How do you memorize a new song??? I realize there have been many articles and posts on this subject (in fact I think we posted our views several months ago), but Im in the process of learning an incredible song, one of my all-time favorites, by ear (with the help of Annie Staninec) and its challenging, so I thought Id share what works for me and get your input as well; what works best for you, whether you learn from sheet music or by ear. Recognizing that everyone learns differently, but you can group successful teaching methods into a handful of specific techniques, here has been my challenge.... I normally learn a new song, if by ear, (for me, learning a new song with sheet music is usually easier and more straight forward) by learning (not memorizing) a phrase at a time, maybe 5 - 10 notes at a time; repeating that phrase over and over until it makes sense; then moving to the next phrase, throughout the song. By the end of the song, I dont have it memorized but familiarized. I then repeat that, with the help of my teacher, a dozen times, until my brain starts to recognize the relationships within the song, and (as Id mentioned in an early post) I recognize landmarks, where my fingers should be to start the next phrase. Then once I have it in my short-term memory, I immediately go off on my own and play it over 100 times; I play it just before I go to be, and immediately upon waking; then I usually own it. Now owning it can have different meanings, lol. I own it in my head; I know the notes. I then spend several days/weeks mastering the techniques/stylization, until I like how it sounds. But this recent song, Jerusalem Ridge, is a challenge for me; not technically, because Ive learned several songs in this past 6 months that have been extremely technically challenging with timing and pulses and slides; this song is just a looooooong song with four long parts. So as Annie was ripping through (she thought she was patiently moving slowly through it) each phrase, I had to get her to feed me only 5 notes at a time, and then we labeled the phrases. So that during each (of the four) part, all she had to do was tell me the [label] of the phrase and then I began learning the sequence of labels. So I wonder if this technique is applicable to classical players as well. Care to share any of your thoughts/experiences/tricks which might be interesting and useful to the rest of us. As incredible and true as Kenny Bakers original version is (which is the version Im learning), Mike Clevelands version is just such a piece of art. Side note, always cracks me up to see Mikes chop, it looks like hes chopping cabbage.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 17:02:56 +0000