Behind-the-scenes: learning new music

For me, learning music is very much a two steps forward and one step back process. I'm a very bad sight reader, which forces me to memorize music. This ultimately makes me look more professional, and fortunately I have a pretty good memory, but it can be a frustrating process.

I typically start by sight reading, very slowly, the entire piece. Then I half-memorize the second half; this means that once the entire piece is learned I will be able to finish strongly. I then half-memorize the first half, and start playing through the whole thing while allowing myself to refer back to the sheet music as I slowly wean myself off it.

The tricky part is what happens next. At this point a piece of music is not ready for an audience, but an audience is the only way that I can sharpen up the piece enough to be truly performance-ready.

This is where 10 am at a Renaissance Festival is particularly handy, when I'm technically on stage and there are people listening, but there aren't enough people present and awake enough to truly be paying attention. SCA events are also good for this, where there is a general background of people around without a focused audience.

From here it gets integrated into the periphery of my sets until earning a place in the focal center (which many pieces never achieve). Once I'm confident in front of an audience, it's usually a slamdunk to record after a bit of rehearsal to a metronome.