Playing From Memory, By Necessity

When I sat down to practice this evening and was pulling my music out of my case, I cussed. I had forgotten the Bach music at home. I’d had it out last night to look at something, and forgot to put it back before leaving for work today. (I live in a condo with thin walls, so I don’t practice at home. My violin travels with me to work most days, and I practice in my office—or elsewhere, nearby—after hours.)

Anyway, I cussed. Then I did my warm-ups and scale and Kreutzer, and then figured I’d see how much of the first movement of the Bach I could remember. Playing it from memory was really, really interesting. I remembered almost all of it. And as I was playing, I felt as though I was noticing so much more in terms of how I sounded.

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, but it was. I realized that in practicing, sometimes I’m just noticing something I need to adjust, marking it in the music, playing through it another couple of times to move it in the right direction, then playing on. Not gonna solve it today, it’s just something to keep working on. I rely on the marking to remind me to make the adjustment and, on some level, if I’ve marked it, I’ve done my work for the day.

It sort of reminds me of being in graduate school and having huge, scary papers to write. Since this was the mid-1990s, I actually had to track down paper sources (journal articles, books) in the library and photocopy them. I’d then haul home stacks of stuff to read and feel as though, on some level, I’d spent X hours on my paper. Not gonna write it today, it’s just something to keep working on.

Playing from memory tonight and relying strictly on sound to monitor myself instead of just using practice time to put more pencil marks on my music is sort of like sitting down and actually banging out word count on a paper instead of just killing trees at the library.

That doesn’t mean I need to extend practice sessions endlessly to internalize an adjustment by brute force. It just means that I probably need to get my eyes and brain away from the notes more often.