Tips for Memorizing Well & Early

April 30, 2024, 9:08 AM · It's close to jury time at Virginia Commonwealth University, where I teach a studio of budding violinists. A few students are stressed to get their pieces fully memorized. It feels a bit like a Hail Mary football play and reminds me to talk to them about going about it differently next semester.

I thought I would share some of those same tips with you, for when you or your students are working on memorizing.

I want to preface this by giving you my opinionated two cents: The only reason we should memorize is to learn music more thoroughly and deeply, not as a goal in and of itself. Some players also feel more free on stage without music. Great memorization makes us play better because we have thought more about what is in the music and approached it from different angles. Even if I don't plan to play from memory, I will sometimes memorize parts of new pieces I'm learning, because it helps me learn more thoroughly. Memorizing helps us be more in the zone in performance only if we are not scared of a memory slip. (Been there, done that!)

Tips for Memorizing Well & Early

Memorize as soon as you start learning a piece. When you don’t know a piece well is exactly when it's easier to memorize. Learn from memory from the get go, don't wait to memorize until you feel comfortable playing the piece.

Don't put your music on a music stand when you practice, lay it on a horizontal surface like a table or your case. Go take a look at it when you need to, but do not stare at it as you learn passages. Use it as a reference part, not a look-at-and-play part.

Practice your memorizing mindset by memorizing things you don't have to - a bit regularly. Memorize a few bars of your etude and chamber pieces, just because you can - every week. When it comes time to memorize a piece, your brain will be less resistant.

Know the sections and label them with specific, emotional evocative vocabulary, like cold, foggy, exuberant, regretful, etc. Or, make up a story for each section! Emotion intensifies experiences and helps our memory. Of course it makes us play more musically, too.

Practice your analytical memory. Analyzing requires naming things out loud. This can be the number of times a pattern appears, intervals, or unusual harmonies. If you don't know the name of a chord, it's ok to substitute emotional labels like "happy", "pungent" or "surprise". Take special note of musical motifs that happen twice, but slightly differently. Analytical memory asks us to use our intellect, not our ears or fingers.

Practice your visual memory. Visual memory means using your visual imagination. Try to “see the music”. Name the page and line you are on before you play a phrase, for example, "right hand page, line three".

Practice auditory memory: Use your ears and test your pre-hearing abilities. Sing the music! Sing it, then play it. If you can’t sing it, your fingers won't know where to go.

Practice intellectual singing: Speak or sing anything that you can name: Sing (on pitch) the fingerings, sing the bowing directions, sing with your tongue imitating slurs and articulations.

Sure, practice your motor memory, but don’t over-rely on it! Motor memory allows your fingers to know where to go. Limbs can operate on “autopilot.” Motor memory, however, is the LEAST DEPENDABLE kind of memory. It is the first kind of memory to go when adrenaline comes your way because the body feels very different when we are nervous. To take motor memory offline in practice and test your other types of memory, play extremely slowly and start in random places.

Practice transitions between your sections (and think about what you named them!)

Overlap your phrases: To avoid faltering in transitions, get in the habit of playing one or two bars beyond where your good musician ears tell you to stop. If you are working on an 8-bar phrase, play to bar 10. When you go to the next phrase, start on bar 7. This way the transitions are taken care of.

Make regular memory goals. Have a plan for how much of your music to play by memory for others by what date (in lessons or for a friend).

Memory Quizzing:

Quizzing helps us learn!! Put your memory to the test early and often, so you can find the holes and plug them (meaning, go back to purposefully memorizing those places).

1) Test your memory in front of friends, microphones, etc. It's ok if you have some hiccups. The whole point is to find out where you might have trouble when you get nervous.

2) Play all the way through at different tempos. Be able to play the piece very slow, medium, and fast tempos to make you more secure. The most valuable tempo for memory is super slow, which takes muscle memory off line and forces you to audiate strongly.

3) Ahead of performances, engage in memory games:

Backward Sectioning: Start at the end of the pieces and string your sections together. So E, then ED, then EDC, then EDCB etc.
Stop & Start: Have a friend stop you randomly when you play. When they say "stop", stop and freeze. When they say “start”, try to start exactly on the next note, or as close to that next note as possible. This will help you by forcing you to come in and out of the zone, which sometimes happens on stage.
No Life Raft Challenge: If you get stuck when practicing by memory, don’t look at the music. Keep working —by ear— until you can find your way. Don't give up. If need be, skip to a later section, but persevere and get back on track as quickly as possible. Over time, this builds confidence and shows you where there is fuzziness in your understanding

I hope you find these tips helpful for you, or for your students!

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Replies

Michael Browder

May 1, 2024 at 07:37 AM · Wow! Quite an extensive list of how to memorize. It matches exactly what II do personally. You also match my philosophy on the why or why not of memorizing.

Thanks!

Richard Pairaudeau

May 1, 2024 at 09:39 AM · Full agreement with Michael. Susanna is very convincing and I realize I need to do more memorization.

Diana Skinner

May 1, 2024 at 12:51 PM · Susanna, Thank you for this wonderful article! The tip I always forget to do is "overlap your phrases." I greatly appreciate the reminder!

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Tips for Memorizing Well & Early

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