I’m at the beginning of my third year at music school, and I still have a big issue when I play.
When I play an easy or intermediate piece, I don’t have much trouble following the sheet music. However, when a piece gets harder, I keep looking at the score as usual, but the more I practice and the more muscle memory kicks in, the harder it becomes to follow the score accurately.
For example, I learnt Never Forget from Halo 3, which is a pretty challenging piece for my level. At first, I needed to look at the score, but once I started playing it well, looking at the score began to completely throw me off.
The main issue is that I feel like I never really know my pieces well enough to play them from the score alone, and muscle memory ends up taking over. I really want to improve this, so does anyone have any suggestions ?