Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum How do you memorize music?

I do not. I prefer that time to work on new songs, not to memorize songs I already can perform. I don't mind carrying music with me. I'd rather be able to play 1,000 songs by music than 10 songs by memory.
But that's just me!

I use my own 'FOAM' method [Figure out and memorize]. The 'memorize' part comes nearly effortlessly with repetition so that just leaves the 'figure out' part. That's where nightly noodling comes in.

I put the basic core melodies together like a quilt and over time fine tune the entire piece together.

Most of the effort is in coming up with the melodies to begin with because that is the unknown. Everything else is more a matter of getting better at what you already know how to do.

Once again, as always, you really do get out of something what you put into it. Just think how long people have been trying to beat that recipe but you just can't. Trust me, I tried!

I do

So, for example, you could look at a passage from a score and you would know whether or not a performance corresponded to that passage or deviated from it?

Me too. There are unquestionable benefits in memorising from time to time as a means of deeply exploring expression but I think for a student, it's vital to absorb as much music as possible as quickly as possible. I've a hunch that one can 'build' instincts in this way. Also that it might help develop the aural - playing by ear - skills.

I've nothing to back this up!

I'd define this more as comparison (something of which someone familiar with music notation should be capable) rather than thinking it similar to taking from scratch a written piece and utilizing aural skills (intervallic relationships, chord progressions, cadences, etc.) to essentially conduct the score in your head from no aural starting point and with no assistance.

- and therefore the ability to do the more comprehensive "..no aural starting point.." task would imply the ability to make the comparison?

I should say, I'm familiar with music notation and can read reasonably well but being unable to audiate anything but melody and simple harmony (rhythm no problem) and without reference to a piano I could not make such a comparison with any reliability unless the passage in question were quite simple. That's why I'm testing it against the ability to audiate which I see as being all-encompassing.

There's a point which I think is worth making here and I'm expecting to wind it back to the question of memorizing.

Well, I have memory problems, have had a stroke and am dyslexic so I am not the best one to answer this but I play all the music that I know of about 60 pieces everyday. I always look at my music and play the music easily because I play it all the time except the new pieces which takes me many months to play well. What you haven't said is a piece of how many measures and how many times do you play it everyday without mistakes and for how many months have you been playing this piece that you are trying to memorize, 3 months, 6 months, 18 months, 2 years?

I have been playing my pieces for about a year and I think with a little work I could memorize it, but I am okay with reading the music. I understand that for some pieces some people take 6 months to a year to learn. Memorizing is a huge picture without details of what you are trying to accomplish.

What I would do is I would play the first three measures and see if I could play it without looking. If I had a problem, I would play the 3 measures over and over until I could play it from memory - for 20 minutes at a time - and then do other piano stuff. And I would play the three measures everyday for 20 minute periods for as many weeks and months as it would take to learn those 3 measures and the rest of the piece adding new measures as I go. The idea is you don't quit but you do it for as long as it takes to learn the piece from memory.

I don't, unless it happens by accident from playing the same piece a zillion times.

There are a couple of pieces that I play well from written music and I've been trying to memorize them. The usual "play it over and over" has not worked.

However, it dawned on me (and maybe I'm slow to figure this out) - that even though I play them pretty darn well, and could recognize any phrase in it if I heard it - I can't hum the whole thing end to end without referring to the score.

So, if I can not hum the entire thing that means I don't actually know it. So, I'm taking a step away from the piano and working on just learning the piece. If I can hum the whole thing (just the melody of course) then I bet I'll be able to memorize it to play it. After all, I know that I can play the music, the problem is that I don't actually have the tune memorized well enough in my head for it to serve as the prompt to help me with where my fingers need to go next. I now have these couple of tunes on my iPod and I listen to them with some regularity. I think (hope) that if I can really get it thoroughly stuck (end-to-end) in my head, that I can make it come out of my fingers.

SO, can you actually hum or maybe whistle the entire thing? All the way through - without having to stop and think about what comes next? If not, see if getting to where you can do that helps. I'm betting that it will.

I've been pondering the role of audiating since it came up. I'm not pondering whether it can be done, because I audiated long before I ever knew there was a word for it. For me audiation happened primarily with the types of music I commonly encountered. If it was atonal with little happening diatonically, I don't think it would have worked. But with other music, I'd look at the page and hear the music off the page. I could sing what's there, like you can read a text out loud, because I was hearing it anyway. In fact, I thought that's how people read music. So yes, I'm familiar with audiating.

But I am not familiar with the idea of audiating as a means of memorizing. Something else seems to be going on here.

To me it's like someone saying that he reads the script of a play, "To be, or not to be, that is the question." and then he listens to the actors, and he is not surprised that the actor says "To be, or not to be, that is the question." Why would you even expect to be surprised? I'm not catching the point. But more importantly, I'm not catching the role of this for memorizing.

Well, to push the analogy to theater, I am capable of reading a script, which is like audiating spoken words. But this does not make me good at memorizing. Or as a singer, where you must memorize melody plus lyrics. I don't see the role.

The only thing that I CAN see, is that this audiation is being compared to something that works less well. (Like, what is its significance?)

I'm still exploring while trying to get a picture. I'm thinking that this audiating is replacing something that has worked less well.

In what way is audiating better than sight reading? In order to achieve which thing, which can be better done than sight reading?

My sight reading used to be mixed with audiation. I heard what was on the page, and I played what I heard. I actually switched to learning real sight reading, where you see F# and play F# knowing that it is that black key which is F#. This gave me a greater degree of accuracy, and let me wend my way through more complex pieces. So I'm coming from the opposite end.

So I'm still trying to understand this. I'm thinking that maybe sight reading can be an unmusical activity, where you type out the notes and hear them afterward as pitches, but they don't coalesce as music. If that is what is happening, then I can see that audiating will give you the music as music. In that case it would be "better than sight reading"

So I think I'm beginning to follow.


THIS may be the clue.

Unraveling this from bottom to top I see this possibility:

- Sight reading is the act of typing out the notes by knowing F# is that black key, or the next note is that note a major 3rd up from the last one. It's not being heard as music. On the other hand, if you want to hear it as music, recordings may not be a perfect solution, because you may not be able to hear all the details. When you audiate (like a singer?), however, you are able to hear the details in a musical way, and for this audiating is a better solution than a sight reading without the music inputting itself, combined with recordings where the music whizzes by too fast to catch all of it.

So now I see the role of audiating. As so often with music, it would have to do with where a person finds himself.

It depends on the music and the degree of deviation. I cannot look at the score of a symphony and tell whether the violas are playing the wrong notes. But I can find my place rapidly in a score.

If I've heard a rock song many, many times I may or may not be able to reproduce the drum or bass line. If I've audiated it from a piano transcription I could probably tell whether the bass guitar was playing the piano bass line from the score I'd seen or was playing something else.

Are you "talking" only about music you haven't heard? Can you not hear a full orchestra when you recall, for example, a familiar symphony? Or drums, bass, piano, guitar and vocals in a well-known pop song?

All-encompassing? Can you elaborate on that? My understanding of audiation mightn't be the same as yours. Audiation is a recently coined word (within my lifetime) and I may have misunderstood it but I don't see it as all-encompassing. I compare audiation to visualisation.

Let me make an analogy that might convey my understanding. I draw. I can look at a photograph and make a quick linear sketch of it that's recognisable. I can look at a quick linear sketch of something or someone unfamiliar in detail and produce a recognisable tonal image of it. I can look at a caricature of a personality and recognise them from it when I see them on TV.

I can do this because of visualisation and I consider that process analogous to audiation. I have absolutely no idea how a police sketch artist works or what's involved. I know these things can be done.
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I can't hear all the fine details in a chromatic passage but I get a good idea of what I will hear when I do hear it.

An 'audible sketch' is all I need to know how a piece goes and I can get a better idea of it than I can by sight-singing or sight-reading on the piano. I can also 'fill in' chromatic and harmonic detail at the piano without having to sight-read everything on the staves.

I can learn a song or simple piano piece from the score alone without necessarily being able to reproduce it on the piano in a play by ear mode. I may be pleasantly surprised by the richness of the harmony but it wouldn't be totally unexpected or make me lose my place in the music.

I can reproduce in my head the sound of a full orchestra, with or without the score, of a familiar work.

I know I'm not unique because I've worked with others that do the same sort of things.
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I've briefly scanned keystring's post and I think she's got it but...

The music can have more than one thing going on. I can't sight-sing or audiate an unfamiliar fugue or a symphony without assistance and I can't be sure I've got the harmony right.

The advantage is being able to reconstruct the sequence of events in greater or lesser amounts of detail and at target speed. I can't do that on a piano.

Watch a typical youth singing a rock song then branching into air guitar for the solo with pitchless da-da-da's. They're audiating from memory. They can hear the guitars and drums.

You didn’t respond to my later post so I’ll get straight to the point.

I listened to your Consolation 3 – you link to it here in your ‘shameless plug’ post in the AOTW thread linking to ‘My new Kawai’ showing off your new piano (congrats, by the way, a fine instrument).

You’ve put in a spirited effort but I should also say there are some aspects of your performance which need attention and since no one else has thought fit, I’ll lay it out - this will give you the opportunity to put things right and also maybe for you to throw some more light on ‘audiation’. As things stand, I’m finding it impossible to square what you’re doing with the supposed use of any such skills.

Let’s pass over the pedalling and 3 against 4 polyrhythms - these things will improve (the 2 against 3 are nice and smooth). What concern me are the notational errors – you’re playing glaringly wrong notes in more than a dozen places in this piece. When I asked if you could audiate in order to compare a performance against a score I’d intended to ask if you might be able to use it to verify the errors in your consolation 3.

For the moment, as an example, listen to your bar 29. Can you hear, audiate or whatever it is you do, to establish how the score differs from what you’re playing? It looks clear to me (perhaps it will to you too?) how this mistake might have seeded itself. Also how it is something of an indictment of your method which will always risk burning in these errors where, by contrast, the fail-safe of repeated and progressively improved reading can at any point put a student back on track.

Your other errors are less harmonious, less coherent but I’m ready to list them if it will help. Either that or find a teacher to oversee what you’re doing and to guide you to make the changes. A third option would be to have someone in the forum proof your early efforts to nip those kind of errors in the bud. You complained in an early post of my being unhelpful but if it doesn’t stick in your craw I could oblige.

Coming back to ‘audiation’ – I think there is much that is too vague about this alleged skill, too easy to lay claim to and too inaccessible to relate to others what we ‘hear’ mentally and with what accuracy. I don’t claim to be able to reliably audiate (to my definition!) but I can hear very starkly (and see from the score) your errors in the piece. You do claim to audiate yet you are apparently unable to hear the mistakes, or more exactly, you’ve been unable so far to do so. The other possibility, although I think it’s extremely slim, is that you can spot the errors through audiation but you cannot do so by listening to your performance and comparing it with another (entirely in the aural domain). And that’s what baffles me most of all; that one might be able to audiate to any useful extent while having an unreliable ear. At the moment, that is the intriguing paradox you present.

In your AOTW post you say:-

Some do, some don’t,
also;-

- If you don’t ‘hear’ it, none of this is useful….

Returning to topic, I wanted to underline here how sharply your Liszt piece points up the risks we take when adopting flawed practising regimes – particularly when we find ourselves memorising the wrong things, and when we go about reinforcing those errors in the most elaborate, time-consuming, ways. Time is precious and there’s an ever-present risk of wasting it.

There’s a place for memorizing but one should be wary of turning it into a way of life and especially careful about the manner of doing it.

This is awkward, rather than difficult to answer but if you're looking for detail...

I normally work on a piece one week on and a few weeks off, five or six pieces a day and twenty to twenty-five pieces actively current.

Example One - a typical Bach invention, sinfonia or suite movement in my normal working style (reconstructed from my practise journal).

It is typically a double page spread. I would divide it into four and treat each quarter as an individual piece. I spend about ten to fifteen minutes a day memorising a short passage in each hand separately, and join the hands when memorised. I frequently have to re-learn the passage a few times over the week before it sticks but the passage grows through the week. I would expect to have the quarter memorised at the end of the week with the hardest to memorise passage still in and out of memory. I will have the whole thing done in four weeks spread over sixteen.

Some months later I'll have to do it all again and memorise the whole thing in a fortnight but still in individual quarters but it will sound much better and be more fluent. I may well have gone over parts of it once or twice at weekends.

Another few months on and I'll have to do it all again but will usually join the passages on the third time and memorise the whole thing in less than a week. The next revisit I expect to memorise the whole piece in a couple of days and usually without having to refer to the score. I'll play it a few times a day over a couple of weekends to be sure. I'll be able to play it from memory then as often or as infrequently as I like and will generally be able to recall the whole thing in a day or two several years later.

Example Two - Mendelssohn's Song Without Words, Op. 62/3, for the upcoming recital in my older style of consecutive weeks (not as productive over time, I've found, as there is no progress from assimilation away from the piece and it encourages boredom/tedium).

October 15 to December 31 memorised the music as sound using the score, recordings and a couple of tryouts on the piano. I resisted sight-reading to avoid the introduction of wrong notes into a recital piece. I started at the piano on January 7 and have followed my plan with only minor deviations such as having to practise on Saturdays to make my weeks objective. Some weeks I was done earlier.

Jan 7-11 Memorised M1-4, M28-32 and M46-48

Jan 14-18 memorised M5-12

Jan 21-25 M13-20

Jan 28-Feb 2 M20-24

Feb 4-9 M25-28

Feb 11-15 M33-39 and join M1-20

Feb 18-20 M39-46 and join M28-38

Feb 25-Mar 1 M20-28 and practise M1-20, M28-38

Mar 4-8 practise M1-20 á tempo, M20-28 dead slow, M28-48 á tempo

Mar 9 to date, practise M1-28 and M20-48 at weekends only with preliminary recordings.

April 1 onwards, start recording.

Most weekends since January 12 I've gone over previous material except M20-28 when I was not confident in my ability to play it without errors until March 9 but the tempo (for that section) is rising steadily and I'm fully confident I'll have it in time.

I haven't used the score since mid February (though I still read it away from the piano now and again) and see no reason why I'd ever have to go back to it in my lifetime (which is not so long now )

I hope I'm not monopolising the thread...

I am overwhelmed by your generosity and shower you with gratitude.

Oh, my apologies for responding late...we have suffered weather damage in the garden and I am busy with reparations.

In this instance I will not take up your offer. I know these performances weren't my best and were offered in the rush of posting something I'd promised (rashly it seems) before the new piano became an old one. I did offer a disclaimer at the time. (If you'd like to do the same with the Grieg piece from the recent ABF Recital, however... )

Any pieces I post in future with recital quality intended I may well consult a third ear and, mayhap, even yours. I will, though, refrain from doing so in the piano bars or other more 'casual' posts.

Even Beethoven and Liszt played wrong notes (no, I'm not comparing myself). Recordings are so different from live performance. The tiniest error stands in perpetuity as the measure of one's ability at the time no matter how busy the day or trying the life outside the instrument. I think many can attest also to the effects of the red dot.

My left ear is in reasonable shape, my right ear comes and goes with the effects of tinnitus but my inner ear is still fully functional. Unfortunately, the connection from brain to fingers is still not perfect.

Again, I am grateful for your kind offer and am glad our past friction (your discomfort at what I say and my discomfort at what you don't ) has left no sign of bitterness.

dire tonic, how do you memorize?

Richard, I have tinnitus in both ears. I also have hearing loss. So far I have been fortunate not to have lost clear hearing of pitch up to the highest note on the piano. I can still hear beats on that note, but I need to turn up the volume of a DP to hear them, and on an acoustic I need to strike the keys really hard way up there. I may lose some of this in the next few years. It will be a huge loss for me.

The tinnitus is like crickets, and in fact it is so loud ALL THE TIME that I am not always sure when walking outside when I am hearing real crickets.

But this does not affect my ability to look at a score, one I have never seen before to music I have never heard before, and make corrections without even looking at the piano or at hands. I do this routinely while teaching. And my ability to audiate is the key to this.

Now of course there is music that is too complex for me to "hear mentally" with complete accuracy, which is what "audiate" means to me. And I agree it is a relatively new word. The built in spell-checker here does not even recognize it as a word.

However, for music such as Beethoven and Mozart I hear the music so clearly in my head that if I misread it, I will hear the wrong notes in my head just as clearly as if I strike them wrong on the piano. In other words, if I make a mental mistake, that will go right into my fingers and cause a corresponding physical mistake. I make such mental mistakes when I do not notice that an accidental has been cancelled or that a note remains sharped, flatted or natural later on in a complex measure. My mistakes will be logical, meaning that what I play wrong COULD be right. It would not sound bad. But for anyone who knows the piece I have misread, mentally, it will be obvious.

The danger in working alone is that ANY of us can at ANY time learn a wrong note or many of them and then have the mind accept them as correct. Exactly how we go about error checking is complicated, but when playing something that is not available in recordings, the danger is always there that something wrong will be internalized and will become permanent.

Here is how strong my ability to hear is, both from score directly and in comparison. If I play anything famous and accidentally learn a wrong note, I will hear something WRONG in the playing of someone famous. This "wrongness" comes from the fact that the person I am listening to is not playing the same thing as what I play. I then pull out the score and check. I have found some astounding errors in the playing of very famous people that are as logical and correct sounding as some of my logical and correct sounding errors.

But I would say that 80 to 90% of the time the wrong notes by famous players turn out to be right, and I end up thumping my forehead in irritation. I then circle the mistake and remind myself that it may be a LONG time before my fingers get used to playing the real notes, the correct ones, instead of my error(s).

I did not point out any wrong notes in your Liszt Consolation, but I have taught this piece for decades and some of them are really major mistakes. Not the brushing of a wrong key but true errors. Memorized errors.

The first one I remember (I can't find the link to your performance now) is in measure 9. You hold the Gbm7b5 chord (Gb Bb Db F) rather than resolving it to the C7 chord which is formed at the very end of the measure, where the Db in the LH 2nd finger slips down to C while that LH thumb slips down to E natural.

Note that I am telling you this from memory. Note also that I can see my fingers pressing down the correct keys. I am hearing all the notes very clearly.

But I do not play this piece from memory.

Do not think that I am picking on you. I know very well that it is easy to take pot-shots at someone else's work, and presenting your playing to the public takes guts.

On the other hand, when I sent DT (Dire Tonic) my best effort at transcribing a tune called "Death of Love and Trust" by Dave Grusin, which is not correctly notated anywhere, I did not turn down his offer to correct my work. I think he found a good 20 errors, maybe more.

I suspect that if he started from scratch and sent me his transcription, I might have heard some errors in his work.

In other words, no matter how advanced we are, it never hurts to have someone else very advanced check our work. And refusing help when there are wrong notes is like saying:

"Please don't help me. I like my playing just as it, with all sorts of things wrong."

That's just sticking your head in the sand, Richard.

Ok, but how does this help with memory?

Wow, I'm flattered by all the attention!

I'm not sticking my head in the sand, Gary, nor am I turning away the offer of help out of disdain. I am delighted by the offer, especially from a such a source, but consider myself unworthy. I have a local source I can make use of who is more commensurate with my skills.

I did not expect the pieces to come in for such inspection and I'll refrain from making casual submissions in future. I don't mind that level being aimed at my recital submissions - they're fair game. I may re-post the Liszt after the Mendelssohn recital and have had time to give it as much attention.

No, Im afraid not. My scan was too brief. Mea culpa.

When I sight-read I don't have the technical equipment to hit the right notes at the right time or at the right tempo so I can't hear how the music is supposed to sound.

When I listen to a recording some of the underlying music may not be loud enough or clear enough in relation to the rest of the music, the tape hiss, the bass distorting and rattling the speakers or any other ambient distractions within my hearing like the coffee maker or passing traffic.

When I read the score I'm not restricted by physical inadequacies and not distracted by wrong notes.

I can't begin to describe how being able to play a song in one's head helps with memory. Walking is the process of catching yourself from falling by putting a foot out in front. How does stopping yourself falling help you to make progress?

I do hope the OP has gained benefit from this thread.

Then I will remain unable to understand. I have audiated my entire life since I was small. I also do something which probably everybody here does: I can read words. The ability to audiate doesn't help me memorize, just like the ability to read words doesn't help me memorize. But I supposed that if I could not read a whole sentence fluidly, or grasp a paragraph after a brief look, it would be hard to memorize. I'll have to assume that it relates to this.