Learning a Piece
8 04 2008
The actual process of learning a piece is something I have thought about for many years. Don’t know whether this will work for you but I’ve arrived at the following format by experimenting and discussing with other guitarists and musicians.
Read through the score without your instrument. This way, the technical problems will not get in the way. Try to hear the music in your mind. Study the rhythm, phrases, harmonic progressions, etc.
Play the piece through very slowly. You should now take note of the difficult passages. Try to devise some technical exercises based on the specific problems and worked at them slowly. Remember, you cannot play something fast if you can’t play it slowly.
Put some landmarks throughout the piece. Memory lapses happen even to the best musicians! When i first saw Segovia played in 1981,he was pretty old then and there were memory lapses in most pieces but through his vast experience ,he just skipped the bars, moved on to the next section and finished the piece!
Practice the piece in sections. Do not be too ambitious. A bit at a time is better than playing to whole piece aimlessly.
To check whether you really know each section, either play for someone or write out the section from memory. With much practice, it is possible to not only see the printed page in your mind, but also hear every minute detail of the score.
Finally, do not keep playing the piece. If you had practiced correctly, a lot of work would have been done in that time for the subconscious to take over. Play something else. It will be beneficial to have a rest from a piece and when you come back to it, you will be fresh and ready to bring that piece to greater heights.
