Why Does the End of a Piece Always Fall Apart?
1. Beginning
You may have noticed that the opening of a piece of music becomes the most secure part of the piece. As you learn more of the piece, the bars later on feel like they are more likely to be hit by a mistake. The obvious conclusion is that the beginning of a piece of music is the first thing that you learn, and so you’ve practiced it the most. However, while this is definitely true, there is a little more to it than that.
Of course, it is true that we don’t practice pieces evenly, we tend to spend much more time and many more practice sessions covering the earlier parts of a piece of music. But each time we play through the piece, we are also reinforcing the opening, often without including the later parts that we may not have learnt yet.
Along with that, when first beginning a piece of music, we experience the novelty effect. The opening requires a little more active focus because you need to work out the notes, the rhythms, the sound and the meaning of the music for the first time. This inevitably means that the opening section gets encoded in your brain a little better. Later in the piece, the music is often new enough to need learning, but similar enough to earlier parts that you don’t have to deeply work out what is happening.
This combination of factors means that we tend to have a very strong opening, a less stable middle section, and a weaker ending.
So what can we learn from this, and what can you do about it?
2. Breakdown
Later in a piece, a more deliberate attempt needs to be made to secure the music.
Breaking the music down in a way that requires you to more heavily practice the least stable parts is one way to combat this problem. Often, I advise students to learn the beginning and the end of the piece at the same time. While learning the first 4 bars, also learn the last 4 bars.
This does two main things.
Firstly, it is akin to learning two separate pieces of music at the same time. You can mentally divide your practice so that you are focusing on two entirely separate sections that will eventually meet. Those who are more likely to accidentally start playing through the piece can benefit from starting at the end, because there is no more music after the bars that you are attempting to work on.
Secondly, it allows you to make the end and the beginning of the piece equally strong. You are learning the end at the same time as you are working out how the music is supposed to sound. Learning the end and working backwards also means that you know the end of the story, and this can greatly influence how you approach the middle section as you connect what you have learnt at the beginning with what you have learnt at the end.
Typically, when a player starts from the beginning and slowly works through the music, it can slow down the progression of a piece as you get stuck on a particular technique. Treating the piece in this way allows you to continue progressing by working on other sections.
To push this further, you can also have three starting points: the beginning, the end and the peak of the piece.
Typically, around 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through a piece, there is a peak (the moment the music has been building towards before resolving at the end). If you treat this moment as a starting point, you can solidify the structure of the piece, learn it more quickly and make it more secure under your hands.
3. Reliability
Learning a piece of music doesn’t need to be a linear process. In fact, more often than not, it is better to learn a piece in a way that helps you understand the story the music is trying to tell. Practicing each section as if it were its own piece allows you to move between sections in a way that naturally builds musicality.
When we think of a story like Little Red Riding Hood, we tend to remember the key plot points rather than each individual word. These larger moments become more securely embedded in our memory. In the same way, we can break down a piece of music into its key moments and approach it in a way that promotes that same level of security.
If the end of a piece seems to fall apart, it’s not only because it’s been practiced the least, but also because it has had the least focused attention on what the music is trying to do. So try treating it as an entirely separate learning activity and see if that makes the difference.
Matt
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