ShiroKuro But I have never seen my inability to play by ear as enough of a liability that I was willing to devote my limited piano time to work on changing that... Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I always felt (and still feel) that my score-reading ability is such a useful strength that my time is better spent improving my reading abilities even more, rather than trying to improve my ear or other skills that I'm really bad at (like playing from a lead sheet).
There's an important thing right there. IF for some reason you suddenly wanted to get good at memorizing everything and playing from memory, then you might want to get some new approaches, add to what you're doing and also what you know. What works for reading might on one hand hamper some of a "memorize a whole long piece" endeavour, help the same endeavour and also dovetail with it. That would be a huge endeavour. The topic was switched to the pianist section, so I've entertained a more ambitious level. 🙂
But one would have to want to do all that.
My aim has been reading skills, physical technique, learning elements of interpretation, and theory also interests me. I am NOT really interested in memorizing per se. But the question came up so I explored it.
I worked with one of the excerpts you shared this morning - the Hana Bi. I wanted to see what I'd do to memorize it. First I saw broad patterns: primarily Gm for 2 measures, a D7 for two measures, then it starts the same way but deviates. I noted the LH chromatic descent, the way the LH lands on C, then D, then E for the fancy bit. I sussed out the melody. I did things like playing the RH Gm chords alone, and then adding the extra. I left it, did a whole bunch of things, came back a few hours later and I just recorded it from memory - an aware kind.
Ok, so what I did works, seems rather effective. But I see no reason why I would want to pursue this. Same as what you're saying. That is, I got some benefits from the exercise because my grasp of chords is deeper because of how I had to work with them, with no "aid" from notation. It will also possibly enhance my reading by adding more dimensions to it. The time I spent getting this into memory, as effective as it might have been, could have been spent in improving and perfecting the passage. There is also danger, if memorizing, of mis-memorizing. For me that was primarily which octave music was in - that sequence that starts with E in the LH.
I do think that memorizing should have some awareness of structure, of various patterns and such, because you can't memorize a gazillion details over 6 pages, or rely on muscle memory via umpteen repetitions. But the first question should be whether we actually want to memorize music - esp. longer, more complex pieces. In the main, I don't, and it is definitely not my aim.
Btw, I have the stages recorded that I took this morning, and then the final result. It's utterly boring though.
