I teach a few private double bass students on Wednesdays and something that has come up in both of their lessons in one form or another is memorization. I've been thinking about this a lot lately in terms of how to teach them to memorize music. Here's what I've come up with so far. I'm sure these ideas are a) probably not new to me; b) useful to people who play other instruments as well; c) related closely to the goals of most aural skills curricula; and d) related closely to different learning styles.
As I see it, there are basically three ways one can memorize a piece of music that he or she is playing. I will call these three types of memorization aural, visual, and tactile. To memorize something aurally is to memorize how it sounds and to be able to reproduce those sounds on your instrument (and probably by singing as well). To memorize something visually is to memorize how the notes look on the page. If you've visually memorized a piece of music, you should be able to sit down with a blank sheet of manuscript paper and rewrite note-for-note, dynamic-for-dynamic what appears in the sheet music. Tactile memorization involves muscle memory. In the absence of sheet music and/or an aural memory of the sound, your hands/arms/legs/vocal cords should remember what to do to create the particular sequence of sounds that constitute a piece of music.
As with learning styles, most people are probably more adept at one form of memorization than the others, but I think that with practice anyone can develop the other types to be nearly on par (if not on par) with their primary mode. If all three are strong and one of them fails, you can rely on the other two. It seems to me that eliminating one of the methods (perhaps initially the primary method) forces the other two to compensate, thereby strengthening them. Forcing a student to play a solo without sheet music (particularly early in their study of a piece) makes their auditory and tactile memory work overtime.
I should also mention that I'm not interested in having them memorize for the sake of memorization. Warren Benfield, a giant in the bass world once played something like a half an hour of orchestral excerpts on a TV morning show from memory (no doubt captivating television). The host was amazed and asked how he managed to do that. Benfield replied to the effect of, "There are two ways to play: either you know it or you don't." I'm sure he had the bass parts in front of him when he played the pieces with orchestra, but I think that if you truly know a piece, you have it memorized, whether you set out to memorize it or not.
Next on the agenda is developing some good activities that develop these different areas.
Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas? Anyone seen something like this before (I can't imagine it's novel with me)?
As I see it, there are basically three ways one can memorize a piece of music that he or she is playing. I will call these three types of memorization aural, visual, and tactile. To memorize something aurally is to memorize how it sounds and to be able to reproduce those sounds on your instrument (and probably by singing as well). To memorize something visually is to memorize how the notes look on the page. If you've visually memorized a piece of music, you should be able to sit down with a blank sheet of manuscript paper and rewrite note-for-note, dynamic-for-dynamic what appears in the sheet music. Tactile memorization involves muscle memory. In the absence of sheet music and/or an aural memory of the sound, your hands/arms/legs/vocal cords should remember what to do to create the particular sequence of sounds that constitute a piece of music.
As with learning styles, most people are probably more adept at one form of memorization than the others, but I think that with practice anyone can develop the other types to be nearly on par (if not on par) with their primary mode. If all three are strong and one of them fails, you can rely on the other two. It seems to me that eliminating one of the methods (perhaps initially the primary method) forces the other two to compensate, thereby strengthening them. Forcing a student to play a solo without sheet music (particularly early in their study of a piece) makes their auditory and tactile memory work overtime.
I should also mention that I'm not interested in having them memorize for the sake of memorization. Warren Benfield, a giant in the bass world once played something like a half an hour of orchestral excerpts on a TV morning show from memory (no doubt captivating television). The host was amazed and asked how he managed to do that. Benfield replied to the effect of, "There are two ways to play: either you know it or you don't." I'm sure he had the bass parts in front of him when he played the pieces with orchestra, but I think that if you truly know a piece, you have it memorized, whether you set out to memorize it or not.
Next on the agenda is developing some good activities that develop these different areas.
Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas? Anyone seen something like this before (I can't imagine it's novel with me)?