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.
Recently I saw where they found that students who study their material a number of times a day for shorter periods learned and memorized their stuff more quickly and with better retention than students who studied for one long period each day. So if you can, pick up your whistle a bunch of times during the day and practice the tune you're trying to learn, rather than just having one long practice session a day. I do this, and can learn a tune fast sometimes. I'll even make a point of running through the tune a few times right before I go to bed, and right when I wake up, because the mind is more receptive then (I'll put some tape over the windway so I don't disturb anyone). It works for me. If vomitbunny's cranial surgery doesn't work, you might try this.
I also agree with everyone who said to listen to the tune a lot before even trying to play it. If I do this, it's already an old friend by that time, it's in my blood, and it's not so much a mental process then trying to learn it.
As someone who has come directly from the classical 'play from sheet music' school, I can let you know what has worked for me as I have got to grips with learning tunes to play by memory.
Four things to consider:
1. Try to avoid humming tunes to learn them. One of the biggest problems with memorising tunes is that when we already know a tune well -- and by that I mean, we can RECOGNISE the tune well, perhaps from a CD we always play -- we *don't have to reproduce it very accurately* in order for our brain to still identify it as this tune. When we can roughly hum a tune, the brain "fills in" the stuff which is not 100% accurate, and I find that it teaches bad habits when trying to learn tunes. So, when you say you can hum a tune -- can you REALLY? I have found that I *thought* I knew a tune, but I was not actually humming it very precisely. Don't forget, your instruments plays *precise* notes: if you've not yet got to the stage where you know it *accurately* (and I don't mean hearing the notes as A-D-D, but hearing that the INTERVALS are exactly A-D-D), then it's not going to be so easy to learn it. For example, I thought, oh I can learn "Gravel Walk", no problem I can hum the tune OK, but: I only really knew *roughly* how it went. I would, for that reason, *sing* it slowly and accurately, trying to get the intervals as good as possible.
2. Simply try to play stuff on your instrument that you make up. This is a useful practise, to try to get to "know" your instrument. Think up a simple tune. Sing it (no humming please!). Now try to "find" it on your whistle. You'll make plenty of wrong notes trying to find it, but eventually you'll get it. Repeat the exercise for a few minutes as a regular part of your practising. When you can do this more accurately and at speed you'll be able to learn tunes simply by hearing them. We had a session workshop recently where we had to follow a series of slow simple notes from a fiddle player: and it was *astonishing* how in the regular session afterwards I could "find" notes on my flute far more easily, I was even able to play along a bit with tunes I didn't know!
3. You can rely on your "muscle memory" for tunes when you really know them well, but as people have already said, literally knowing the first few notes of a tune is a real help in getting started in a tune, particularly if the tune is similar to other ones. And I mean the first few notes: the first note is not really that helpful, since no tune starts on a note not used by other tunes.
4. Practise "little and often". Three one-hour practise sessions over three days is FAR more useful than one three-hour practise session.
As said, these points aren't rules, but they've helped me to memorise a whole bunch of stuff in less time than I'd thought possible.
thanks for all the great advice, I am now really diving into it and today I just tried "south wind" by going over and over and over and....
then all of a sudden I could play from memory!!!!!!
I now understand that this is the way for me to learn so I will try this next on "blind mary" too!
happy sunday!!
berti
Haha! It's good to know Im *not* the only one who has this trouble... I know that I am a visual learner, but I cannot read music well, so I rely on my auditory (can you spell 'tone deaf'?) and tactile learning a lot... I always thought it weird that my *fingers* could remember a tune when my conscious memory had no clue what the thing was...
I always attributed it to my ADD. Seems either many manypeople are ADD, or I'm (gasp) more "normal" than I would have hoped.
I do the 'listen to it over and over' routine, and the 'grab the whistle every little while throughout the day and try it' mode of practice.
Remember - it is documented that it takes about 27 repetitions to memorize something!!
For me it seems to be about double that! (where's the smilie with its lip stuck out??)
But I*do* get it, eventually, and that is FUN!
anniemcu
--- "You are what you do, not what you claim to believe." -Gene A. Statler
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Berti - you've had lots of good advice above......
I've taught a workshop on "Throw Away that TAB" for dulcimer, but the tips work well on any instrument.
As said already, listen,listen,listen. Doesn't have to be a "professional" CD, can be a friend playing that you recorded, a session, or a midi. The trick it to get that tune in your head first. Listen to the "ups and downs" of the music. You stated you can't tell if the note is a "D or B". But you can tell if it goes up the scale or down. Just try to find it that way.
For me personally, I "keep" tunes that I've figured out on my own much better than those I've learned off a sheet, in fact, I very rarely use any type of printed material now (and this came after having 8 years of piano as a kid!!!). Ok - so I may not have the notes EXACTLY as someone else will play, but as long as it's not a really tightly orchastrated setting, what I play will fit in.
This is a quirk of mine, but I often find I can play the "B" part of a tune easier than the "A" part. So I often (for my own memory aid) start with the B part of a song to get into the rhythm of the piece.
Also work out the "bare bones" of a piece first, then go back and add embellishments. Don't try to get every single note the first time through.
And if you can't do it - well, that's ok, too. Just so you play and enjoy, that's the most important part!!!
Tell us something.: Whistle player, aspiring C#/D accordion and flute player, and aspiring tunesmith. Particularly interested in the music of South Sligo and Newfoundland. Inspired by the music of Peter Horan, Fred Finn, Rufus Guinchard, Emile Benoit, and Liz Carroll.
missy wrote:This is a quirk of mine, but I often find I can play the "B" part of a tune easier than the "A" part.
I don't think it's really a quirk -- B parts are very frequently noticably simpler than A parts.
This will work for me, too, when I've got the tune but it needs to be coaxed out of the clutter. I might amend -or add to- colomon's last contribution by suggesting that B parts are very frequently simply noticeabler than A parts.
Hi,
You don't HAVE to memorize stuff, you know. The big orchestras play from sheet music.
But, just keep playing the tunes, year after year, and eventually you
will find you do have a few actually memorized!
Or, maybe you are like me; just TOO OLD to memorize anything
any more. The brain is just too full of "stuff".
Even Sir Paul McCartney said he had to forget some of his Beatle
tunes to be able to play the new ones, ha ha
So have fun, and don't worry about it!
Lolly
Or, at least part of the answer... I too used to have a memorization problem. I was like the vacuum cleaner salesman who, if interrupted mid-pitch would be stumped, and have to start at the beginning or forget it! It took me about 30 years of music to figure out this one. The most important thing is to NEVER, ever learn a piece from the music (the written music), because once you do, you'll be stuck at this rote level of knowing it, but you won't ever really own it (i.e. so aptly named, "by heart").
What I mean is this: when you are ready to learn a new piece, either learn it by ear (from a record or a person) or use the written music ONLY AS A GUIDE. In other words, don't just read through the whole thing and play it, over and over again, staring at the music... before you try to memorize it. By that time it's too late. By that time, the initial (and very powerful) hook-up has occured between brain and fingers everlastingly tied to the music, like a chick imprinting on its mama. Your screwed. You'll never be able to memorize it completly after that. When you use the music only as a guide it is much slower AT FIRST. But once you've got it, you've got it.
Now, there's one other thing I've noticed. It takes sleeping on a new piece to help me remember it. I can practice that darn thing for hours and still be shaky. But after a night's sleep I always notice that I own it more the next day.
And finally, another way you can improve your ability to memorize is to observe HOW you learn. Meaning, what's your most natural and easy way to learn anything? Does hearing it work for you? Or, are you visual? Or, do you get the feel of the piece and that's what cements in your ability to play it well? When you figure out how you learn best, you can get clever about structuring ways to practice that make it much easier to learn new pieces -- and that includes memorizing them.
Please let me know if any of these ideas are helpful to you!
Laurel Emrys wrote:Or, at least part of the answer... I too used to have a memorization problem. I was like the vacuum cleaner salesman who, if interrupted mid-pitch would be stumped, and have to start at the beginning or forget it! It took me about 30 years of music to figure out this one. The most important thing is to NEVER, ever learn a piece from the music (the written music), because once you do, you'll be stuck at this rote level of knowing it, but you won't ever really own it (i.e. so aptly named, "by heart").
What I mean is this: when you are ready to learn a new piece, either learn it by ear (from a record or a person) or use the written music ONLY AS A GUIDE.
Sounds right to me. In Irish trad there is the great advantage that the tunes are structured very clearly, creating meaning, and those chucks of musical meaning are building blocks for learning the tune. So if you are going to use sheet music to pick up a tune, I'd recommend going backwards: learning the last phrase of the A part first (that is the answer or resolution or what you want to call it), then the second to last phrase (the restated question) and so forth. The advantage is that you, as you are getting away from the sheet music always end the strongest, becaust that is the phrase you've played most often.
