Music or memory?

[jhnbrbr]

I would be interested to know members' views on playing from memory, rather than the score. It still seems to be quite rare for professional organists to do this, whereas professional pianists would be embarrassed to be seen with music on the stand. I'm sure it's better to play from memory, even at my low standard, because the brainpower which was previously reading and deciphering can be devoted to listening instead. Of course, it's not really an either/or situation, because practice is actually a process of partial memorisation, so the printed music becomes a reminder, rather than a complete set of instructions. I find it takes me a long time to memorise even a short piece. Do any members have any interesting techniques to speed up the process?

[sunwaiter]

i play from memory only, since i can't read. but i don't play classical or complex pieces.

so i assume that it must be a challenge for any musician in the classical field to play a relatively long piece without reading it all along.

i've played the drums in a "jazz" workshop, with lots of saxophone players, and their purpose was to KNOW the tunes so they wouldn't have to read anymore. some found it almost impossible simply because they diodn't have enough TIME.

as an autodidact, i've learned to play repertoire of funk, jazz, rock, and other things on guitar by following the cd as best as i could. rehearsal (repetition) seems the best and simplest way to memorize, as for any matter (languages, numbers, etc).

[Krummhorn]

Regulator note:

Discussion topic moved: We have a thread on this very topic Playing from memory at the organ.

For sake of continuity, I have copied the above two postings to that thread, and the ensuing discussion will take place there.
No posts have been removed and this thread closed and kept here as a reference point to the ongoing discussion only.

Krummhorn,
Sr. Regulator