Muscle Memory

RedXIV

Was thinking about this in work today, used to play piano years and years ago, always a struggle coz to be honest, music isn't my forte, but always would have liked one song to stick to have something to show for my years of torture.

Would it be possible to simply learn the finger movements for one song? Would this technique work?

Just for my own curiosity

Rigsby

Basically if you practice the same thing for long enough eventually your fingers will do it almost automatically.

You'd never know, but maybe some of what you learned might come back if you give it a try.

Voodu Child

Im not sure I understand the question. Its impossible to learn a song only by muscle memory unless you're completely blind and deaf. Otherwise, your brain is going to be using tonnes of different things (audio feedback, visual clues, breaking a song in versus/bars/phrases etc) to help the learning process. That's why the average person can learn a song with hundreds/thousands of notes in succession no problem, whereas only freaky savant types can learn pi to thousands of places, or memorize a phonebook.

Can someone who's never played an instrument learn a song by rote? Sure. But there are other things that come only with practice....good rhythm, dynamics etc. And if the song has any technically difficult parts, that's something that can require a lot of practice to pull off smoothly and confidently.

If you've played piano before, you should already have that to some extent. So I don't see why you couldn't learn one song 'just because'.

-=al=-

sounds kinda pointless and unrewarding if theres not really any musical connection to you and the music your playing

but yeah im sure its doable if u do anything long and ahrd enough it would become second nature i guess

RedXIV

-=al=- wrote: »

sounds kinda pointless and unrewarding if theres not really any musical connection to you and the music your playing

but yeah im sure its doable if u do anything long and ahrd enough it would become second nature i guess

If i'm being honest, tonedeaf would describe me best, i have the musical ability of a concussed gerbil I was neber that good at the piano, i just was stubborn and didn't like doing something i was bad at. Eventually i gave it up after painfully clawing my was up to grade 3.

Like i said, i'm only asking just for the sake of curiosity, was something that sprung into mind as it kinda sucks saying i was doing piano for years and having nothing to show for it. cheers though!

To all of you for your advice, thanks again!

Demeyes

I'd say you could do it. You might not ba able to pull off anything too difficult but you could learn a simple tune. Especially as you played before.

Basically thats what you do to learn an instrument. You learn something until you can play it. Then you learn another peice, etc and you move up in ability and expand your knowledge.

fobster

I think the general point coming from this thread is that when you learn an instrument, some people can simply learn their favourite songs or bits of songs etc just by rote and don't bother learning the instrument and theory behind it all so that they can then create their own music.

Sure nailing your favourite riff and the like is a great feeling, but coming up with your own stuff is much more satisfying, even if it is heavily influenced by bands you listen to, you can still call it your own.

-=al=-

yeah i guess people play for different reasons either way tis doable, but music will always mean different things to different people, for me personally its all about feeling, i wont really learn sometihng for the sake of it... well unless it sounds really cool, ha, both sides of the story i guess.... i like to know whats goin on when i play something

PurpleFistMixer

Dragging up an old thread a bit here...
I find most of the things I can play on piano I know by muscle memory. I mean, you have to learn it (in my case reading the music, as I can do that much better than playing by ear), but I find by the time I can play it smoothly, it's in muscle memory and I don't need the music any more.
One particular piece (it's that piano bit from Clubbed to Death by Rob Dougan), I actually probably couldn't write down the music to it, I can only play it if I don't think about it and just let my hands do it. So it must be muscle memory! So yes, it's possible. Though you still have to learn the piece in the first place, of course. Your muscles can't learn it for you. : p

Baggio...

I'll always remember one of my mates. He was not musical at all. However, he played so much he ended up being pretty darn good. it's all about practice.