After I have committed a piece into memory, I will mix things up to solidify it in my mind. I play the following from memory:
- play a bar, or opening of a bar, then skip a bar or two
- play a bar, then play the previous bar, or skip a few bars backward
- pair up like passages from different spots within the piece - jump around back and forth - do this from memory (but make sure you know where you are at within the piece)
I will do this hands separately, or hands together. This technique allows me to have many starting points in a piece, such that if I lose concentration accidentally during a performance, I can re-start without pause (and hopefully nobody will notice either).
Let’s take the opening of Chopin’s Polonaise Op 53 as an example:
Example 1 - skipping bars:
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Example 2:
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Example 3:
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You can scramble it up even more! And do this hand separately, hands together, or jumping back and forth between left hand and right hand. But key is train yourself to do this from memory. Soon you will be able to pick up any point in a piece and know what the left or right hand supposed to be.
Here is a even more extreme example:
Of course, if you do this for the whole piece, it may be too overwhelming. Why not just set aside 20 minutes daily for 2 weeks to work like this on spots that you have memory trouble. Gradually build this up and soon you will have the entire piece 100% solid in your memory.
Now let’s look at another example. Below are excerpts from two similar pssages from the Liszt’s Sonata in B-:
I will pair up each like passage, and jump back and forth between that from Exposition to that from Recapitulation. For example:
Key is train yourself to do this from memory. Each time before you jump, give yourself a slight pause and say to yourself silently where you want to jump to (perhaps sing the tune in your head, imagine the bar visually in your mind’s eye, or imagine your hand position for that spot you want to jump to).
Initially of course you will need the score but if you break it apart like this, you soon can start your piece anywhere you want!
(see also my article “Efficient Memorization“)
