Seeing the whole form

When studying a piece of music to learn it and understand it, it can help to take a step back and look at the music from a farther perspective. Try to view the whole piece of music as a whole.

Can you see the entire form of the music in your head?

This is harder than it sounds to do, especially if the piece of music is longer than 5 minutes and definitely if it’s longer than 15 minutes.

Taking a big enough step back to be able to view the whole piece that way takes a lot of time studying and familiarizing yourself with the piece. Playing through it once isn’t enough. Play it through a bunch of times. Almost as if you’re trying to memorize the entire piece of music and play it from memory.

Knowing it from memory isn’t necessary, but the goal is to know it well enough to be able to create a mental map of the piece. Where are the fast sections? Where are the loud sections? Where are the slow sections and the quiet sections?

Often this can be done by simply flipping through the music like a magazine. Literally just looking at it a lot helps. Look at it enough to be able to “see” the whole thing.

No matter what you’re learning the music for this can help a lot because it’s such a different perspective than remembering single notes and chords and melodies. You’re looking at whole sections of music.

Give it a shot.

ISJ