ok I have a kind of a challenge to face.
I cannot memorize the pieces I play.
I play from sheet music all right and of course practicing is no problem there.
But I think it would come in handy if I could memorize at least SOME pieces to play.
I have tried the measure by measure (if playing in 4/4 then four counts by four counts…etc) and for one time I did fine.
Next day…couldn’t remember anymore.
my handicap is that I do have a hearing problem (although I can hear whistle/ flute allright) and maybe that has something to do with it but I have a feeling it is more than just that.
I can hum the tune for a bit no problem but I do not remember which notes to play! ARGH…
how do I overcome this, does anyone have some great tips I can try.
berti
I, too, find this difficult. The tunes I have managed to memorize seem to come out more as rote muscle memory…if I stop to think about what I’m doing I invariably glitch it. I’d say it just takes determination…and there’s a difficult weaning process which those of us raised on sheet music can maybe never quite complete.
I have been playing for 20 years and still can only play a dozen or so tunes from memory. My memory is so bad that I can play a tune from sheet music and not be able to hum it immediately after.
What seems to help is listening rather than trying to memorize. The more I hear a tune, the more likely it is to stick in my head. Once I can hear it running in my head, I can play it.
When I play with others, I do better. When I forget what comes next, I sit and listen until I remember and jump in again. I will often only have to drop out for part of one repeat. Fortunately, the people I play with are great and have no difficulty forgiving my lapses.
I do not consider myself at a level qualified to give playing tips, but am pretty fair at the remembering thing.
I suggest that you need to listen to the music enough so that you can recognize readily when you’re playing the wrong notes and so that the tunes sort of pop up in your head whether or not you want them to. Also, as suggested by Em, then it’s repetition so that muscle memory is indeed built in. Good luck.
ok…thanks for the replies BUT>>>>>>>>>>
as I said so I have a hearing problem…hearing the music allright but when listening to a cd I CANNOT hear whether someone plays say an B or an A…
for the tune itself so I can hum it along, no problem partially but for the NOTES to play it IS a problem.
should I just stick to sheetmusic for a while and just let my fingers do the memorizing and try to turn my “conscious mind” OFF and see what happens?
it is a bit hard to explain… but I will keep trying no matter what!
berti
I found that playing along with sheet music didn’t help my memory at all. It would help my fingers get used to the movements, but when it came time to play without the sheetmusic it was completely gone from my memory.
What I do is load up a tune on the PC in Transcribe, hightlight a region to loop over and then play along over and over until I get it. This can take a while. Then I move on to the next. After I can play along with the recording I start playing on my own, going back to the recording as necessary.
Two things that I think are essential…
don’t start cold, meaning don’t learn a tune you can’t hum. Listen to the recording over and over again in your car or your office or while sipping a butterscotch latte at the coffe shop until you have that song stuck in your head.
don’t get frustrated. some folks can just pick up tunes, for other’s it’s a learned behavior. I’m one of the latter. After a couple years of playing, I’m slowly getting better at picking up tunes by ear, but I’m far, far from proficient at it. At first I had to slow a tune down 50% before I could pick pu notes, now I can do it at 75%-80%.
I know a fiddle player who can pick up tunes in realtime at the session, it’s not fair.
I’ve “picked out” a couple of tunes by ear (e.g. John of the Glenn - Joanie Madden) and those I can play without any problems from memory.
Tunes I’ve learned from sheet music, I need to “pick out” again before I can play it without sheet music. That is, once I’ve learned the tune from sheet music, I put it away and try to play without it. I can play some of the tune but I stumble along for awhile, finding the right notes and play it again and again this way. Once I’ve done that, it sticks pretty well. For me, sheet music is a short cut so I don’t have to figure all of the notes by ear, but there is that additional step that can be a little frustrating, especially after having been able to play it fluently from paper.
The sensible thing is to only learn tunes you know well to hear. Tunes off CDs you’ve listened to loads so you have them in your head, can sing them, have them memorised before you attempt playing them. Makes life loads easier. Assimilate your music before you try play it.
Try to get a record of your tune and her it so often as you can. Then learn the tune to play, then play the tune from the sheet and if you know it quite well try to play with closed eyes!
This has helped me, hope it will help you!
Berti, try downloading blank sheet music from the internet, then writing out the tune you want to learn. Copy a measure, then play it. I have NEVER failed to memorize easily a piece I’ve written, usually by the time I’m done copying it. Its tedious though.
I also think that playing a measure or two while looking at it, then glancing away for the next two measures, or longer if I can keep it up. Usually if I get the first measure or two I can play the rest of that part.
And there are tunes that really lend themselves to mental pictures…at least to me they do. Saddle the Pony is one of them. The images in my head are indications of the tune itself. Maid Behind the Bar is another. Listen to a nice simple recording, get a clear image then try to play it.
I asked a fifer once how he learned his music, which is very precise, no alteration of notes or note lengths allowed. He said he ‘chunked’ each piece so he wasn’t memorizing notes, but ‘chunks’ of music. Three note patterns, eight note patterns, whatever made sense.
Lastly, if I have a complicated version of a tune, I tend to memorize that version exclusively. If, however, I have a ‘bare bones’ version without variations I tend to learn it more fluidly, and can put in my own variations without losing track of where I am.
Best of luck! Once you figure out a trick that works for you, you’ll probably be off and running!
I agree with those who said to get a tune in your head so that you can hum it or sing it.
One thing that helps me is to keep a list of song titles with the first note for each. If I can’t quite get started, I can play that note, then imagine or hum the tune, and the rest of the notes start to come. On a few odd tunes, I put down 3 or 4 notes to get me going.
OK, some might find this totally wierd, but its worked for me ever since HS band where we were’t allowed lyres on the field or on parade. You either memorized every piece (and proved it to a very picky bandmaster) or someone else took your place in the line.
If its a song you’re learning, learn the song (words and melody). Somehow, this is easier than learning a series of notes. Then, when practicing or playing, ‘sing’ the song mentally as you play. It helps keep the melody in your mind. If it’s a tune without words, learn the melody the same way and ‘sing’ it as well when you play.
The other thing is just practice a lot.
FWIW, and I am certainly not much of a musician myself, sheet music is great for telling you which notes to play, but if I try to learn a tune just from sheet music, then I find myself having to follow a mental picture of the staff and getting easily confused.
Record yourself playing a tune from the sheet music at a reasonable speed (not cd fast, in other words). Then, listen to the recording over and over (if you can’t already hum the tune). Then, sit down and play along with the recording, and figure out the really obvious notes - for example, if the tune is in G, then find all the points where there are longs Gs. DO NOT go back to the sheet music at this stage. Get to the stage where you can play all the obvious notes every time round. Then try to figure out what’s happening in between them. Does the melody go up or down? Are there any big interval jumps? Can you hum what happens? Concentrate on the sound of the tune, not on the exact notes, and try to switch off your conscious mind and let your fingers do the work. This sounds weird, and is kind of scary, but it seems to work for most people. Try to get to the stage where you have most of the notes without the music, and only go back to the sheet music if you are absolutely stuck.
Memorizing and training your ear so you can pick tunes up require the same skills. You get to the stage where you can hum it, and then you transfer it to your fingers. The trick to getting good at either lies in making the transfer process faster. Like anything else, this requires practice, so don’t give in and go back to the notes. After a while, you won’t have to think about the exact notes any more - you’ll hear the tune, and there will be run of notes going up, and your fingers will automatically know what to do (and where to start and stop).
Trick: the geeker you get, the older the tunes you kept in memory. Like born in the late 40’s all you can remember may be “Apache” by The Shadows, and something even cornier by The Platters, and you just can’t memorize this Session tune.
Berti, Do you know your learning style? When you try to remember a phone number , do you see a picture of it written in your address book in your mind’s eye, or do you hear it as you may have recited it out loud at one time, or do you remember it by the pattern of the touch tone phone keys under your fingers?
I am a visual learner so when I memorize I can usually picture parts of the music I’ve seen on sheet music. The auditory learner is the type that can listen and remember ( I wish I could be more auditory but it just ain’t in me!) The tactile learner remembers the placement and touch of certain passages by feel. There are other styles I once heard about in a teaching seminar but I don’t remember them all…Many people use a combination of more than one learning style when memorizing.
If you are a visual learner, its pretty tough to put on a recording and try to play along or memorize from it, as an auditory learner would, especially if you can’t hear well!
Or maybe you are an auditory learner who is trying to memorize visually using sheet music, which would account for your frustration.
How about ear phones… or how about sheet music AND earphones?
A tip I got from my instructor in a beginner’s class is to convert the tune into mouth music. Then you can repeat the tune over and over again while at work, while driving, while walking laps in the gym, where ever. Repetition seems to work for me.
Also it is hard to be grumpy at work when you are quietly repeating Salley gardens to yourself all day long.
I recommend excessive practice. Try over and over to memorize a tune, one phrase at a time (2 to 4 measures).
It may seem hopeless at first, but these things are learnable skills. The last thing you want to do is fool yourself into thinking “I must just be naturally bad at this.” This will only impede your progress.
No matter what, you’re better off with a recording to learn from, and I don’t mean a CD full of rip-roaring speedy ornaments and fancy accompaniment. L.E. McCullogh’s book+CD set, available from Homespun Tapes, is worth checking out. This has music written on sheet music, and the same played on whistle. The recordings are easy to hear.
Have you tried the blue tac tweak? It helps people memorize music. You take a piece of blue tac about the size of a marble and squash it flat against your forhead. Move it around and flatten it out to get it in just the right spot. When you start remembering tunes better, you’ll have it in the right place.
Don’t place it too high, or you’ll remember the high notes too easily and the low notes you won’t remember for sh*t. Same goes for placing it too low.
Some people cut a very small bevel out of the back of thier skulls to help them remember the low notes better with out affecting the high notes. Don’t cut too much or you won’t remember anything at all.
Another thing you might try is very lightly rubbing sandpaper across your face. Use the finest grade of sandpaper you can get, and start very softly. You don’t want to sand off too much or no one will recognize you.
That’s probably about as far as you need to go at home.
