[osian]

How long does it take you to memorise a piece of music and can anyone offer any tips/techniques?
I can memorise about a dozen pieces from Juan Martin's Flamenco book/CD...I can also play from memory several classical pieces and other finger style pieces like Pepinni D'Agostino's 'Born in the sea' but,they all took quite a long time! I'd be grateful for any tips.
thanks

[osian]

Sorry that should have been Pepinno

[__tsidewinder__]

Good question. I'd like to hear what others have to say about this.

[solidwalnut]

Well, I'd say that memorization is a game as well as only gained by hard practice.

A person will remember what they play if they play it over and over again so it becomes rote, but there's a couple of shortcuts.

One is that realizing that pop music (rock, folk, jazz, blues, etc.) is written in sections. Learn one section and it will mostly apply to the other similar sections.

So if you learn the chorus, then the music is most likely going to be the same every time, with maybe a few exceptions and differences.

If you learn a verse, the same applies. It will be very close to the same musically, so you can hang your hat on that.

When it comes to classical and other styles, I think some of that can transfer over. Even though those types of songs seem to (or can be) different from beginning to end, there will be sections that will be similar. Take the shortcuts and learn to recognize where those are.

The same can apply for singing any song.

Memorizing lyrics, now that's another challenge, but it's similar, e.g. the chorus will always be the same.

Steve

[mattz196]

I really struggle with memory thing , the only thing I have found to help is to force myself not to look constantly at the tab but try to imbedd a song a bar at time from memory . I find even simple to play things when looking at the tab just don't stick unless I force myself to play them without looking.

[jdpaz]

I agree with sw. Take it in sections.

Something I've also tried is start memorizing at the end of the song and work your way forward until you've learned the whole thing. That way the further along in the song you get the more familiar it'll be.

[Kirk Lorange]

I think if you know even a little about how music is structured the process of remembering tunes becomes easier. If all you're doing is remembering to move your fingers to certain frets at certain times, it's going to take a lot longer that if you're remembering the chord that underlies the moment and how that chord fits into the whole progression. If you can remember that kind of thing, then the details will fall into place more easily and can even change slightly without ruining everything.

It's a bit like memorizing the way to friend's house in a big city: if you know that (for example) it's on the south side of town, across the river, and that you take highway 1 before you take exit 33, and then turn left at the second junction, then to the top of the hill etc. ... that's a lot easier than thinking "I turn right when I leave my driveway, then first left, then third right, then second left, then fifteenth right, then third spoke at the traffic circle, bear left at the Y junction, then left at the traffic lights, then the seventh exit off the highway etc.

The first way of remembering allows for mistakes to be made and corrected easily; the second will leave you stranded if you make one wrong turn. That's when the dreaded "oops, made a mistake ... I'll need to start over again" syndrome comes in.

Knowing a bit about the key, which chords are likely to come into play etc., is a good place to start.

[Lcjones]

.... just to add to my thoughts into the memorization process.....

Music, in general, is repetitious. It's the nature of the beast. As Steve mentions, verse 2 is 99.9% going to be musically the same as verse 1.

Music in itself is written in sections. Measures. 4 beats per measure. 8 Beats per measure, .etc., etc., though not always in even counts. Some may be odd, like 3/4 or 6/8. However, the accumulated measures are a stanza. Though measures may be different musically, in most cases there will be a coda at the end of an certain number of measures, arbitrary and completely at the whim of the author of the music, which indicates to the musician a return to the beginning of the stanza and repeat. That complete set of measures would then become a verse if lyrics are written and a stanza whether lyrics are written or not. (and I'm digging way back into my formative piano years here)

As with everything you learn in life, it is learned by repetition. The more you do something, the less you think about doing it and the more it becomes an extension of your automatic processes.

A beginning guitarist will most likely choose simple songs to learn. Such a Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. And right now let me express my sentiments to beginning guitarist. It is OK to learn Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. It will serve you well. But as a beginning guitarist, pianist, or bassist, or trombonist, you will only learn and memorize it by repeatedly practicing the melody. Repetition.

As far as how long it takes to learn and memorize? Well, that is completely dependent upon the individual learning the tune. I may learn a particular tune faster than someone else. Likewise, they may learn a different tune faster than I.

I would not get hung up how long it takes to learn a tune. Every single player learns at a different pace. Heck, I've been learning some tunes for 25 years and still can't get them down. Some tunes I can hear once or twice and can tell you exactly whats going on and play them without a hitch.

Learn the tunes you want and take the time you need to learn them.

**
LC

[AX7221]

Originally Posted by mattz196

I really struggle with memory thing , the only thing I have found to help is to force myself not to look constantly at the tab but try to imbedd a song a bar at time from memory . I find even simple to play things when looking at the tab just don't stick unless I force myself to play them without looking.

Me too. If I constantly look at the chords I never have to recall a chord from memory, so I'm not making a whole lot of progress on the memory front. So sometimes I'll stop playing for like 5 (even 10 seconds) b/c I can't remember the next chord, until finally I remember it, and once I do that I almost always remember that chord change.

[osian]

I'm taking note of ALL your replies. Sadly I'm one of those people who memorises note by note,so I'm going to take Kurts advice there.
This may be slightly off topic but as a self taught I lack the linear disciplined aproach to practice therefore I'm 'all over the place'.
Lessons are out due to time constraints,but what surprises me is amongst several friends who had lessons only one or two stick with them,the others virtualy all say they gave up paying a guy to sit watching them play scales and chords and gave up the lessons and taught themselves.
Twinkle twinkle!!!!!! Sorry! I'm one of those people who if ever found themselves playing 'Greensleeves' would quietly open a vein whilst sitting in a warm bath!
I know a lot can be learned from such tunes but I find it physically immpossible to play them! Why IS that?
Thanks again to you all.

[Black&Blue]

To me it is vital to have a sense of the melody. I simply cannot learn by playing from tab- it doesnt carry any sense of the music to me.Give me a good melody and I can recall it 20 years after. Though I do use tab to some extent I find properly notated music gives me a much clearer idea of the voices being suggested and the layout of the chords- andI assimilate all the information much faster.

Another issue is that as a relative beginner you work on a piece of music and you have so many technical issues with fingering and with getting your right hand to behave itself that you really do lose sight of the structure of the music.

I'd also strongly endorse Kirk's comments about knowing a bit of theory. Once you understand things like how a turnaround works or how to play alternating bass fingerstyle whatever you can start to learn music in chunks rather than note by note.

In the end though everything feeds back on itself. The more melodies you know, the more thoroughly you understand the kes and the harmonised scales, and the more comfortable you are with your technique- the faster you will learn.

[wcostley]

Thanks for starting the thread osian, it's been very interesting reading the replies, I hope at least a little of what I've read sinks in, I'm probably one of the worlds worst at memorizing.
Skip

[AX7221]

Originally Posted by osian

ITwinkle twinkle!!!!!! Sorry! I'm one of those people who if ever found themselves playing 'Greensleeves' would quietly open a vein whilst sitting in a warm bath!
I know a lot can be learned from such tunes but I find it physically immpossible to play them! Why IS that?
Thanks again to you all.

That is quite a graphic metaphor! I guess the reason you be you're looking at the short term? Which isn't bad, there's different ways to go about things, like I do things for short term gains then other things for the long term gains. When you wrote "there's a lot to be learn from such tunes" to hit the nail right on the head, basically it sounds like you recognize that's its beneficial you just don't have the motivation right now to go down that route.

The whole purpose of playing guitar is to enjoy it, and if we could, we would choose to only do what we enjoy the most, unfortunately that isn't the case. I've heard an anology for college that I think applies here too. People don't have to go to college (atleast more so 15-20 years ago), people can get an unskilled job, and they'll get job training over the years and just say after 20 years they get a job position "A". Now the person can on the other hand can go to college then when he/she graduate he/she start working at the job position "A".

Okay, so I used just mess around on guitar, I didn't know any chords and I didn't know any scales, and I had fun. Basically all I did was play fifth and fourth harmonies all over the place (note: I didn't know what a perfect fifth was nor did I know what a perfect fourth was I just knew if I played a note and another note on the same fret 1 string up or 2 frets up and 1 sting up I liked the way it sounded). However after some time that wasn't enough, and I wanted more.

So I started to learn scales and intervals. I learned the term "perfect fifth" and "perfect fourth," but I also learned a whole slew of stuff that would have taken a long time to figure out. Something that I found interesting was when I looked at my old recordings they were basically all in the minor key, but I didn't ulitize all 7 notes scale, I just knew some of them. So my brain was all setup up to hear minor keys, and so when I would experiment with say a fifth harmony on the root then a fifth harmony 4 half steps up (a major third) it sounded bad. So, when I learn the major scale it too opened up a ton of new stuff to me.

In short, play to have fun, but at some point everything you know just won't cut it and you will be willing to do the boring stuff (learn more things) to expand your horizons...maybe you will even learn from greensleeves...minus the graphic analogy.

[Black&Blue]

I guess another point about tunes like Greensleeves or Twinkle Twinkle is that you already know them- they are so common that almost anyone could hum them from memory. They might be utterly banal but their familiarity gives you a great starting point when you try to get under the hood and see how they work. There are lots of other choices you could make- but what you want is simplicity and familiarity. These sort of tunes are also really helpful for when you want to move up a step and learn to sing and play guitar at the same time.

[scott58]

This is a difficult question. As some of you know I'm trying to play the entire dark side of the moon album and the memorization process really comes down to how complicated the music is I've heard this album thousands of times and believe me that helps, but I still have about 11 pages of tabs in front of me. I don't have to look at them all the time, but i still have to look. Knowing the fretboard and knowing the music is key, but when the brain farts.........