I refuse to do a gig staring at an Ipad
October 3, 2022 10:32 AM   Subscribe

Calling all Mefi musicians that read scores, tabs, and lead sheets: how do you memorize what you're working on? Have there been any specific techniques passed down from teachers and friends that have been particularly helpful?
posted by umbú to Media & Arts (11 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
The only way I've ever done it successfully is to memorize the last measure and then work backwards a measure at a time to the beginning until I can play the whole thing. As a kid I was taught to physically number the measures, but now I just eyeball it.

Also, if you have to play via iPad, invest in a Bluetooth foot pedal to turn pages.
posted by michaelh at 10:36 AM on October 3, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm not a musician, but I've memorized a lot of poetry and I agree about starting at the end and then working your way towards the front. That way you get more repetitions of the end, and when you practice you're always going towards something more familiar. It makes it less stressful.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 10:53 AM on October 3, 2022 [6 favorites]


I'm a bass player. I write and perform my own jazz compositions, and I can't remember them AT ALL. I read sheet music along with everyone else. I wish I could remember these songs along with jazz standards, but without the opportunity to play out several nights a week, this stuff just never sinks in for me.

If it's stuff for a band I've been in, it just comes down to repetition. I just saw a video on youtube where bass player Lee Sklar was talking about how he memorized 30 songs for a one-off Lyle Lovett show, an he said he spent one day just listening to the songs in his car so he absorbed them. Then he spent the next few days playing along. I would try this is a similar situation came up for me.

One trick I've used (after running through the songs a bunch of times) for one-off gigs, or for people I don't play with a lot is to write little notes on the set list. Quite often, it's just what my first note is (not even the key of the song — just the first note). And once I hit that first note and everyone else has started, I remember what to do. I'll occasionally write notes about the form of the song, or I'll notate the rhythm in one part, but having the first note is enough for 99% of the time. And since it's on the set list (or a list of songs we might play) it's discrete enough that I don't have to stare at anything throughout the song.
posted by jonathanhughes at 11:25 AM on October 3, 2022 [3 favorites]


I'll agree with Jonathan - it's sheer repetition that works for me. I fill in on guitar with a number of bands, and when I get the call from a new band I ask them to send me their set list. I then make a Spotify playlist and listen for a couple of days and then start playing along. I always print out a copy of the set list with keys, and maybe short notes on parts of songs that are stubbornly not sinking in while I practice them.

The idea of starting at the end of a song and working backwards has never occurred to me. I'll have to try that.
posted by MrKellyBlah at 12:44 PM on October 3, 2022 [3 favorites]


I play or sing through the piece a couple of times with the music in front of me, then try it without the music, skipping forward when I get to a part I don't know (skipping a long way if necessary - maybe I can only remember the chorus or a bit of a later verse to start with). Then go back to the music and look up the bits I didn't know, playing through those again from the music. Repeat until sufficiently complete.

(This works better if a song's lyrics tell a story, because it's easier to fill in gaps...)
posted by offog at 12:48 PM on October 3, 2022


I sing, and consider myself good at memorisation.

I start with text and rhythm. Speak the text in rhythm while walking, or while tapping the rhythm with one hand on my chest or sternum.

Then add music. Go by sections. Sometimes starting from the end works best, as suggested above-- I like doing that for long Baroque coloratura passages.

If you have to wait for a certain number of bars, count the bars or (better) sing the music in between to yourself. (in the practice room, not in performance obviously)

Be scrupulously accurate in reading the music as you learn. Check and check again. Forgetting is better than mislearning, which you have to un-learn and learn again.

Do you learn better by listening than by reading? Make a recording, or play/sing along with an existing one if it's a situation where quick memorisation is required.

It is frustrating. A teacher once told me "Work till you think you'll scream, then work some more, then maybe you'll be working up to your potential."

A friend of mine learns text by writing it down, and then writing it again smaller and smaller in different colours. Something about the motor control engages his mind. He has special colourful fine-tipped pens that he uses for this.

Things that aid memorisation:

The scent of rosemary


Taking breaks (spacing)

Cross-lateral exercises (I do walking in place, touching each knee to the opposite hand, while going over music and/or text. Sounds like woo-woo, but in my personal experience it works)

Hope this helps!
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:24 PM on October 3, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'll add that in the intermediate stage of memorisation, when you're away from the score but not yet fully internalised, most people will either be

- reading off a score that they see in their head

or

- singing along to sound they hear in their head

That is, they will use either a visual memory of the score or an auditory memory of the sound as their aid/reference. A few will have a primarily kinetic memory-- that is, a string player might remember the pattern of bowing, plucking and fingering as physical actions or as a shape rather than primarily as sound. But kinetic memorisers will more often do dance, theatre or sport than music.

(Kinetic memory also helps in opera, though; we internalise the music along with the staging)

Another teacher once told me "when you memorise a piece of music, you're re-composing it in your head." The written score is only an intermediary in that process between the original composer and you.

When your music is fully internalised, you're no longer counting or thinking about entrances or cues or about your technique; the music is *yours* and you're creating it in that moment. At that point, you are able to "forget" the memorisation process and just tell the story, beginning anew every time. Takes a hell of a lot of work to get to that stage, though.
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:53 AM on October 4, 2022


There's extensive instruction on memorizing in Fundamentals of Piano Practice - in particular:

Chapter 6: Memorizing
Chapter 12. Learning, Memorizing, and Mental Play

The basic approach (summary) is:
* listen to the piece and analyze its structure
* learn the piece in tiny chunks, starting with the most difficult - and START by memorizing the chunk. Don't play until after you've memorized it.

And specifically,
Chapter 6: Begin by memorizing bars 2 to 4 of the LH [Left Hand], including the first two notes (conjunction) of bar 5. It should take less than a minute to memorize; then start playing it at speed. Take your hands off the piano, close your eyes, and play this section in your head (MP [Mental Play]), visualizing every note and key that you play (photographic and keyboard memory). Then do the same for the RH [Right Hand], bars 1 to 4, including the first 4 notes of bar 5. Now return to the LH and see if you can play it without the score, and similarly with the RH.
Chapter 12: Whenever you memorize a small section, close your eyes and see if you can play it in your mind without playing it on the piano.
posted by kristi at 5:49 PM on October 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also, on pages 9-10 of Jamey Aebersold's Jazz Handbook (free PDF), he lays out

Tips for Learning a New Tune
Practice Procedures for Memorizing Scales and Chords to Any Song

(The Practice Procedure is basically: play the song, playing just the tonic at each chord change; then again playing the first 2 notes of each scale, then 3 notes of the scale, for a total of 12 variants - and by the time you've played it through 12 times in slightly different ways, you will know the song, he says.)
posted by kristi at 5:59 PM on October 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks all for your thoughtful responses! I've realized through reading them that a major part of the challenge for me right now is that I've been using a different alternate tuning on guitar for each tune that I've arranged. (Clearly, this was a practice I started doing during COVID lockdown, when I couldn't even imagine playing a show in public, let alone envision what a pain it would be to change tunings in between each song on stage.)

The problem ends up being that, when I try to memorize one of these arrangements, my fingers (and my mind) have a conflict between what's on the page, and which fret numbers are associated with what pitches in my underlying muscle habits that were formed in standard tuning. It ends up feeling like memorizing a poem letter by letter, rather than word by word and line by line.
posted by umbú at 6:48 AM on October 6, 2022


Response by poster: I've decided not to mark a best answer, but only because I was marking all of them!
posted by umbú at 8:21 AM on October 6, 2022


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