How Do You Memorize Songs?

[Dazza]

Hey guys. I have chosen a list of 8 songs i really want to nail down so i can play with backing tracks and “perform” and this is hard cause there are so many songs i love and want to learn. For those who have been playing a while…how the heck do you memorize the tunes to be flawless and hopefully potentially add another twenty songs to that list. I have played one or two from start to finish and although mostly there I often forget a note or two which then puts you out of time. Is it more about not being afraid to have music on front of you though this looks amateurish, which is what i am of course! Johnny, any special techniques you can share on this topic to help get them imprinted in your head?

[Anonymous]

how do you do it?

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys/Gals etc..

I noticed Dazza raised this question recently & read Johnny’s response.

After 15 months of playing my instructor just recently said to me that he felt it was the right time (in my case) to start playing songs from memory with a backing track.

He told me to pick something that was very easy that i was familiar with, so i managed to play ‘fly me to the moon’ 3/4 of the way from memory!

Anyway apart from accepting the fact that it is ok to play the odd wrong note & just keep going and don’t make a big deal about it if it happens live!

Being new to this process – i’d be interested to hear more tips from anyone else!

[Z]

The main thing people need to realize about memorizing music is to quit worrying about playing the “correct notes”. If you’re playing live and you’re standing stiff and all you’re thinking about is playing the right notes, it’s gonna sound bad and/or boring anyway. You need to get past that stage of being nervous about playing the right notes and put your emotion and feeling into the song to make it your own, whether the notes are right or wrong! That being said, of course you need to learn it first, for reference so that the song still sounds good! But once you play through it enough times you shouldn’t have to worry about playing it “correctly note wise)and you can just have fun performing and making music.

[Anonymous]

yeah – good point, pre grade exam, i was playing a piece in front of my instructor & was so concentrating on not making a mistake i made a mistake & stopped playing due to nerves.

He made me play it again, and said just enjoy playing the piece, it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake as most people listening don’t give a toss.

In terms of memorising a piece, so far the main tips have been from Johnny about learning small bits at a time & linking them together when you can remember them.

Does anyone think i should learn to play the piece properly first from playing the sheet before commiting it to memmory? or does it matter?

[Z]

You should take as much from the music sheet as you want to. If there’s a part you don’t like, change it. But… You should feel 100% comfortable playing with whatever you have on that sheet live. Then once you have your music sheet (what you’re going to play) finalized, you’ll start to memorize that as you go along playing it.

[Dazza]

Thanks all. Some great tips to progress. Today i did a big practice session and nailed Misty from start to finish. Very pleased and sounds great. Be sure to post soon. It’s a simple but beautiful melody and easy to learn. So I then went to the backing track and tried to play along and this was quite difficult to keep with the timing as the backing track is kind of indistinguishable to the melody.

What i did do though when I got lost was just play along with the track using the pentatonic scale and a “feel” for the tune and i gotta tell you it felt great. I was making music!! I wished I had recorded it but will do it again. Improvising, though not at it’s best, was cool and I could picture myself on a smokey stage (or at least my back deck) playing for a small crowd. Sure is a long journey this mastering of the sax but every day brings new skills and it’s exciting. Can’t wait for that improvising course Johnny.

[Anonymous]

good points – if a piece is unfamiliar or tricky, then master playing it from the sheet before hand, then start memorising it bit by bit.

When i played ‘fly me to the moon’ from memory i was playing it by ear and not by notes. In some cases i can sing a phrase in terms of da da da dat da da etc.. and play it on the sax without knowing what notes they are – sort of just feeling my way round the sax.

Is it a good idea to learn to sign a song, then pickup the sax and play it like how its sung & totslly ignore the sheet! or better still just listen to the music and try and play it from ear? I can partially do this, and was wondering if its worthwhile going down this path?
ie – listen to a few bars & play it back by ear and learn the whole piece that way – sounds a quicker way of remembering?

Dazza sone of the classical backing tracks are really difficult to play along to, in fact one piece i played with a piano player was that hard, i ended up playing the sax & ignoring the piano player, and the piano player kept in time with me! something you can’t do with backing tracks.

[john]

@ Dazza, sorry but these posts are out of order…I’ll see if I can correct that.
Anyway regarding your interest in memorizing songs, ya, I have worked on this for years.
I go at it a few different ways…
If it’s a melody that I can sing with no problem then i find it easy to learn on sax because it’s just a matter of taking a few minutes to work out the fingering and then it just falls into place. You can try this on a really easy tune like happy birthday or marry had a little lamb…some pop or blues melodies are not much harder than these anyway!
If it gets a bit more involved I roll up my sleeves and start with the music sheet right from the first note. Take the first phrase. Think of a phrase like a sentence which can be 10-20 words long. So lets say the phrase is 10-20 notes long. Now play the first few notes which is like dividing up the phrase. I’m pretty sure you can memorize 3 note right? Right, now after you memorize 3 notes grab the next 2, 3 or 4 notes. After you memorize the 2nd group go back and play them all together. This works for me because it’s so repetitive and you can also visualize these notes on the page as you’re memorizing. The thing here is that anyone can memorize 2-3 notes at a time so it’s just working on it enough to string the whole tune together. This is not as daunting as looking at the full 12 bars or whatever. This works for me, and whenever I screw a not up I stop, look at the mistake, correct it and start again.

[Andrew Gibson]

The big thing is to understand the melody, and be able to play the tune with the sheet music first!

Then, as Johnny says, learn it bit by bit; I just set some sort of goal, like learn 2 bars a day. Then, when you think you have it, play it with the sheet music again to make sure you have it.

While playing tunes note for note is overrated, I think it definitely helps your development.

[Author]

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