# Chopin - Winter wind



## Rilk (Mar 8, 2013)

I'm trying to learn Chopin's etude no. 23 in A minor (winter wind) and am struggling to memorize it. The patterns are so complex... 

does anyone have tips?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

One measure at a time, one quarter note of a measure at a time, like everyone else.

Since the etudes are about highly repetitions exercise patterns, those are very nearly the same, or with slight differences.

Name each one of type, either, 1, 2, 3, A, B, C, etc. to fix them as entities in your mind. Know too, the fundamental key or harmony point each is on, i.e. iv of the key, or just generic, 'E minor,' for example. Any way you can attach an identifier to each similar passage, cement in memory what 'key' it is in,' and then that helps keep track of 'which one' and 'where you are' in the piece.

Ideal memorization, you should be able to stop or start on any quarter note anywhere in the piece. If you do not have the gift of an eidetic memory, you'll have to work it like the rest of us 

P.s. Do music, yourself and the world a favor, and never use those ghastly Non-composer given nicknames for these works (Chopin is on record as having no truck with that sort of sentiment or literal associations attached to his music.)

Instead, it is Chopin's Étude Op. 25, No. 11. That's how Freddy called'em, and so should we all.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

I haven't played this one, but I know from other works that Chopin often groups fast notes together in "handfuls". If you divide up the passagework at the places where the hand moves, you get more easily learnable units that then repeat. For example you could learn each of these handfuls with a pause in between:








Then the rest of the line is just those four handfuls repeated in order.
As it happens, Chopin re-uses two of those handfuls in the next passage. The red one is unchanged. The dark blue one is exactly like the light blue except that the F has received a sharp. So you get an extra little bonus there.








That might help you make sense of it. It's never going to be truly easy though. It's a Chopin etude! It takes dozens of hours of sweat, if not hundreds, and then you have to make it look easy...


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