How to memorize piano music

Four kinds of memory

When you know a piece “by heart”, several different memories are working together. The more of them you build on purpose, the harder the piece is to lose.

• Finger (motor) memory. Your hands know the movements. It forms by itself with repetition, which is why pieces you’ve played a lot seem to play themselves. But it runs as a chain: break one link, with a slip or a moment of nerves, and it can’t find its way back in.
• Aural memory. You can hear what comes next before you play it. It helps you notice a wrong turn straight away, and keeps the phrase going.
• Visual memory. You can picture the page, where a phrase sits on it, and the shapes your hands make on the keys.
• Analytical memory. You know what the music is doing: the key, the chords, where the sections start, what changes the second time. This is the one that gets you back in after a slip, because you know where you are.

Finger memory alone is what fails on stage. The rest of this guide is about building the other three alongside it.

How to memorise a piece, step by step

1. Analyse the form. Before memorising anything, map the piece. Which sections are the same, which are similar, and exactly where do the similar ones differ? A piece with an A section that comes back three times has much less to learn than it looks. The differences between near-repeats are the places memory slips, so mark them.
2. Memorise small sections from the score. Take a phrase or a few bars. Play it from the score several times, looking hard at what you’re playing. Then close the score or look away and play it from memory. Then open it and check: every note, the fingering, the rhythm, the rests. It’s easy to memorise a small mistake without noticing.
3. Hands separately from memory. Once a section is memorised hands together, play each hand alone from memory. It’s often surprisingly hard, and that shows you which hand was relying on the other. Left-hand parts in particular tend to be carried by finger memory.
4. Join sections, then learn the whole. Link each new section to the one before, practising the join on its own.

Know several starting points

If you can only play the piece from the top, any slip sends you back to the beginning. So build in places to restart from: the start of every phrase, or every four bars, and the start of each section. Number them in the score.

Then practise starting from each one, in random order. Write the numbers on slips of paper and draw one, or roll a die. If you can start cleanly from any of them, a slip in performance costs you a few notes rather than the whole piece: you jump to the next starting point and carry on.

Practise away from the piano

Sit somewhere quiet with the score closed and play the piece in your head, as slowly as you need, hearing each note and feeling which finger plays it. Wherever it goes blank, you’ve found a weak spot. Check it in the score and go on.

Say the chords out loud as you go: “C, then F with C on the bottom, G7, C.” Naming the harmony turns a string of notes into a sequence you understand, which is the analytical memory at work. If chord names are new to you, our pages on chords and key signatures are a good start. Knowing the key tells you which sharps or flats every note carries, so they stop being separate things to remember.

Play it slowly from memory

This is the test that shows how much is really finger memory. At half speed the movements lose their momentum, and finger memory can’t carry you; you have to know what comes next. If a piece falls apart when you slow it down, it isn’t memorised yet. Practise it slowly from memory until it holds.

Test it under a little pressure

Performing is different from practising, and memory is the first thing nerves affect. Give yourself small trial runs before the real thing:

• record a run-through on your phone and treat it as a performance: no stopping;
• play for a friend or family member, or on a video call;
• play it first thing, without warming up, on a day you haven’t practised it yet.

Each test shows you where it’s weak. Go back to those places with the score, then test again.

Keep it memorised

Memorised pieces fade if you only ever play them from memory. Every week or so, play it from the score again and check the details. It’s common to find a note or a rhythm that has quietly changed.

Memorising doesn’t replace reading

It’s tempting to learn everything by heart and look at the music only at the start. But players who memorise everything often find their reading stays stuck, and each new piece is slow to learn. Reading and memorising are separate skills, and you want both. Keep some time for reading new music every day; the sight-reading guide explains how.

For how to learn a piece’s notes in the first place, before memorising, see how to learn a piece faster, and for planning the sessions themselves, how to practise piano effectively.