Comments

I've had the same experience with age and memory. I remember, sometimes note for note, pieces I've played in orchestras in high school and college. When I hear these pieces now, I can sing the second violin part along with the recording. However, sometimes when I hear something I've played 5 years ago, I barely remember it. It's all about aging. I'm somewhat surprised to hear about it happening to people so much younger than I. As I get older I'm finding it takes
more time to learn almost anything new. You are not the only one who feels a need to slow things down and break them down in order to get them. Hilary Hahn learns music that way, so you are in good company.

Vaguely a propos of how well you remember pieces you played in your younger days even if you haven't played them for a while, I had a funny experience a couple of years ago. I went to a concert at the Smithsonian which included the Brahms Piano Quintet. For purposes of the concert, the group was using the Wirth viola, which was the one actually used when the piece was premiered lo those many years ago. They joked that the violist was able to rest while they practiced that piece because the viola remembered it.

Well, one of my points here is that I don't think it's "all about aging."

There's a lot more that goes into learning at different ages, especially in the realm of expectations. So, when I was learning Egmont in high school, there was no way we were expected to learn it perfectly in a couple of rehearsals with a week in between each one. The expectations on adults are much higher, but that doesn't seem to get taken into account.

I find that's true for many memory- and organizational-related tasks. There may be a small age-related decline in cognitive and memory skills that plays a role, but that's entirely swamped by the hugely increased expectations that you'll remember everything and be able to manage and organize your life independently (not to mention everybody else's life including that of your kids and other loved ones).

There's an extent to which people don't appreciate how much their teachers and parents do for them--or at least I didn't, until I had to be my own teacher and figure it out for myself what to do during the week between rehearsals and lessons.

Karen, I agree with you that the method of teaching and learning has a strong effect on the length of time you remember something. "Over learning" makes what you've learned stay in your mind for a longer time than other kinds of learnin do. A separate issue is the effect of aging on long and short term memory. I apologize for not making this clear in my earlier comment. I can't remember anything I learned when I was a kid. But the older I get, the faster I learn and the better I memorize. I'm finally getting some hair on my chest too. Uh, what were we talking about? I've also discovered that many of the pieces that I played as a teen I can play *almost* by rote as an adult. I find freedom in this to be able to add new levels of interpretation to those pieces. Eine Kliene is a good example. It was painful to learn when I was 12, but now at ::cough:: pushing 40, I can have alot more fun with that piece, even though it has been ::hem hem::: nearly 30 years since I played it before. The kicker was when I was just learning to play cello, and was able to play Eine Kliene mostly from memory even though I never played the cello part (or cello for that matter).

Say something about learning young.

I'm not familiar with the jargon, but perhaps what I'm getting at is that adult players can and should make more use of "over learning," the way kids do.

To me the key point seems to be the daily, or more than daily, repetition of small chunks. (I don't know if that qualifies as "over learning," and it sounds a bit like aspects of the Suzuki method).

The way it's working for me now is something like this: we go over a passage in rehearsal, the conductor has something wise to say about it, and I write down what he said, either in the music or in the practice log. And then the next day, when I'm practicing, I play the passage or movement again, and review my notes about what he said, both mentally and in writing, and then repeat the passage with my instrument one or more times to make sure the lesson sank in. It only takes a few minutes. And when I do that throughout the week, between weekly rehearsals, it simulates the continuity of the Monday-Friday orchestra rehearsals that I had in school when I was a kid.

But I don't know, it's weird, most adults don't seem to approach practicing orchestra music this way (present company excluded?). Instead, their practice agendas are crammed with 3-octave scales in thirds up and down the circle of fifths, etudes, and solo performance pieces. While in orchestra, they expect themselves to just remember from one week to the next or one year to the next something they heard in passing once or twice, without even writing it down.

My son, Royce Jr., was a nurse. He worked in Geriontology for most of his career and taught me that older persons can learn new things. Granted recall of longterm is easier than short term as we age. As children/teen-agers, we are in the formiable years and the things we learn during those years are to be our tools of survival for the rest of our lives once we reach maturity. It's shown when elderly persons can remember their childhood and early adult lives readily, but lack recall of what's gone on durring the recent week/month. Maybe this helps with the topic of this blog?

Kinde Regards,

royce

The brain only holds so much. I'm trying to figure out what I need to forget to make room for something new. Hi,Karen-
In 1995, after hearing a lecture by Edwin Gordon at the CMEA Convention, I enrolled for graduate courses at Temple University; and, in essence, started to restructure my own training.
Almost immediately the audiation promise of security in knowing what comes next - a sort of double tracking whereby I can hear phrase "B" while I am playing phrase "A"- kicked in.
I am planning to go to the 50th reunion of my high school graduating class and have asked permission to play the solo that I played at graduation.
I may just be lucky but I think that there is more to it. And, yes, this security in playing without the score is a new experience for me!