I was just wondering if anyone has any tricks they use for memorizing music.
play the song over and over again till you can hear it in your head, that’s normally when i can start to ignore the sheet music. Normally takes 20 times of playing the song over and over to get to that point for me. hope this helps a little
Hey StewySmoot! Make this fool an avatar. I’m getting a migraine.
Athena, it takes me about twenty passes too, and then a few days to set. I usually break them down into phrases, work out the kinks, and then string the phrases together. During the day I try to make a point of playing through the tune in my mind. Some get etched into place on the first few passes. Once in awhile one just never finds a place to roost, and moves on. Do whatever works, I guess.
I saw a great Ann Coulter avatar today. Cant find the link!
I digress…
To me, a lot of ITM is repetitive so I find that learning typical phrases makes it a lot easier to pick up tunes (ie, the old “de-DA-da-duh-DUM”). Whenever I post my 2 cents, I drop in a line about practicing scales and breathing.
These go hand in hand with learning a tune: you need to know the scales on a whistle, be nimble, breathe in the right spots (for you. not necessarily when Joannie Madden places them).
In other words, the better you know the fundamentals of the whistle, the easier memorizing and playing a tune. You will “feel” where the next note will be, if that makes sense.
This came through trial and error for me; a lot of duh! moments. Cant say I am great, but I feel confident.
I find it helps to keep whistles all over the house, and to pick one up and play as much as I can of a tune whenever the mood strikes me. Often I’m surprised at how much I already have by memory. If I can’t remember how a tune starts, I may run and check the tunebook for the first few notes, but then I just play without looking and see how far memory takes me.
Usually, even if I’ve only practiced it once or twice before, there’s a surprising amount of memory in the old fingers!
Redwolf
I generally try memorizing in peices. I start with something that sticks in my head and then branch out from there. I also try playing from memory then doing something else like reading a book for fifteen minutes and then trying to play the peice from memory again.
The only thing this strategy doesn’t seem to help me with is certain measures I for some reason get stuck on. When playing with other people this is not a problem and it happens less, but it really stands out when I’m playing by myself.
A couple of other things have helped me get control of my instruments, and strengthened my ability to learn new tunes:
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I play several instruments (fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar), and when I learn a tune on one, I immediately try to pick it out on the others. This often brings me to new places on the instruments, and always gives me a new perspective.
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I spend a lot of time picking out tunes I figure I’ll never play again, (e.g. In-a-gadda-da-vida, Begin The Beguine, Crossroads Blues, Smoke on the Water, Hokey-Pokey… you name it). The more time you spend in uncharted territory, the faster subsequent tunes will come to you.
My biggest regret over several decades of music-making is that I spent way too much time playing things I already knew how to play. That’s relaxing, but it really doesn’t lead anywhere exciting.
bingo! 
Find the bit of the tune that trips you up the most, and practise that section only, many times, until you have it under your fingers.
When trying to recall a tune from memory, sometimes you can start in your head at the “hook”, and find your way back to the beginning, when you join in on your instrument.
First, listen to the tune many times. I keep an MP3 player in my car with tunes I’m working on loaded and play them while driving to and from work. If you can hum or sing a tune, it will be way easier to play.
Second, play the tune without sheet music. Even if you can only play a few bars, make yourself play the tune without the music. Once you’ve got a few bars down, add bars or sections (see Stewy’s comment above about learning the sections that repeat) one at a time. I try to learn tunes from the end, i.e. I learn the last few bars first then work my way backward through the tune. That way, when I play it, I’m going into territory I know best.
Exactly what he said.
There are lots of ways to memorize but the two things that helped me the most were listening to the tune and putting the sheet music away as some as I knew a few bars.
Someone suggested to try playing the B part first, since it typically (but not always) a litle harder. I’ve been doing that for a bit now and it seems to help.
I always get one of the parts mixed up, B before A, half of A inserted into B, that kind of thing so I’m trying to straighten that out. don’t even talk about a 5 part tune.
Hmm… I hardly ever have a problem with the big jigs and reels. It’s the standard 2 part stuff that gets me. If I haven’t played a tune for a while I’ll stick the B part from another similar tune.
Whether I learn a tune by-ear or from the dots, I don’t play it on the whistle until I can lilt (hum) the tune from memory.
To get a tune memorized, I sometimes use Transcribe! to slow things down so I can lilt along. It probably takes 10 to 20 times through.
One of my favorite times to lilt is when I take my kids to the park. I get about an hour to run through tunes.
I’m pretty good at memorizing but I remember a time when I wasn’t. The more familiar you are with common four note phrases, the easier it gets. A friend of mine is a chess instructor. He has no doubt that memory can be improved. If you think you have a poor memory, don’t give up.