{"id":6562,"date":"2015-03-29T23:06:40","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T06:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6562"},"modified":"2015-03-29T23:11:07","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T06:11:07","slug":"how-to-memorize-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/how-to-memorize-music\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Memorize Music…"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing that all musicians struggle with, no matter your age or experience level, it’s memorizing music and being able to keep it in your memory for longer than a day or 2.<\/p>\n

For beginners, memorizing lets you get your eyes back on the guitar as soon as possible so you can focus on actually moving them where they are supposed to go and playing notes cleanly and precisely.<\/p>\n

As you hit the intermediate level, you start wanting to be able to remember songs or signature licks and riffs from those songs… as well as memorizing licks that you might use for improvising.<\/p>\n

\"iStock_000014640293XSmall\"<\/a>For the advanced or pro players, it can be memorizing enough songs to get through a 3 or 4 set night and have some in reserve in case someone out there yells “Free Bird!” (yes, it will happen.)<\/p>\n

Obviously I’m slanting this a little more towards more popular music styles like blues, rock, country, or jazz… but classical musicians have similar situations and similar struggles.<\/p>\n

As someone who has personally learned literally thousands of songs in the last 30 years… as well as 2 hours worth of classical repertoire in my 20’s… I’ve learned a thing or 2 about memorization.<\/p>\n

But the things that work for me don’t just work for me, they can work for you too I found by reading several different studies including this one<\/a> that seemed to echo what I’ve also discovered.<\/p>\n

So I’ll save you some time and give you 3 things you can do today that will help with your memorization:<\/p>\n

Make chunks out of parts you already know by another name…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you recognize that the chord progression to the song you’re working on is a common chord progression (like I, IV, I, V) then instead of remembering, “G, C, G, D, G, C, G, C, G, C, G, D, G, C, G, D” (yuck!!!) you can make it much easier.<\/p>\n

That monstrosity above becomes “I, IV, I,V 4 times,” which is a LOT easier to remember.<\/p>\n

If you’re learning “Sunshine Of Your Love” and notice that the main riff is nothing but the minor blues scale (box 1) that makes it a heck of a lot easier to remember than trying to remember each and every single note by name or fret\/string.<\/p>\n

Get comfortable with song form names<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Things like verse<\/em>, chorus<\/em>, bridge<\/em>, pre-chorus<\/em>, intro<\/em>, and outro<\/em> are all labels we use for the various parts of a song.<\/p>\n

Along with chunking like we talked about above, you can break a song into big pieces that are easy to remember.<\/p>\n

The chorus of a song is most easily described as the part you walk away humming… it’s the hook. Verses tend to go between choruses while the bridge is usually in the middle and breaks things up a little bit. Intros and Outros are the beginning and end sections of the song, respectively.<\/p>\n

Not every song has every section and blues songs often just have an intro, choruses, and an outro. But many, like “Ain’t Gonna Give Up On Love” have a bridge as well.<\/p>\n

Memorize early and often…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When I learn a new tune, I go over it a few times with the music or the recording and then I try it on my own with no help.<\/p>\n

I go as far as I can, and when I’m stumped I go find what I should have done next. From there I keep going until I get stumped again and so on.<\/p>\n

Using this technique I used to be able to learn the entire set of lyrics to a song in the 40 minute drive from my lessons to the gig. I would go over the song in my car on the way and sing it on the bandstand that night after having only heard in on the radio a few times.<\/p>\n

I also firmly believe that memorization is a skill like any other… if you never use it, you will lose it. I don’t do it as well as I used to because I don’t have to. But if I need to learn a bunch of tunes for a gig, I know that within a few days I can have them all down comfortably.<\/p>\n

I also know that learning a new lick or new anything is going to be pretty straightforward because I’ve done it so much.<\/p>\n

The more you memorize early and often, the more comfortable you’ll get with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing that all musicians struggle with, no matter your age or experience level, it’s memorizing music and being able to keep it in your memory for longer than a day or 2. For beginners, memorizing lets you get your eyes back on the guitar as soon as possible so you can focus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6562"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6568,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6562\/revisions\/6568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}