Arts & Entertainment, Music
Memorization and Practice: Student Q&A
Lesson time 18:18 min
Mr. Perlman and students from Juilliard discuss their personal tips for improving memorization.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Practice of Musicality
Teaches Violin
In his first-ever online class, virtuoso violin player Itzhak Perlman breaks down his techniques for improved practice and powerful performances.
Sign UpPreview
[VIOLIN PLAYING] - What I'd like to talk about right now is memorizing. Ha, ha, ha, your favorite subject and mine. So any problems, or offer any solutions that you may have, I would love to hear it. What about you and memorizing? - I find that I haven't really ever practiced with the intent of memorizing something. It's always just once you practice it enough, you've done it so many times. - That's a good point. That's a good point. Not to practice for the memory, but just to think about it, just to practice to know the piece. And so do you feel most of it, then, just stays there? - Pretty much, yeah. I mean, as long as I keep the music in front of me when I'm practicing. Even once it's memorized, I kind of keep it there for reference to make sure that-- - That's another point that I'd like to make. Whenever you practice-- and I'm not blaming anybody but, I just want to say this to whoever is watching this. When you practice, practice from the music. It's very important, especially if you have a lesson and the teacher tells you do this, do this, do that, and you know the piece, more or less, and then you write something down and then you practice without the music. So you forget what the teacher tells you. So always practice with the music because it also helps with the memory, that when you're actually playing, you actually see the page. I can see page 2 of the Brahms Concerto. Now, it's the edition that I always practice. I'm sure they didn't put a different edition and they put it on a different page. I can see the edition to that practice when I first started that. I can see what's page 2 and what's page 3. Page 3 is always dam da dam, dam da, in the middle of the page. Always see that, because that's what I've done. So memory, anything? - Well for me, what I like to do is I really like to study the music, just mainly making sections of it, because you can break it up into different sections. So that's the exciting part. That's the contemplative part, whatever. And that helps me a lot with the Bach fugues, definitely not overthinking, trusting your muscle memory, that it's going to work. Sometimes it helps if you fall asleep in the performance because then you really know everything. - I think what you just said was very important. Trusting your muscle memory is very important, because sometimes when we play something at the house, to practice to see if you can do it by memory, and you sometimes concentrate on something else and you can play it with no problems. Then you come on stage and you start to do the business about, what comes next? Disaster. So that's, as you said, trusting the memory. What about you? - Well, when I was younger, I actually had a lot of trouble with memory. I would really get primarily nervous for memory, actually. And it was because I had a couple of major memory slips that really kind of traumatized me, and so I would always be very scared about that. I've gotten over that an...
About the Instructor
The world’s reigning virtuoso violin player, Itzhak Perlman performs for presidents, royals, and classical music lovers around the world. Now the beloved Juilliard instructor and 15-time Grammy Award winner brings his passion for teaching to a wide audience for the first time. Learn fundamental techniques, practice strategies, and how to add richness and depth to your sound. Give your most dynamic performance yet.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Itzhak Perlman
In his first-ever online class, virtuoso violin player Itzhak Perlman breaks down his techniques for improved practice and powerful performances.
Explore the Class