# 16 — TACTILE MEMORY

Lately, my students have been preparing for the Certificate of Merit (CM) evaluations, which are held by the Music Teachers’ Association of California. It is a state-wide, annual program that tests the student’s ability and knowledge in repertoire, sight-reading, ear-training, technique, and music history and theory. At the same time, the CM evaluations provide me an opportunity to learn the piano parts of several pieces and collaborate with the students of my colleagues — all within a relatively short amount of time. Although sight-reading has never quite been my forte, the numerous requests for accompaniment have required me to quickly strengthen my skills in that department — playing the music without learning it beforehand. For the purposes of this blog entry, that definition is a bit extreme, so I’ll tone it down. Let’s change it to “playing the music without sufficient preparation.” There; that’s more like it. Anyway, as I practiced more and more pages of music in each session at the piano, I realized that there are a few components to decent sight-reading, and I also discovered which ones I’m good at and which ones I’m not so good at. The main one of the latter category, which I would like to focus my writing on, is tactile memory (more commonly known as “muscle memory”). One of the most common phrases I hear is, “It’s like riding a bike.” Although the message may be overall true, there are several nuances within the message surrounding instinctive memory. As a performer and teacher of classical piano, tactile memory is an important aspect of playing the instrument.

When we look at a piece of music, there are notations that we look at and immediately have an intuitive reaction to. Let’s just say, for example, that there is a significant leap/jump of notes — a high note followed by a low note. That distance between the two notes tells me that I need to shift hand positions to the left so that I can easily reach the next note without having to stretch my fingers too much. Or, if I see a smooth ascent or descent of notes on the music, then I know immediately that there is a scale my fingers need to prepare for. Unfortunately, almost no music is as simple as that… especially when having to use both hands for piano music, nonetheless. In fact, having the ability to play a piece while looking at the music is a skill highly sought-after by pianists like me who heavily rely on actually memorizing the music. I need to see where my hands and fingers are in relation to the keys on the piano.

One thing I like to do is take a memorized piece in the solo piano repertoire and play it with the music laid out on the stand in front of me. Although I could technically play it without looking at the notes, I would force myself to look at the notes. In the department of tactile memory, I’m training my eyes to actually look elsewhere. Here’s what would happen a lot at first: In the middle of playing the memorized piece, I would occasionally look up at the score but just see a blur of notes on paper. Like, I’ll look at the score but I’ll have no idea what part of the paper I’m supposed to look at. Am I currently playing the notes on the first page or on the second page? Did I miss a page-turn? I have no idea. I can look, but I can’t see. However, at that moment, my eyes are no longer fixed on my hands and fingers, and I can still play the music without stopping. That’s good enough for me; the visual recognition of the notes on the music stand can come later. And it does. Eventually, it will come to a point when I no longer need to stare down at the keys; instead, I can comfortably play while tracking the score in front of me.

Now, how does that apply to pieces that are not memorized? Everything is pretty much the same; the fundamental difference is that — this time, with non-memorized music — my eyes are guiding the movements of my hands and fingers; before, with memorized music, it was the other way around. There’s an even more advanced stage of sight-reading. As a collaborative pianist, I must know not only my own piano part, but also that/those of my ensemble partner(s). If they accidentally skip a few notes, loop back to an earlier section, or make some other mistake like that, then I have to be aware of it and immediately adjust to them. After all, I am sometimes a mere accompanist. Nowadays, I feel more comfortable playing my own piano part while keeping my eyes on a different part(s) that I, myself, am not even playing! It is unbelievable to realize that, at one point, I was constrained to fixing my eyes on the keys, my hands, and my fingers. Those times, thankfully, are no more. Oh, how satisfying it is to see progress like this; it’s wonderful to still learn and discover something new.