Music Learning Tools

Here's one:
http://allenibmusic.org/?p=366

Four Types of Musical Memory

There are four types of musical memory which are used in music. Three of these types, aural, visual, and motor memory, depend on our senses or imagery. The fourth, and most important type, is known as cognitive memory. It is based on knowledge, and it the memory we use in the analytical study of music.

The memorization of music requires the combination and collaboration of the four types of memory. We all vary in our natural gifts and capacities, but all types of memory should be cultivated and can be improved.

Cognitive Memory

This memory is the basis of all study, from the time the piece is first practiced until it is performed from memory. Every detail of the music should be analyzed technically and musically and be consciously known.

Organize notes into patterns, groups, and phrases. Note all sequences and variations from the sequential pattern. Analyze harmonic progressions and relate them to each other. Contrapuntal lines, rhythm, and interpretive factors are all part of analytical study. Study the form and relate the details to the whole.

Aural Memory

This memory is useful in enabling us to hear mentally what the next note or chord is, and it strengthens the other types of memory.

The ability to hear accurately and retain what we hear should be developed until individual lines of the music can be played and sung without errors. Eventually a whole composition can be "practiced" by going though it and hearing the sound mentally.

Visual Memory

This type of memory gives us a mental image of the way the notes look on the printed page, or the place of the notes and the shape of each passage on the keyboard.

Visual memory may be developed by concentrating on a measure of music, consciously noting all its details, and then reproducing it from the mental image.

Gradually more measures can be added, and a mental image of whole phrases and sections can be retained. Avoid using different editions of a composition during the learning process.

Motor Memory

This is one of the most useful and also the most dangerous types of musical memory. Motor memory involves the touch sensations and training of the muscles so that the movements become automatic. They should, however, never be mechanical.

In developing motor memory the same fingering and pedaling must always be used. Avoid repeating phrases endlessly without thought or purpose.

Never depend on motor memory in memorizing a piece. The slightest interruption in the automatic process will inevitably lead to a breakdown.

Harold Gleason. Method of Organ Playing (5th ed). Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962.

http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm9-3/pianiste-en.htm

Getting a Teacher

Well, as much as I think it would be cool to be an autodidact (which is a very cool word, by the way), I really need a teacher. Nick Calandro is a local bass player who was actually in the combo that played at my wedding reception. He's a good player, a nice guy, and I have met him a few times. We're going to connect later this month for lessons. Good plan.

Yep, he's a really good player. Here's a YouTube video.

Buegeleisen & Jacobson

Some photos about the jobbers that imported my bass from Czechoslovakia in the 1920s.

Doing It Now

"I don’t like to look back, because
the whole point in jazz is doing it now."
--Scott LaFaro

I was going to make this an essay about failure. Instead it's just going to be the first blog entry. It's often said that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes, but I think that people mean a kind of "acute" failure, as in an attempt that goes horribly wrong. But what about chronic, repeated, overarching failure? And by failure here, I mean something that matters to you, something you really want. That's what I am going to explore here. Long, painful, slow failure.

So I'll start with the only class I failed in college, and by "fail" here I mean straight-up zero-point-zero failure. When I failed my music theory class in the Fall of 1987, it blew a Sousaphone-sized hole in my grade point average. But more than that, it cemented a perception in my mind about my ability to understand and speak the language of music: you simply can't do this.

The bottom line is this: despite my failure in the past, I should just start "doing it now." Work on it now. You have all the materials. And how about you log on every Friday to say how it's going?

Give it a try. Do it now.