Why is it that violinsts can memorize so much music?

Question

I've tried so hard to memorize music on my flute, but it just doesn't happen. Can someone explain?

Answer 1

First, you have to be able to play by ear. If you can do that, then memorizing music should come naturally.
If you can't, here is my explanation for why it is easier to play violin by ear, than flute, and hopefully the thoughts will lead you somewhere!

For stringed instruments like guitar, piano and violin, your hands makes logical physical movements to adjust the pitch. An octave leap in the bass clef is a proportional physical movement in the treble clef, and because of that your body can respond easily to what you are hearing in your head. Playing the intervals easily by ear leads naturally to playing the harmonies by ear.

On wind instruments like flute the fingerings to play intervals don't make any physical sense to your body. To play a wind instrument by ear your brain learns to associate the different potential fingerings with exact pitches. Even more than learning solfege, the wind player who plays by ear can likely associate a note on a page with an exact pitch and a range of fingerings! Likely any musician such as this has a good ear for harmonics. Whatever exact fingering gives you the tone with its overtones that you associate with the pitch you hear -- once you have a feel for this, you can play by ear and memorize music easily. You will begin playing all the intervals to and from that pitch and your harmonic sense will be refined making you follow the entire piece more easily. Interesting, the more you play flute by ear the more you arrive at alternate and true fingerings on your particular instruments. It is just a matter of getting more advanced as a musician, that's all. For violinists, they have a role in the orchestra and in the works written for the instrument by composers that inspires their musicianship in the ways I described. You have to work harder to find that music, for flute.

Answer 2

Who cares about violinists? I know a girl who learned the Prokoviev Third Piano concerto in two weeks, then won a competition with it and performed with an orchestra. Memorization is a personal thing. I'm right now trying to hurry a violinist along in a dvorak piece so we can play it; it's only two pages of violin music! She's had it for two months! If you're thinking of symphony violinists, you suffer from a common misconception; that the violin section is the only section that ever does anything. Yes, the rest of the symphony does exist as well. If you're good enough to be in a symphony, you can pretty much memorize anything. Most pianists have the concertos of Beethoven, Bach, Schumann, Grieg, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Brahms in their head ready to play at any time. That's about 34 concertos; times that by the common three movements per concerto, and that's 112 pieces, most upwards of ten minutes long, that a pianist has to know to be taken seriously. Any one of the symphony players could probably sit around for hours playing stuff and never repeat themselves. Yes, even the percussionists have to be great with memorization.
Your flute has nothing to do with anything, unless you have the same problem with flute that I do. When I tried to play the flute, I couldn't get a note out, and I nearly passed out trying. If you pass out often, it would explain your memory problem. Do you know your parents' names and dates of birth?

Answer 3

If I have three pages of music to memorize I look at it this way, I take the first page and think of it as one piece and don't even look at rest of the music until the first page is memorized and then I start the next page, and continue until the piece is memorized, it may sound silly but it works for me, I play the piece over and over until I can almost see it in my head. I've done this with many a Bach piece, good luck, try it and let me know how it works for you!chessmaster1018

Answer 4

I used to play the violin and the usual way that I memorized music was by playing it over and over again. The violin is much easier, I think, than band instruments and since the sounds vibrates throughout the f-holes and the hollow part of the instrument, we (violinists) hear the sounds and memorize them more easily, as if someone is playing with us.

Answer 5

I really don't think it has to do with the violin at all. I have friends who play violin and can memorize anything but then those who can't. Then I have friends who can memorize anything but they don't play violin, etc. I think it just depends on who has better muslce memory and/or who practices more.

Answer 6

I think it has something to do with the bow.
You know, moving it back and forth and back and forth.
It really stimulates the brain.

Answer 7

Hours and hours of practice...dedication to the art...