Why You Shouldn’t Leave the Ending of a Piece Until Last
1. Why We Ignore the Ending
One of the most impactful techniques I use when both practicing myself and teaching students is to approach a piece from both ends. Early on in my playing career I would typically start a piece at the beginning and slowly but surely work my way to the end of the piece bar-by-bar. However, a teacher of mine once suggested learning the final phrase of the piece of music and working backwards one phrase at a time as well. Now, this is a fundamental part of how I approach a piece of music.
Learning the end of a piece of music actually does several things. Firstly, the ending of the piece of music often has a much clearer direction and meaning. Imagine you are reading a book trying to work out how you are supposed to feel as you read through the story. This is great as a consumer of the content because there are surprises and this is what makes the story interesting. However, as a creator of the content it’s much more advantageous to understand where that piece of music is going so that you can emphasise and interpret things that are happening early to arrive at that destination. This is why authors often have plot points and outcomes predetermined before writing the story.
In a musical context, we can see if the piece has a big finish, does it return to where it started or does it fade away into the distance? Knowing this might help you understand the overarching narrative of the piece of music and therefore what to emphasise as you are playing. Does the middle section need to feel big so that the end feels more tragic, does the middle need to leave room for a big finish?
2. Why the Ending Falls Apart
The ending of a piece for those that practice from bar 1 onwards is often the weakest part of the piece. There is much more time spent on the opening of a piece and therefore this is the strongest, most comfortable part. However, this means that the most impactful moment in a piece of music (how you leave the audience feeling) is much less thought through and stable.
Practicing the ending early in your learning of a piece enables you to become confident in how the piece is going to be left with your audience. There is a famous psychological principle called the “Primacy-Recency Effect,” which is the phenomenon where people tend to remember the start and the end far more than the middle. So if you make mistakes in the middle of a piece of music, if you start and finish strong then they will likely remember your playing as a great performance.
So working through a piece of music both forwards and backwards means that the two most important moments (the start and the end) are the most practised and the most thoroughly thought-out moments in the music.
Learning the end of a piece of music alongside the start of the piece of music also allows you to learn the piece of music almost like you are learning two separate pieces of music. It is much easier and faster to learn a piece of music this way because of this. You can practice much longer by switching to the ending of the piece when you’re fatigued because your brain gets tired of processing the same patterns and becomes re-energised by novelty. This is the psychology behind the “Pomodoro Technique,” for example, which is built on the idea that your concentration has a natural limit (typically 20–40 minutes) but switching tasks resets your focus.
3. How to Use the Ending Earlier
So how do you actually use this idea in your practice?
Well, here is how I approach learning a piece of music and how you can change yours to benefit from learning the ending early in your practice without neglecting the beginning too.
Step 1 - Start with the opening.
The best thing to do first is always to learn the opening of a piece of music (perhaps the first couple of phrases). This is where you find most of the information about the character, tempo and the general feel of the piece. You need context for the music before jumping anywhere else.
Step 2 - Learn the ending of the piece
After you have an idea of where the piece of music starts and what general themes are in the music, it is great to work out where the music is going to end up. You can do this by maybe starting 8 bars from the end and working through to the end, making sure you make a mental note of how it relates to where you started. Does it end back home or does it feel like it’s changed in some way?
Step 3 - Work through to the middle
As you continue to practice through from the beginning to the middle of the piece, think about how the ending influences what is important throughout the piece. Are there particular themes that appear at the end that you are hearing for the first time in the middle? Do you need to bring those out more so that they are more impactful at the end?
Step 4 - Keep jumping backwards from the end
After you have the final phrase of the piece of music, jump backwards a phrase at a time. Doing this will help you keep applying more context to the ending. It also has the added benefit of stopping you from just playing through what you can already play. Unlike the beginning, there are only finite bars to play through if you start from the end.
The ending doesn’t need to be the first thing that you learn, however, once you have context for the piece, it’s important to treat practicing the end with the same importance that the ending has to a listener.
Matthew Cawood
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