What's new in pedagogy research? (Professional Resources).(Brief Article)

Musical Recall Memory

When a child begins lessons, he often finds that after a week of practice his simple pieces are memorized. As lessons continue and the pieces become more complex, we, as teachers, often permit memorizing in this "muscle memory/ear" way. Almost inevitably there will come a point when, in a recital situation, this memorization approach will fail, and the teacher and student will be surprised when a memory problem suddenly occurs. To prevent this, many instructors talk with students about the various ways to memorize, emphasizing the importance of studying the score, seeing patterns and understanding the harmonies of the piece. A recently published study, "Musical Recall Memory: Contributions of Elaboration and Depth of Processing," (1) gives some additional possibilities of what emphases might help the memorization process.

While musicians refer to the processes of memorization with the words "repetition" and "understanding" the score, psychologists use the terms elaboration and depth of processing. In this study, elaboration means to think about the music to be memorized in a number of different ways; depth of processing refers to focusing on deeper, more aesthetic information than just notes and rhythm.

In this experiment four experienced pianists were given four unfamiliar, short pieces of music, each to be played through only four times. Each time the piece was played, a different set of instructions was given for the pianist's focus. The four combinations of high elaboration/deep processing, high elaboration/shallow processing, low elaboration/shallow processing and low elaboration/deep processing were assigned to the four pieces. The instructions given were as follows:

* Shallow Processing--Low Elaboration

Trial 1: Please focus all your attention on mechanical, accurate playing of the notes and timing.

The other three instructions were the same as Trial 1.