment. I still need to update that. But that's another tool and if you have more questions, specific questions about memorization, you might want to give that a try. As I mentioned, that answer bot's included in my Heart Mastery membership. So if you are my Heart Mastery member, that's already there for you. And you can go ahead and use that anytime you want. So there are a few tools for you to continue your exploration of memorization, but I have something new I want to tell you about right now. You may be familiar with the intensive courses that I have done in the past. They're real quick study, one week sort of courses and I've done them on confidence and on freedom and on theory and on chords, all sorts of things. And this time I'm doing a one week quick study course on arpeggios. How to play your arpeggios with ease. Now that's a capital E, capital A, capital S, capital E. Because I've got a four step framework that is going to help you learn how to play arpeggios more easily, to learn them faster, to be able to play them with more speed, with more fluency, with more, yes, confidence, all those things. And this arpeggios course is coming up in in the middle of October. So it will start on Monday, October 20th, and we'll be working through arpeggios for four days that week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. We have a page that tells you all about the course and I have linked to that in today's show notes. So you'll be able to access that and sign up for that course. Now this is a paid course. It's $47 for all the four days of training. And you'll see, I think you'll see that's really a bar. But if you were one of the people who took our Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza challenge some years ago, you'll find that those two courses go very, very well together. So if you already took that Waltz of the Flowers Cadenza Challenge, then I am offering this course to you for just $20. So that's a really good bargain. So if you already took that course, we will be getting in touch with you and giving you a special way to access that course. If you have never taken the Walls of the Flowers Cadenza Challenge, that's fine, because this arpeggios course touches on that just a little bit. But really it's just about arpeggios, and we'll be working on how arpeggios show up in a lot of different pieces, probably some of the pieces that you want to play. So we'll be working on a much broader scale in this course. And. And as I said, we'll be teaching you how to play your arpeggios with ease. E A S E, My personal framework. And I think you're going to enjoy it. I'm looking forward to working with you in this intensive. So you can head on over to the page. We've got the link on the Show Notes. You'll find. You'll find it on the homepage of heartmaster.com as well. And you'll want to get in and register for that because we get started soon. Although we won't be talking about this specifically, I wouldn't be at all surprised if during that course, somewhere or other, you find a benefit in memorization and you find a new way to do it. There could be a little bit of a tie in there, and you might find that that's a good place to sort of test out the kind of stuff we're talking about today. Because what I want to impress upon you right from the outset is that the debate about memorization shouldn't exist. At least it shouldn't exist the way I think a lot of harpists think about it. Now, there are some conventions about memorization. For instance, in a formal recital, it is assumed that pianists and violinists will play without music. That's just assumed. I have seen virtuosos on both instruments use music while they play. So even that is not ironclad. It is also a convention with wind players, like flutists, that they don't have to play from memory, that no matter what kind of a concert stage they're playing on, if they want to use music, that's perfectly acceptable. I have no idea why that difference exists, but it's there. And so it's sort of typical. Harpists have Been in the memorized category so that it is considered proper. And I use that word in air quotes because I know you can't see me. To play from memory if you're playing a formal recital, but none of those rules apply to most of the circumstances in which we play. If you're not playing a formal recital, you don't have to have your music memorized, period. End. Nobody says you have to except for you or perhaps your teacher. And I don't want to go against anything your teacher says. So if there's a reason that you need to memorize and that's what your teacher tells you to do, then please follow instructions. And if you don't want to follow instructions, perhaps you'll find some discussion points here today that you can bring up with your teacher at that point. What I'm really not talking about is playing from memory in recital. What I'm talking about today is the value of memorization. And this is where there should be no debate. There are things that we do when we learn the harp that are of immense value to us in our playing. Some of them are easier to recognize than others. For instance, our technique is a tool, and we know this. The more our technique develops, the more we can play. Got that part. Note reading is part of this, too. The faster our note reading, the more music we can learn, and the faster we can learn it. Okay, that makes sense. Our understanding of theory of scales, of chords, of arpeggios, all of that helps us learn better. And guess what? Memorization does, too. So why don't we want to do it? Well, I think there are some obvious reasons. Right. The first one that most people I think would say is that memorizing is scary. Well, it's only scary if you are in a performance situation. And if you're going to worry about forgetting. Right. If you're not worried about forgetting, then it's not scary. And this is the big reframe I want you to start thinking about, because that's our premise for today. You don't have to memorize just to perform a piece. Practicing memorization is where the power is. So now all of a sudden, memorization doesn't have to be scary, Right? We're taking the performance component and therefore the forgetting component out of the equation. But maybe you think, oh, well, I've never had a good memory. I can't remember anything. Memorization done right isn't about remembering. Yeah, there's a certain kind of remembering that happens, but it's really about knowing. It's about this Very complete knowledge of the music that you develop over time. The same way you learn to practice a piece and play it better over time. Same kind of idea. It's not remembering, it's knowing, it's learning. Or maybe you just think that your brain is too old. Well, nonsense. I mean, yes, our brain capacity, our brain strengths, our brain flexibility sort of changes as we age. But we're talking about a skill, just like playing the harp is a skill. And actually, if you have enough focus to practice the harp, you can benefit from the kind of memorization. I mean, it's not any harder than any other kind of practice. It's the same thing. It's developing a skill. We do it step by step over time, and we do it for some very clear and remarkable benefits. That's right. This is a skill that we are practicing because it's going to make things easier and better for us, because it's going to make us better harpists, make us better musicians. It's not something we have to do in public. It's not a test. This is a different way of looking at memorization. It's not that final thing that you have to put on before you can, you know, go out in public. It's like, okay, well, I learned my piece and I play it pretty well, and now I have to do it without a net, without a safety net. I can't play with the music. That's not what we're talking about. The kind of memorization we're talking about could make that process easier and much more comfortable for you. You might actually enjoy it. But that's not my focus today. I want you to think about memorization as a skill that's going to help you, not as something you have to do to pass muster to be a good performer. You don't have to do it that way. You can do it this way instead. What if you looked at memorization as a way to help you learn a piece as a learning tool and not just something you're doing because you have to perform it from memory, It's a big difference, right? If this is something that helps you on the way to learning, the same way that counting aloud does or working with a metronome. We don't do those things in performance, but they're part of how we learn our piece. They're tools. And that's what memorization can be. It can be a tool. When you work at memorizing something, you look at it differently, you listen to it differently, and you discover different things about it because you're no longer just looking at the notes on the page and figuring out what strings they go with. You're actually looking at the notes on the page to identify what patterns they form and how you will describe them. The word I just used describe, I used very intentionally. I'm not talking about you remembering the notes. You know, when, when you think about remembering something, or at least when I do, I'm thinking, okay, C, E, A, C, E, A. And then it's like, oh no, I messed it up and I'm hitting myself in the head and it's like, no, no, no. Okay, wait, I'm not hitting myself in the head very hard, just sort of tapping my forehead. Really don't worry about me here. But the idea is that I'm thinking about remembering and it's either right or it's wrong. But if I think about looking at it and having it form a pattern, oh, C, E, A. Well, that's like an A minor chord in first inversion. Now that's one way to describe it. You might describe it by its fingering or its spacing or its place on the harp. Not everything has to have the same name to every person. But trying to memorize something, trying to commit it to, you know, to your inside soul, not just your brain, not just your memory, but trying to learn it, let's use an old fashioned phrase, trying to learn it by heart helps you actually be able to understand it better because it forces you to describe it to yourself however you choose to describe it. So you say, oh, okay, so those notes are there, I get it. That's right. And then those notes are here. And you're listening to it differently because you're listening for what you're playing, not just looking at the music. I don't know about you, but there's an interesting thing that happens when I read. Sometimes it's reading music, sometimes it's just reading words. I can actually be reading, you know, a text and I can even read it out loud and have my mind wander at the same time. Now, I know you've had that same experience when you're playing some music in front of you and you kind of go on autopilot, right? Same idea. The information's going in, but it doesn't really connect with our brain. And this is where the process of memorization is so helpful. It connects with our brain. It connects with a thing. It's not just, you know, data in, data out. It's actually something that we begin to know and understand. So it forces us to think about what we're playing and not just play it. We need to listen to it, to decide whether we did it right or wrong, because we don't have the music right there in front of us to check. So it helps us identify mistakes and to identify them in a slightly different way. And it helps us to discover and understand the structure of the piece. How is it put together? How do we relate things? Because if we're trying to memorize something, we need things to hang on to, don't we? We need facts. We can't just say, okay, it's a C with my third finger, then an E with my second finger, an A with my thumb, and then my left hand at the same time is playing an F. We can't understand it that way because we can't play it that way. And, you know, if you've ever sat down at the harp and you've played those, the first two measures of a piece that you've been practicing and you've played those without the music, it's like, hey, wow, this is really great. And some of that is just sort of motor memory, right? It's like, okay, if I'm in the right place to start, I kind of know how it goes. I hear it in my head, and I can go for a while, and then I run out of information and I don't know what comes next. Okay, and that's memorization. That happens through familiarization, through doing it something over and over again and it sticks. That's sort of the base level of memorization. It's rote memorization. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's information, too, because the information that our fingers get from practice helps them do that same thing over and over again without our conscious intervention. But we can go beyond that and actually learn what's there. And that's conscious memorization. Looking at the notes and relating them to a pattern, to a key, to a something, something you've seen before, to a place on the string, anything that helps you understand what's there so that as you're trying to play it from memory and you get to that next thing. Okay, wait, what happens here? Oh, that's right. My right hand jumps up an octave and my left hand plays a G or whatever it happens to be, you know, you can describe, you understand more about the piece. That's pretty impressive when you think about it, isn't it? So if this is the kind of memorization you'd like to practice memorization, that's going to help you learn something better learn to do it better, then think about starting very small. Start with four measures of a piece that you're working on right now. Just pick four measures. Don't pick the hardest ones. Probably. You could start with the beginning ones, but you probably know those pretty well. It's kind of fun to start with the ending measures because they're the ones that always need the most practice anyway. They're the ones that we get to last often. And there are sometimes the ones that have just a little bit of something different in them. So we need to learn how to play them. So start with those last four measures. Look at them, look at what's going on. Think about the key, think about the patterns. You can do one hand at a time if you want, and just, you know, look at it, understand it, play it with the music once or twice, and then turn your music, stand around or put something over it and do it. Looking at the strings, thinking about what you saw on the page. Not to try to remember it visually, but to remember the patterns, remember the information that you gathered about it. That's what this process is. It's information gathering. Take just those couple of measures. You don't have to do much more. In fact, if you wanted to develop a regular habit of memorizing a few measures in your practice every day just to try it, you'll see how different a process it is from what you might have been using for memorization before this, and from what you might have been thinking memorization is. So start small. Just pick a few measures. Don't hold your breath and start to play it. Remember, you're going to look for information. Tell yourself one thing that you know about those measures that you're about to play, and then hear them in your head and play them. You'll make mistakes. That's fine. You look at it, you go through it a couple times with the music, you do it again. Remember this. Memorization is a skill, and like any skill, it gets easier and you get better at it the more you do it. So if you just practice a little bit of memorization, you might start to get very comfortable with the idea that you can play from memory. Notice I didn't say you had to play from memory. I'm not saying that you ever have to perform or play from memory if you don't want to. I mean, if you put yourself in a situation like a competition where they require it, that's one thing. But I don't think you ever have to do it if you're not comfortable doing it. But I will tell you that when you play from memory, even if it's just for yourself, there are some things you will notice. You will notice that you feel much more comfortable trying to make the music. You can focus on the harp. You and your harp are in that nice little bubble, and you kind of can shut everything else out, and you experience the music in a new way. It's easier to be musical. It's easier to play just about anything, because you're not focused on doing exactly what's on the page. You are doing what's on the page, but you know it well enough that you don't have to look at it. You can just make music. You and your harp. I don't mean that to sound cutesy or frivolous or, you know, New Agey or anything, but it's absolutely true. When you can remove that printed page and it's just you and the harp and the music that you're creating, there's so much focus, so much confidence built into that. You don't need the printed page to interfere in the process. You don't worry about getting lost on the printed page and trying to find your place or trying to turn a page or anything else. It's just you and your harp and the music that you're making. That's pretty powerful, and it's so much fun. I think if I could leave you with just one takeaway from today's episode, that would be it. That memorizing music can be fun because you don't have to do it. You don't have to perform from memory. That's not what we mean. I just want you to enjoy learning your music at that deeper level. And start small. Four measures. That's all I'm asking. And if you need to start with two, I'm okay with that. You can work yourself up to a very short piece. Start very simply. We want to build a success track record here. So start easy and get used to the process. And you'll soon find that if you do that regularly, your capacity for memorizing your music will grow. Your understanding of your music will come so much more quickly. You will learn music more quickly because you're looking at it differently. I know that that is not something that you may have thought of before, but that's why I'm telling you so that you can think of it now and you can try it, because I really think that you're going to enjoy the difference it can make in your playing. All right, quick reminder that we have our new arpeggios. Course that is open for registration now, so hop on in there and get that. Or if it's not open for registration today, it will be in just a day or two from the time this episode goes live, so be on the lookout for that. It's going to be a really good course. I'm really excited about teaching this material, so that's coming up. And do watch your inbox or check out harpmastery.com and look for it in the upcoming events because as I said, it's going to be a good one. Next week on the podcast, we're talking about three things every harpist needs to be able to do well. I promise one of them isn't memorized, although that would be not a bad one. But three things every harpist needs to be able to do well, that's next week on the podcast. So in the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.