Memorising Pieces

After learning a piece through, it is important to be able to play and practice it without the music in front of you! I am still working on Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, I can play it through without the music in front of me, but stumble in the middle part - where is it going!! I looked through it for patterns to be guideposts, it was easy to find a way to memorize this section. In the left hand part there is a little chromatic melody going from B to A, then up to C. When I memorized this little bit, the whole section came together! Often it is the harmonic progression that helps with memorising, in this case I found help with a little melodic snippet. It did not help for me to analyse the chords, because where I was stumbling, the chords were in inversions or had upper structures with non-chord notes. memorising music