Music Video Lesson: How Do You Maintain a Musical Repertoire?

Hi, this is Robert Estrin with virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com with a viewer question. How do you maintain a repertoire? This is an excellent question. I'm so glad it was asked, and there is a lot to this. Think about it. You could study the piano or any other instrument for years and years, and if you only are working on the pieces that you're currently studying, you'll forget the old pieces. You'll never have very much music to play. On the other hand, if you try to play through and keep fresh everything you've ever studied, it's impossible. You can't possibly, you couldn't get through your practice session. There's too much.

So, you have to select certain pieces that you really want as part of your, almost your permanent repertoire. One important step, there are three really components to this, number one, play through the pieces that you want to remember. Play through them on a periodic basis, regularly. That way, they'll never get too far gone. But of course, the inevitable happens, and mistakes will creep in, or inaccuracies.

None of us has perfect memories, so it's essential, number two, to refer back to the score. The score is, after all, the gospel of music, and you must refer to it often to refresh your memory. Not only that, you're going to find, when you revisit the score, playing slowly with the music, on the piano, do it without the pedals. You can really hear every note. You'll always discover small things you didn't see before, exactly how long a note lasts, for example. Or dynamic markings or phrasing markings that maybe you didn't quite get an express mark the first time around, or didn't remember where exactly it was, or where does it crescendo or decrescendo, start and end. That's why it's essential to go back and refer to the score.

The last thing I want to leave with you is something I found personally rewarding, which is this. Pieces which you have restudied and performed again and again tend to become just kind of emblazoned in your brain. So you take a piece that you played, and you've dropped, and you've restudied it and played again, and dropped, and maybe you've restudied again. Boy, you get a solidity to the memory.

So, to recap, the three things are, first of all, just play through your pieces as much as you can, the ones you really, really want to have in your repertoire, so they don't get too far gone. Number two, refer back to the score, playing slowly to check your work, and reinforce the memory. And last, restudy pieces that you really enjoy playing, and when you've restudied a number of times, it too will become part of your permanent memory in your repertoire.

Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com.

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