Matt and I recently spent 10 days eating and drinking, swimming and hiking, and generally meandering our way down the California coast.  

Speaking of recitals…..

One of the many challenges to recital preparation is the memory work.  Thanks to the precedent set by our over-achieving piano forefathers, pianists are routinely expected to memorize for performances.

My studio is no exception.

While there are many compelling arguments on both sides of the issue of memorization, the fact remains:  memorizing music demands us to learn more thoroughly.  We are forced to reconcile the discrepancies in what we may or may not really know.  We have to understand patterns in the music on a deeper level, which makes for a richer encoding process within the brain.   Cognitively speaking, these are good things. 

But it requires us to practice differently.  And it is to that subject that we turn.

There are a million strategies for memorizing, and many pedagogues have written extensively on the subject.  But there has not been enough discussion, in my opinion, about how to test one’s memory work, aside from merely playing through the piece in question.  This often is not the most definitive test of memorization, for as cognitive theorists will tell you, “state dependent learning” (hooking our memory to a specific place, situation, emotion, even a particular scent) is a powerful thing.  We often can play our music just fine on our own pianos, in our own houses, during our regular practice hour.  The question is whether we can do it anywhere else, at any other time.  And that’s where good assessment of our memory work is crucial. 

Today we are going to look at one test for memory, which as the case may be, provides us with yet another practice strategy for that growing list:  ghosting.

When my kids are not answering every question I ask with “rhythms,” they respond to my question: “how should you practice this?” with “ghosting.”  This proves only to be helpful about as often as the rhythm answer is; clearly, I still have work to do in teaching students to determine more accurately the best practice strategy needed in any particular case.  At least, however, they know two methods of practicing.  I must at least be doing some things right.

But back to ghosting.

Ghosting is first introduced in piano lessons when teaching the skill of balance—learning to play one hand louder than the other (which, admittedly is not balance at all, as students like to point out).  Ghosting means playing silently on the surface of the keys—“ghosting” the physical gestures but not making a sound.  It is great for teaching balance, (or “imbalance” as it should more rightly be called) because it demonstrates very quickly the difference in weight needed to produce two contrasting sounds:  One hand is an elephant; the other is a feather, as I often tell students.  Or, after the concept is understood, I resort to shorthand:  “elephant/feather” I write in their notebooks as a reminder to listen for balance.

But ghosting is also a brilliant device for checking memory.  Ghosting subtracts the aural component of the music, but keeps the physical gesture, which messes with our brain.  By divorcing the habitual muscle memory from the sound, we circumvent the automatic process, which is good for making us think more concretely about what we are doing.  We have to use more conscious cognitive thinking instead of relying on automatized physical gestures.  We are forced to internally “hear” what we are ghosting, which also tests our memory.  Ghosting can be painfully humbling.

There are three ways to ghost:  Both hands can ghost at the same time, or one hand or another can ghost while the other plays normally.  The kids will tell you that the one they want to avoid is the RH ghost/LH play version.  Because we often are accustomed to listening more closely to the melody, which is most often in the RH or top voice, it is disconcerting to suddenly have that half of the equation gone.  Just because that’s how I roll, I can tell you that RH ghost/LH play is the one I most often “test” in lessons, much to the students’ chagrin.

Ghosting may not the answer to every question I ask, but in the weeks before a recital, it’s a pretty safe bet. 

Last summer we had an old-fashioned wooden screen built for the side door leading into the sunroom.  We (I should say, I) painted it a deep eggplant purple. We (I should say our handyman) installed a ceiling fan in the sunroom.  Suddenly there was air circulation in our old cottage, letting in the cool morning and evening desert air.  The cats would sit for hours with their noses pressed to the screen staring out, watching the birds and feeling the breeze on their little faces.  It was almost like they were outside.  Almost.  To quote Bruce Springsteen, The screen door slams, a most lovely sound.

In an old house, there is always a long list of things needing attention.  Mostly, with lives that are already too full, our attention is elsewhere; it is amazing what we are willing to live with simply because we are too lazy and distracted to do anything about it.  Somewhere on that list has been the item: Get new front doors.  That item has sat on the list for 7 years.

But when you’re done, you’re done.  One day, I decided that I couldn’t stand those awful useless front doors any longer.  They were literally falling apart—an insult to my aesthetic senses and an invitation to anyone who wanted to break in and steal the piano.  At the same time, ironically, it took a degree in engineering to open them.  Lose-lose, I say.

A conversation heard outside our window:

A couple of guys were rewiring the air-conditioner next door.  One says to the other, "Man, that woman sure does play the piano a long time."  

The other responds, "She's a professional pianist.  Like, she went to school for that."  

"You can do that?" 

*** 

These days that time at school seems a million years ago.  I am weeks away from acquiring another useless master’s degree.  I spent last semester in a mind-numbing measurement and assessment course, taught by someone who had the unfortunate habit of reversing numbers in his calculations.  (“You know that’s how bridges collapse,” one friend said drily.  Yes, but we are in the social sciences.) I spent the first month of class wondering why I never came up with same numbers as he did, and the next three months wondering which of the numbers might be reversed in the statistical equations I was struggling to understand.  It was a long semester.

I turned in a final paper and the next day began studying for comps.  Comprehensive exams in that last graduate degree 20 years ago (“Like, she went to school for that.”) consisted of memorizing long lists of opus numbers and keys.  There was one time I knew the opus number of everything Beethoven wrote for the piano.  And Chopin.  I knew all the K numbers used to catalogue Mozart sonatas and concertos.  I could tell you that Beethoven Opus 10 No 3 was in D major.  That was a long time ago.

These days I am studying cognition theories and internal and external validity principles.  I can tell you in great detail about the modal model of memory and talk to you for hours about Bandura’s social cognitive theory.  I have nine hours of written comps and a morning of orals.  During June, I have my last class in human development (due to unfortunate timing, I will have to write my human development comp questions the same week I am finishing the course.  Not ideal.).  The end is in sight.

Recently, a student of mine announced that she was “super excited” about her term paper because she was doing it on Bach and “you, Miss Amy, can be my primary source!”  Research methods are not my strong suit, as anyone in the educational psychology program at the University of New Mexico will tell you, however, I am pretty sure I cannot be Corrine’s primary source on Bach.

Nonetheless, I was charmed, if not by her assertion of my primary connection to Bach, but because she was so psyched about doing an English term paper on a composer.  For weeks she gave me updates, offered fun facts about what she was learning, asked to borrow books.  Finally, one week Corrine declared that the paper was done.  “Do you know what was the toughest part?” she asked me.  “Tell me,” I responded, sensing somehow that piano practice might have taken a back seat the week the term paper was due. 

“The toughest part was trying to explain musical things that I have been doing my whole life.  Like ‘shaping’ or crescendo.  My English teacher had no idea what I was talking about.  He kept making me explain.  It’s really hard to figure out how to talk about what we do.”  In all my years with Corrine I have never seen her so serious.  These days she is a teenager, flakey and distracted as often as she is earnest and intense.  And yet, there she was, talking about being a musician (“…things I have been doing my whole life…”) as if it were a central part of how she viewed herself in the world, as if there was nothing more important than trying to make another person understand this very essence of her.

In the end, perhaps that is why I went back to school.  I wanted to learn to talk more credibly about what it is that I do.  I wanted to understand the theories behind how teaching and learning works.  I wanted to be able to say with some conviction and authority what the educational psychology equivalent of crescendo might be.  Maybe more than anything, I wanted to be able to explain to another person, “Hey!  This is how I see the world.”

You can do that?

I certainly hope so.