I have had the hardest time memorizing songs for my voice lessons. I work at it and I practice, but the practice sessions aren't as focused as I'd like them to be, and it seems that the weekly voice lessons come and go, and the words still aren't there.
Piano is another story. At least when I took from Deborah, memorizing wasn't too much of a stretch because I practiced so intently. At the same time, she didn't require memorization, so I never quite jumped out of the nest with any of my pieces. So did I ever memorize them?
Kind of? Maybe?
I'll never know. So in my rediscovery of the B-flat minor nocturne, I've decided that I want to do two things I'd never seriously focused on before: analysis and memory. The two go hand-in-hand, so it seemed a worthy way to spend some time this afternoon while Anne played with the neighbor kids outside.
My Schirmer edition of the nocturne is the one I learned with, so it's all marked up with fingerings and comments. I had this Alfred edition that I've never used, so it became my "analysis copy." I started by simply labeling the chords.
Quite a few of the chords were simple, as in the very beginning of the piece: B-flat minor to F7, back and forth. It gets more complicated and interesting later on, of course.
I feel a little silly that I waited so long to do this analysis. I noticed a couple of things right off the bat that I'd never even thought about before:
- How changing from the minor to the relative major feels like a sunrise
- How, after making that change, going from the I to the IV of the relative major feels like the warmth of the sun coming from behind a cloud on a too-cold day
I'm sure that is the oldest trick in the book, but it's new to me, and I made stuff up for a good half hour, just noodling from minor to relative major and back again.
The other thing I thought about was diminished seventh chords and how their instability can lead you anywhere. My music theory knowledge is limited, but I do remember learning this at some point. I just never applied it, or even thought about it beyond the classroom setting. It was "theory" and for too much of my life, "theory" had been a separate thing from the experience of making music. For a long time, I just wanted to play. I didn't want to be analytical about it.
I know, I know. It's dumb. I have a lot to make up for.
Once I'd thought about and labeled the chords in the first section, I worked on memorizing. As you might expect, having the chords written down, and now having the ability to think about the direction the music was going, made memorization so much easier. I played at a snail's pace, too, to help ensure that I wasn't just relying on muscle memory.
Somehow, two hours went by as I analyzed and memorized. When Anne came in with the neighbor to see if they could go get ice cream, I felt almost irritable, like I'd just been pulled out of a deep sleep. But we ended up going to Chick-Fil-A for a late lunch and ice cream, and then to the playground, and then to Rack Room to get Anne some new shoes, and it was a fun afternoon with the kids.
When I got home, I sat down to play the few pages I'd memorized earlier, and ... yep. It was still there. I played it slowly, and it was still there. This may be the first time I've actually memorized those pages. Really memorized them. Hopefully I'll never lose them again.
The goal for tomorrow afternoon is to memorize the third main section, and probably the fourth (which is mostly a repeat of the first, except for the ending). The goal for the rest of my life is to play the hell out of this nocturne so that I'm still playing it at age 90 in the nursing home ...whether the rest of my mental faculties are there or not!
I also need to practice voice tomorrow. I wish analyzing the chord progressions would help me memorize the words, but I don't think it works that way ...
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