Memorization

[Mark Gunter]

Let me point out that there is a large range of capacity in this regard, and some of us find it easy while others do not. In my case, I remember notes long before I can play them well, or even before I try to play them. This actually gets me into trouble, trying to play stuff I'm still clunky doing, or not even close to pulling off.

Really good points in that post, Tom, especially the stuff about how people differ so much in these abilities. I can identify with the first paragraph, I can learn, or memorize, the notes to many tunes easily, long before I can play them well. I can write music that I can't play well and have to put in a lot of practice on particular pieces, or to things I can hear in my mind, before I can play them decently.

While my memory in general is pretty spotty; songs, melodies, lyrics, and tunes I learn are no problem when regularly rotated. But this makes it pretty much impossible to give anyone advice on how to do this. Learning or memorizing musical pieces comes naturally, but playing them with competency is much more difficult a task.

[bratsche]

I wonder if any of us older folks who have been playing instruments since childhood really even know for sure how we memorized things when we were young. (I don't, but suspect it was by osmosis, or some such nebulous thing.) I think that all we can really analyze right now is how we do it now.

I can re-memorize things I played many years ago with little effort, even if it's been decades since I played them at all. When learning new things, though, I find that the melody of something is easy to memorize, but the harmonic structure takes a longer time and more effort. For this it definitely helps to remember how it looks printed on the staff in the sheet music. It's not that I can't hear the harmony lines, I can do that if it's just a harmony line by itself, it's that I'm not always able to pick them out simultaneously with the melody with a lot more effort, so that's where I need "hooks" to help me remember. Chord and double-stop voiced melodies are still a bit like multi-tasking to this linear-oriented musician. I'm glad I learned a lot of my Bach early on in life, so that I don't have to memorize it in the present time ;-)

The pianist I play with at church leads the congregational singing from the piano. She says she actually feels more comfortable singing in public if she can play an instrument at the same time. That is like triple-tasking to me, since her hands are already playing two lines at once. I am in awe of people who can do that. Not only can't I sing and play at the same time, I have trouble even speaking a word or two if I'm playing at the moment - I have to stop playing altogether to do more than just grunt. Ha! Although I can practice while reading (and comprehending) a page of commentary on an unrelated subject on my computer, without any problem.

It's interesting reading how our brains all work, as the diverse group of individuals we are.

bratsche

[J Mangio]

If I want to memorize a tune from sheet music I play/ practice two bars, and continue to repeat
those bars until I can play them to perfection, then I move on to the next two etc.

[JeffD]

It's interesting reading how our brains all work, as the diverse group of individuals we are.

I am thankful that it does work, however it works.

[Mark Gunter]

I wonder if any of us older folks who have been playing instruments since childhood really even know for sure how we memorized things when we were young. (I don't, but suspect it was by osmosis, or some such nebulous thing.)

I know how I did it back then. By listening to Burl Ives, Hank Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Marty Robbins on my Dad's records, over and over and over, and listening to Homer and Jethro on my aunt's records over and over and over, and later, Elvis and the Beatles on the radio and on records over and over and over. Once I got past On Top Of Old Smokey and The Red River Valley in an old guitar method book, I tried to imitate Burl Ives, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, Johnny Rivers, Herman's Hermits, The Beatles, etc. I guess maybe it was some kind of osmosis. My dad played for fun, had a big collection of old folk stuff, and would buy new stuff that suited him like that DJ . . . uh Tommy Roe, or later even McCartney's Yesterday.

[Tom Haywood]

Until my late 50s, I had a very good memory for everything except music. See it, hear it, experience it in any way, it was immediately and firmly in my memory. Photographic memory for whatever I read. Unless it was music. I have been reading music since the age of 8 and playing popular music since 13 from records and chord charts, but I could practice a piece a hundred times today and couldn't remember anything about it tomorrow. With one exception: the tunes I wrote, which I played every day. It was a kind of learning disability. In my early 50s I began playing at regular jam sessions where I'm required to sing at least a couple of songs and play lead breaks for quite a few others, and most of the songs I've heard a few times 40 or so years ago so they are not in my memory. I had to come up with a plan to learn to memorize music.

Two things from psychology have been the key. First, mental memory appears to reside in an area of the brain that is responsible for our emotions. It is easy to see that we remember things that have a strong emotional connection. So learning a song is pretty easy (once a minimum of skills are obtained) if it tells the story of an experience I've had that had some emotional impact on me. Second, psychology experiments years ago demonstrated that studying new material just before going to bed, followed by a restful, full night of sleep, yields good retention and ability to manipulate the new information. That was the secret to my college success.

When I play in public, I do not have any paper in front of me. It frequently takes a year or more to learn a new song to be able to present it without reading it. The first public presentation, I usually forget part of the song. The emotional embarrassment guarantees that I'll remember it from then on.

Fiddle tunes are difficult for me to remember because there is generally no emotional story content. Except, maybe, Whiskey Before Breakfast. That one was easy.

[Simon DS]

I (partly) remember what my music teacher once said to me 40 odd years ago. He asked where is the first finger of your left hand, no words?
Answer(s): that black dot on the paper. Or the number 3 on the line of tab. Or the sound that I heard in the song. Or it's a certain distance and direction that my HAND feels from the last known sound, note or position -depending on how I remember. Or it's a position of a passing note that forms a letter in a word or chunk or phrase that I play often. The finger could be the emotion that I feel when my hand moves from a note in a major arpeggio to minor, and that would be relative, the note feeling changes with the key etc. Or sight- my finger is here when I see the D chord on someone else's guitar. Or maybe sometimes it's a colour change...
This is one reason why music can be so complicated and wonderful, we experience things in many different ways. BUT one way to simplify it, and for me the most rewarding is the FfCP system, see Ted Eschliman at jazzmando.com. I love that feeling when the hand knows, and thinks for itself, and when it moves smoothly from note to note. Almost dancing (sometimes).
Another tip that's helped me is to play the scale of that difficult tune before and after, and also take common say four note chunks and then move everything up one note in the same scale, then up again, and again. Hear how the 'word' changes. I do this to old tunes that I learned incorrectly. It helps to break out of the old mistakes that my fingers seem intent on perpetuating. Then it's like my fingers get to the awkward part, and then instead of charging on, they ask me which way now? Anyway, good luck.

[billkilpatrick]

From a Bill Graham interview with Sharon Gilchrist:

"Once you are thinking about what you are playing, you are lost. By simply listening and playing what I hear, I am creating my own sound. Accepting that sound as is—this is what makes me happy and excited about music. Then the sound is free to evolve and grow from there. And it does. It's an adventure from there."

[farmerjones]

On up the page it was mentioned that it's one thing to remember music another to play it. Indeed. I started mandolin and fiddle at 30, but had 30 years prior to memorize (know) music. Twenty some years later, I recall a place between eight and ten thousand hours, where the two diverged. I know there's teeth gnashing every time the 10k thing is brought up. Even by the ones well passed ten thousand hours. Because there are so many facets to be focused upon, eight to ten thousand hours can be burned up and yet another facet has yet to be explored. Example being the life-long pianist or any other musician, that cannot play from memory. Or the inverse, of learning to play from notation. These things take time in the multi-thousand hour chunks. A lifetime, starts to seem short. I've never seen anyone die of knowing too much, accept in the movies. So I keep at it. I don't know if they've done studies of people that continually learn or are perpetually curious, as far as Alzheimer's or dementia is concerned. If the mind is like a muscle, like some say it is. This guy isn't going down without a fight.

[HonketyHank]

From a Bill Graham interview with Sharon Gilchrist:

"Once you are thinking about what you are playing, you are lost. By simply listening and playing what I hear, I am creating my own sound. Accepting that sound as is—this is what makes me happy and excited about music. Then the sound is free to evolve and grow from there. And it does. It's an adventure from there."

I keep seeing things that make me think that playing music and playing golf are similar in many ways. If you are consciously trying to make the swing that will yield the shot you have visualized, it will never happen. OTOH, in both golf and music, you do have to make effort while playing (or swinging) in order to train you body to make the moves that will give that result. And then you have to train your mind that it can stop thinking about it and your body will still safely take care of what needs to be done.

By the way, my golf game is not much better than my mandolin playing -- I still have to make conscious moves to get things done right. Often unsuccessfully.

[catmandu2]

... I don't know if they've done studies of people that continually learn or are perpetually curious, as far as Alzheimer's or dementia is concerned. If the mind is like a muscle, like some say it is. This guy isn't going down without a fight.

Concerning Alzheimer's/dementia and learning - unfortunately the literature and conventional view is that new tasks cannot be learned, of course relative to the severity/stage of morbidity/pathology.

However, what does not diminish as readily as memory and cognitive function impairment, or is among the last parts of the brain to be affected, is emotional functioning. This is why creative arts modalities, music, symbolic thinking, etc are often still quite robust in dementias.

[billkilpatrick]

… This guy isn't going down without a fight.

Grrrrr ….

[farmerjones]

Hank - natural affinity has to be considered too. I've played golf, and been told, "All you need is to play more golf." Nope. I ruined a Summer trying that. Never got better. Didn't have a natural affinity.

On the other hand, I play fiddle as one would eat a cheeseburger. No, I don't over think it, but at the same time I am checking to see if there's ketchup dripping out. It's not turning off your mind, but rather trusting on motor memory, because you've done it so much. If I golfed like I play, I would simply drive by and swat from the cart. (ala Willy Nelson)

[jshane]

From a Bill Graham interview with Sharon Gilchrist:

"Once you are thinking about what you are playing, you are lost."

This seems really really right to me.

[billkilpatrick]

… On the other hand, I play fiddle as one would eat a cheeseburger ...

Serious n.v.. I've got a lovely fiddle and - thanks to ffcp - I can play nice clean notes. But proper bowing is elusive and fleeting. Syncopation from the brain does not reach the arm …

Golf? … I tried - I really tried - but it never got me. Some of my inherited DNA stayed in Scotland.

[Frankdolin]

At 61 and playing mandolin since 5 I've always played by ear. And I must have the entire song locked in my head and then I'll never forget it. When I was as young as 3 I could play simple songs on the harmonica that I knew in my head which is probably my greatest skill as well as must worst enemy in that I've found it impossible to learn sight reading.I'm not that smart nor do I have a photographic memory so I can't explain it. I'm just thankful for it.

[Austin Bob]

I find that when I memorize songs best if I combine methods. Listening to it is very important, I also like to read the music or tablature if available. Then I practice, practice practice. Once I know it somewhat, I hum the notes as I play. I then switch up the rhythm or tempo. I've even tried writing it down from memory.

Combining all of these methods seem to work on different parts of my brain and helps me to remember.

[Frankdolin]

At 61 and playing mandolin since 5 I've always played by ear. And I must have the entire song locked in my head and then I'll never forget it. When I was as young as 3 I could play simple songs on the harmonica that I knew in my head which is probably my greatest skill as well as must worst enemy in that I've found it impossible to learn sight reading.I'm not that smart nor do I have a photographic memory so I can't explain it. I'm just thankful for it.

So 24 hrs later I remember I'm 63 not 61,wt#. And also I have real problems if I can't find the song in my head. In that case I need to be reminded, how's that go again? And with the way too many songs I know without knowing their name;it's a crap shoot

[billkilpatrick]

So 24 hrs later I remember I'm 63 not 61,wt#. And also I have real problems if I can't find the song in my head. In that case I need to be reminded, how's that go again? And with the way too many songs I know without knowing their name;it's a crap shoot

Ha! - That took guts … complimenti.

[BJ O'Day]

Golf? … I tried - I really tried - but it never got me. Some of my inherited DNA stayed in Scotland.

I began to enjoy golf immensely,... as soon as I stopped playing it.
BJ

[JeffD]

Fiddle tunes are difficult for me to remember because there is generally no emotional story content..

I find that many tunes have a narrative logic of their own, that creates tension and releases tension and tells a story, though not with words. A good example I would offer is Wild Rose of the Mountain . If I can tap into that narrative and catch the internal drama of the tune it makes the tune, once learned, much easier to remember

[sbhikes]

I think it helps to play a new tune a few times before you go to bed. Let it percolate. It might be memorized the following day or maybe the day after.

It also helps to just keep going to the jam and playing. The more you play, the more you try to pick up a tune you've never heard before the easier it gets. Let it take years. It's okay!

It also helps to just listen to the music without playing. Once you've got it in your head, you can teach it to yourself from what's in your head.

The best part of playing in the presence of people at a jam is that after a while you learn there isn't a "one right way" for how the tune goes.