How to unlearn incorrect muscle memory

Question

So I've been learning to play piano for a few months now. And there's this one, very easy piece, which I have absolutely no difficulties playing, except for. one. freaking. transition. which I somehow struggle with, even though it's extremely simple.

What do I mean with "struggle"? I can play the whole piece on a steady 76 bpm (as it's meant to be played,) without thinking about fingering or anything. Except in one spot, where either I play the left hand wrong, or I need to think about it and drop out of the rhythm. The problem is only with the left hand.

Here's the malevolent bit:

Seriously. And the thing is, I even know what goes wrong, I just don't know how to fix it. Somehow my brain ALWAYS mixes it up with this measure:

As you can see it's similar; in m7 your l.h. goes from Bb to the dyad F-D, and in m11 it goes from Ab to Eb-C. For some reason my brain got wired to go to Eb-C in m7 too and I always trip over it. Every time.

So, how can I unlearn this? How can I reset my idiotic brain in not doing that anymore? I've tried repeating just that transition for dozens of times, hoping to burn it into my synapses, but nope. During the repetition no problem at all. The moment I start playing the full song, my brain trips again.

Please help a desperate man out! :)

The full score can be found here: https://musescore.com/user/24361621/scores/5833365

Answer 1

Very down-to-earth and an answer from experience, play the piece really slowly and correctly. It might be really irritating and boring. But do it at least twenty times correctly. Then slowly increase the tempo little by little. Your muscles will automatically overwrite its memory

A common misconception is that practicing a piece at a high tempo will make you learn faster. That is false. Once you learn to play a piece fast, you will find it tough to play it slowly, but vice versa is not true. If you practice the piece really slowly, you will never learn the wrong things, and playing fast soon becomes really really easy.

As I said, practicing slowly is really irritating and you might even, sometimes lose your marbles and hate the piece itself. (Experience: Like how I hated Moonlight Sonata while practicing it but even if you ask me to play it with my eyes closed, I can:D)

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."- Muhammed Ali

Answer 2

You may be interested in checking out some of the pedagogy of Arnold Jacobs, the long-time tuba player of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I know this seems unrelated to your question, but he discussed at length the role of muscle memory in musical performance and how to overcome issues related to it.

One of his big concepts was that you can't really unlearn something; rather, you just have to learn something new such that it replaces the old habit.

Herein lays one of the great paradoxes of the Jacobs philosophy. It is incredibly simple, but not easy to change long-held habits that hold a player back. Playing a musical instrument, to use Jacobs’s lexicon, is a series of conditioned responses developed through a trial-and-error process in response to various stimuli. Most players came to Jacobs with conditioned responses that were getting in their way. They substituted tension and pressure for wind (air in motion). They played by pushing valves vs. conceiving of a clear pitch and sending that into the brass instrument. They substituted moving their body for taking a full, seamless breath. Some people could play despite these bad habits, but none reached their potential until new habits were developed over time — new conditioned responses developed to a new set of stimuli. Jacobs’s concept of teaching not by breaking old habits but replacing them with new, better habits was an early musical application of what we know today as neuroplasticity. ... Through careful practice and repetition, the new way would eventually replace the old habit and create a new, conditioned response and a new pattern of neuronal activity. One of Jacobs’ frequent comments was, “Don’t correct what’s wrong; go for what’s right,” and this was reinforced by urging students to rehearse success and not failure in practice. Dr. Frank Diaz, a music educator who has written numerous scholarly articles on the psychology of music, said, “Jacobs’ notions on creating new habits rather than erasing old ones, and on using top-down approaches (mind controls meat) as a way of creating these new neural maps were insightful.”

The above quote is from a celebration page from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which continues on at some length about Jacobs's approach to this. You may also be interested in this blog post, and I bet you could find multiple other sources by searching "arnold jacobs habit" or something along those lines.

In any event, consider taking some of "Jake"'s advice and simplify matters. Maybe just play the left hand, starting in m. 1 and stopping on beat 2 of m. 7. Then perhaps from m. 6 into m. 11, and then connect the two. Once your left hand has learned its new habit, add in the right hand and see how things go.

This isn't a foolproof answer, of course, but I thought it would be worthwhile to share a new way of thinking about problems like this.

Answer 3

There's a practice technique called "building a bridge". I bet you can play m7 on its own just fine. The challenge is to bridge over that measure: to get from m6 to m8 without falling in a hole. What you need is secure foundations on either side. The problem isn't m7 itself, it's something in your state of mind as you approach it.

Try this:

• Start playing from m8. When you can do this without a mistake, repeat it three more times to reinforce it.
• Now start playing from m7. Get used to transitioning from m7 to m8. Once you've got it, repeat at least another three times.
• Now start playing from m6. Once you've done this a few times, you've got your bridge. But you're not done yet: you need to get used to approaching the bridge and using it.
• Finally, play from a few measures earlier (or from the very beginning if you like), and remember that you've got a new bridge.

At some point you'll probably trip up, and then it's worth repeating all the steps from the beginning, probably every day for a few days. You need to be patient with yourself when making this kind of change.

The most important step is actually the first one. You'll be surprised how much it helps to have a secure "landing pad", more than practicing the transition itself.

Answer 4

Richard's answer is excellent; I just wanted to add a small note to expand on it. I encourage you to think about the physicality of the passage. To mistakenly jump to the Eb requires you move your left hand several notes down the keyboard, while the correct change from B to Bb is only a half step. Surely by now you know the passage from memory. For a bit, do what you're always told not to: look at your hands. Watch them move or not move. Feel the muscular realities of the two.

Keep in mind that the "dots on the page" are just an abstraction. For music to happen in actual time, the only realities are our bodies and the vibrations of sound waves. So often we read from the printed page and think in terms of "B" or "E," but the mechanical reality is the difference between moving an inch more than the previous measure or of moving your hand four inches. Since this problem is about so-called "muscle memory," bring your muscles into the conversation.

Answer 5

The ideas presented here are based on the same principle as presented in How to avoid stopping when I play a wrong note on the piano. I recommend reading that answer in addition to this one, possibly before reading this one.

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The core of the problem

Problems like this one are often attributed to muscle memory, and physical solutions are the typical prescription. However, in the absence of a genuine physical limitation (for example, an injury that somehow prevents accurately playing certain notes), there is near always a deeper problem that, when solved, allows the muscle memory to take care of itself or at least be much easier to fix. That deeper problem lies in one's emotional understanding of the music. Emotions drive the movements we make to play the piano. (If not, then we're just robots mechanically following instructions.) Confusing two notes/measures/sections after having learned the mechanics of them means we associate or confuse them on a felt level.

To most efficiently fix the problem requires understanding the "meaning", "feel", "story", "picture", "color", or other emotional association(s) of the two measures. What makes the two measures feel different from each other?

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CAVEAT: What follows is based on my interpretation of the piece. Yours may be different. The goal here is to demonstrate an approach, not to dictate an interpretation. The key is that you practice hearing/feeling the interpretation you find best fits for you; this is how you will fix the problem.

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How do we find the difference between measures 7 and 11?

What is the larger context?

The whole piece

The title of the piece is "Lamentation for a Lost Life", and the feel of the music bears this this out: slow, sad, nostalgic, but also, in seeming contradiction, dance-like.

Within the piece, we can hear three main sections: a dance-like, nostalgic melody that feels somehow incomplete (measures 3–18); a section that feels similar, but very hollowed out (measures 19–34); and a return to the first section (measures 35–50). It's worth noting that while all three section share the identical left hand part, the middle section right hand is a stripped down ("hollowed out") variation of the melody of the first section.

The emotional progression of the piece is: bittersweet, hollow, bittersweet.

The first section

Since measures 7 and 11 are both part of the first, bittersweet section, we'll focus on that.

As with the piece as a whole, we can hear three sub-sections: a sad little dance that trails off (measures 3–6); a slightly happier repetition of the little dance which again trails off — perhaps an attempt to feel a greater presence of whomever was lost, but ending in just feeling the loss again (measures 7–10), and an attempt to revive the dance (feel the presence of the lost life) that keeps sinking lower and finally peters out (in a sense of loss) (measures 11–18).

The first section is sad, tries to be a bit happier by feeling the presence of the lost life, and then tries even harder to be happier (feel more presence), failing every time (experiencing loss).

What does this mean for measure 7?

Measure 7 is the beginning of a happier attempt at the little dance. Since it's trying for "happier", I would add some energy. I would do this by making measure 7 just a bit louder than measure 3 (note the shift from minor [measure 3] to major [measure 7]). I also might press the tempo very, very slightly in measure 7. Speeding up and playing louder both add energy — greater musical "presence" — and happiness (felt presence) is more energetic than sadness (loss).

Measure 7 is has a bit more energy/presence than measure 3.

What does this mean for measure 11?

Measure 11 not only kicks off another attempt at a happier memory, but it's a more earnest attempt: 8 measures instead of 4. And it tries to use only the dance part (presence) of the initial musical idea (measures 3-4 and 7-8), avoiding the "trailing off" (absence/loss) part (measure 5-6 and 9–10). The measure 11–18 section repeats the dance idea three times, but each time lower and lower in pitch. There's a tension between the effort of trying again and again, and the "defeat" of sinking lower and lower.

Measure 11 needs more energy than measure 7, because its the beginning of the most substantial emotional effort so far.

What is the musical difference between measures 7 and 11?

Measure 7 needs enough energy to support a four-measure idea that starts off a little bit happier or warmer than measure 3, but ends by fading away.

Measure 11 needs enough energy to sustain an eighth-measure idea that makes a substantial effort at happiness or warmth.

I would play measure 7 a slight bit louder than measure 3, and measure 11 would be louder than measure 7. I would also consider subtly pushing the tempo in measures 7 and 11 to add some momentum at the beginning of their respective phrases. Again, measure 11 needs a little more momentum than measure 7.

How to practice this?

1. Play measure 7 with the emotion you want behind it. If this takes more than 3–5 tries, you likely need to look deeper for what else might be mission at the emotional/interpretive level.
2. Play measure 11 with the emotion you want behind it. If this takes more than 3–5 tries, you likely need to look deeper for what else might be mission at the emotional/interpretive level.
3. Play measure 7 and then measure 11 (back to back, but with a pause in between), making sure you can feel/hear the difference between them. If this takes more than 3–5 tries, ....
4. Play the first phrase with the overall musical "shape" you want. If this....

A warning

Invariably, fixing problems in this way "creates" other problems. That is, deepening one's emotional understanding of a note, a chord, a measure, etc. will automatically reveal other notes/chords/measures/... that haven't yet achieved the same depth of understanding.

Answer 6

I can probably relate this to something more "native" to stackexchange. This sounds like it is not all that different from switching from Vi text editor to Emacs text editor, for a person who uses both. I can speak from some experience on that topic.

Both editors are effectively controlled exclusively by use of keyboard shortcuts, which often become learned muscle memory for common tasks.

A person using one editor exclusively for a prolonged period of time, when switching to the other one, inevitably presses the shortcuts common in the previous one. Initial period of switching requires a conscious effort for a period of a few days to a few weeks of exclusive use to re-adjust (relearn) the muscle memory.

Even in the medium term the mistakes occasionally continue to happen. They disappear virtually entirely after enough time has passed that enough of the more esoteric shortcuts, used in the old editor, become forgotten. Which is not to say the forgotten shortcuts do not get used. But rather, after the uncommon shortcuts are forgotten, the common ones stop creeping in as mistakes. This takes a period of a few months of exclusive use.

If the new use is not exclusive, then the effort may have to continue to be conscious. Occasional mistakes are inevitable. But they become less common over time simply because the conscious effort required to distinguish which editor is being used becomes part of the learned process.

Answer 7

Muscle memory is forever but you can overwrite it. However, it is always there waiting to resurface especially when we are cold or nervous. That is why things can go haywire during a performance because we let the old hardwired movements take over and anarchy reigns. This is also where injury can occur because as you improve your technique, the old muscles that you don't need anymore atrophy and are no longer there to support improper movement. You may wake up the next morning with stiff arms or hand tendons. Something to be cognizant of is playing old repertoire. If you learned a work with improper movement, that movement will be hardwired into that song forever. Unless you take the time to relearn a piece, steer away from former repertoire works.