Memorise a music piece quickly: “isolation” vs “compound” practice

How does one learn a new music piece efficiently - and memorise it as quickly as possible?

A while ago, I got a recommendation to do a video on “learning a new piece quickly”. There are many aspects on learning a musical piece, and “learning” can be put to many different contexts, such as memorisation, technical excellence, maturity of musical interpretation etc.

Let’s talk about memorisation

A new piece can be a violin concerto, a solo sonata, an etude, or a Paganini Caprice you’ve never played before.

The main advice students hear, is just play a couple bars of a piece, repeat many times, then move onto the next couple bars, repeat, and then try to play all of them together in one sequence. And repeat the same thing in the next section, etc.

When it comes to memorisation, I think reducing one’s practice into small sections is very limiting and in a way, “quite robotic”, which prevents the effectiveness of the development of one’s musical interpretation and its “melding” with the sheer memorising of the new notes.

Therefore, while I agree on the effectiveness of the above technique in many respects, its effectiveness is limited: because the main thing this does is isolating your practice. Isolated practice can be a great tool, especially for working on left-hand articulation, left & right-hand coordination or intonation, for example.

But a music piece never works in isolation.

If one wants to fully learn and have a better quality of interpretation of a piece, he or she also needs to know & listen to the other parts (e.g. the oboe solo in Brahms Violin Concerto, or knowing how incredibly demanding the third movement of the Strauss Violin & Piano Sonata on a pianist is).

On the other hand, there is a second type of practicing, which is playing everything in one sequence. You can also call it “playing through”. This type of practicing is beneficial for seamless transitions within the piece - but it lacks the detail work that the isolated practice is great for.

Imagine a weightlifter: if he only trains isolated movements, like lateral shoulder raises, bicep curls or leg extensions, he will indeed get strong, but if he doesn’t also include compound movements like squats, or shoulder presses, the body won’t be as effective in moving as a whole.

The same thing applies to practicing a musical instrument. One needs to focus on both “isolated” and “compound” practice types. Both are important.

When it comes to memorisation: don’t worry about it too much. There is nothing wrong with playing something from the score, and in fact, sometimes it's actually a good idea to play from the music, or out of respect to your chamber music partners.

But if you need to memorise something, just practice it the right way, technically and musically (where you’ll have to repeat certain passages many times anyway) and let your brain do its magic.

But let’s say, you’re very short on time and need to learn something as quickly as possible: a general tip would be to listen to the recordings you like. One caveat though: I would probably avoid doing this until I’ve read the music myself first and at least come up with some of my own interpretative ideas.

Did you ever have problems regarding memorising a piece? Please leave a comment below - and if you got value of this post, I warmly invite you to share it with your friends.