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. 2016 May 10:7:645.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00645. eCollection 2016.

Music Memory Following Short-term Practice and Its Relationship with the Sight-reading Abilities of Professional Pianists

Affiliations

Music Memory Following Short-term Practice and Its Relationship with the Sight-reading Abilities of Professional Pianists

Eriko Aiba et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between the ability to sight-read and the ability to memorize a score using a behavioral experiment. By measuring the amount of memorization following short-term practice, we examined whether better sight-readers not only estimate forthcoming notes but also memorize musical structures and phrases with more practice. Eleven pianists performed the music first by sight-reading. After a 20-minute practice, the participants were asked to perform from memory without any advance notice. The number of mistakes was used as an index of performance. There were no correlations in the numbers of mistakes between sight-reading and memory trial performance. Some pianists memorized almost the entire score, while others hardly remembered it despite demonstrating almost completely accurate performance just before memory trial performance. However, judging from the participants' responses to a questionnaire regarding their practice strategies, we found auditory memory was helpful for memorizing music following short-term practice.

Keywords: auditory memory; expertise; individual differences; mistakes; musical score; musical training.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Flow of the experimental procedure for the task music (Granados). The vertical arrow indicates the flow of time. The boxes surrounded by a solid line indicate the trials that were included in the analysis. The participants could play with the score, with the exception of the memory trial performance. In the trials for the two training pieces, the rehearsal time was either cut or was shortened (Table 1), and the performance by memory trial was excluded.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Each participant’s number of mistakes for each trial in which they played the task music (Granados). Vertical bars indicate each participant’s number of mistakes, with the bars arranged according to the number of mistakes in the sight-reading trial. The participant ID was created based on their sight-reading (from S01 to S11) and their music memorization (from M01 to M11) scores. For example, Participant S01M03 made the fewest mistakes in the sight-reading trial and the third fewest mistakes in memory performance. The color indicates the type of mistake made. There were 581 total notes in the task music.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Structure of the task music (Granados) and bars memorized by each participant. Capital letters indicate the section of the music, and lower-case letters indicate the phrase types. The superscript symbol for each lower-case letter indicates the developed phrases from each type of phrase. The apostrophe indicates the variation of each type of section or phrase. The subscripts ‘trans’ and ‘inv’ represent the abbreviations ‘transposition’ and ‘inversion’, respectively. The filled squares show the bars memorized by each participant. The dark gray square indicates bars for which the participant memorized both right and left hand notes (including bars with whole remaining notes in either the right or left hand). The light gray square indicates bars for which the participant memorized only the right or left hand.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Mistake rate by bar number for Participants S05M01, S03M02, and S01M10 in each trial they played the task music (Granados). The color indicates the type of mistake. Each panel represents one trial.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Mistake rate by bar number for Participants S06M09 and S09M11 in each trial they played the task music (Granados). The color indicates the type of mistake. Each panel represents one trial.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
(A) Excerpt from the original score (numbers indicate the bar number). (B) The score that was generated from S06M09’s memory performance of the same bar number. Blue-colored notes indicate notes played correctly. These scores were generated by music notation software (MuseScore 2.0.2, MuseScore).
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
(A) Excerpt from the original score (numbers indicate the bar number). (B) Score that was generated from S09M11’s memory performance of the same bar number. Blue-colored notes indicate notes played correctly. These scores were generated by music notation software (MuseScore 2.0.2, MuseScore).

References

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