It really strikes home that the mind is not in the shape it used to be when it stubbornly refuses to remember pieces of music that in bygone days would have been etched in stone somewhere inside without any effort. No matter how I try with some pieces, it just doesn’t work. I panic.
I suppose that like most things that don’t come naturally any more, there are two options. Firstly, accept it and secondly, do something about it. Retrain the memory.
The problem is that some new pieces I can remember and some I can’t, and I don’t know why this should be the case. Its not complexity so much, or technical difficulty. I never really had a technique for memorising – it just happened as part of the process of learning a piece of music.
I’m beginning to believe that one of the major contributors is discipline – in the sense of playing the notes exactly and ‘tightly’. Virtually all of my work as a church musician, whether on a keyboard or organ, is improvised in one way or another. Its perfectly natural for me to do this and I’ve been doing it for many years, even if there are occasions when I think I’ve rediscovered the Lost Chord. I suspect that that has worked against my ability to memorise – my brain is being lazy and shortcutting the path to what is left of my long term memory.
I’m not sure if there is a cure.