I require memorization as a yearly goal – 20 2-3 page pieces over the course of the year. But, I never require them to perform from memory for the same reasons as you. I believe trying to work on memory skills is a worthy goal I think for their own satisfaction of having a repertoire of pieces to sit down and play when the opportunity presents itself.
Becky sent me this comment in response to the When Students Can’t Memorize post. As much as I advocate sight-reading, this really resonates with me because I do wish I had a more expansive repertoire of pieces I could just sit down and play without the printed music. This is something I should probably encourage my students to do more regularly as well. I’m curious to know how other teachers approach this. How do you encourage memorization in your studios? Do you have a repertoire tracker of some sort so that students maintain a list of certain pieces that they can sit down and play at a moment’s notice?
It is good for beginners especially to ready the music as they play it. I think memorizing is more suited for very advanced students who might need a challenge.
I don’t require a lot of memorization from my students, but when I find a short piece that has a lot of patterns or repeating chord progressions I encourage them to memorize it after they have learned it and done a thorough analysis. This helps them recognize that memorizing is so much easier when you “chunk” and look for patterns.
I also encourage memorization when a student learns a piece that they really love.
I do encourage my students to memorize, because it’s so sad to find yourself sitting at a piano but unable to play anything!
We keep track of favorites and also memorized pieces on a sheet of 8 1/2″ x 11″ cardstock (a pretty color which they choose) that we call “Sara’s Repertoire” or “Ben’s Repertoire,” etc.
Another thing we did last year (as part of “The Ladder of Success,” one of Natalie’s practice incentives) was make 1 or 2 songs memorized part of each level.