Memorize Sheet Music
Whether you're in a rock band, marching band, or your band teacher requires it, memorizing music is an important skill. You never see professional musicians reading off of sheet music for music they made! How do musicians memorize their music? Look no further, the steps are below.
Contents
Steps
- Practice Music the music. You obviously won't be able to memorize your music when you don't even know how to play it!
- Recognize phrases. This will not only give you a better understanding of the music, but when it comes time to actually start memorizing it, it will be easier to divide it up. Most phrases are four to eight measures.
- Begin repeating the last part of the song. The music will be more secure in your memory if you learn it from the end toward the beginning than if you learn the beginning first.
- The length of each section depends on how well you know your memory to have been in the past; if you know you remember things well, extend the length, but if you're forgetful, make it shorter, even if it's just a phrase or two. Keep reading off the music at this point.
- Play it once from memory with eyes closed. Go as far as you can.
- Look at the music again. Find what you did right and what you did wrong. If you need to, play something that you missed.
- Play it again without looking at the music. Continue to alternate between eyes closed and eyes open until you know the piece well.
- Even after it is memorized, it helps to continue looking at the music in alternate cycles. This not only secures your memory, but also helps to minimize the chance you might habituate yourself to a wrong note.
- Move onto a different chunk. This will, again, depend on your memory. Repeat the process you used with the first chunk, but play this chunk by itself.
- Link the two chunks together. Play from measure one to however far you memorized. Keep repeating this until you can play it from memory five times in a row.
- Continue this process until you have memorized the song.
- Start at the end and play the last measure, play it by memory, go on to the second to last measure, and repeat the process till you can play the whole song.
- Use a metronome while Practice Music and learn to count the measures of rests, you don't want to be the one person who plays during a rest.
- Sing the music you're trying to memorize. Don't be embarrassed to sing or hum it, because the more familiar you are with the music, the easier memorizing it would be.
Tips
- Listen to other people in your band. Knowing how your part fits in with other parts will help you remember what to play.
- Keep doing this for as long as you need the music memorized. Unless you're constantly playing it from memory, a lot of people will find it easy to forget after a few weeks of not playing it.
- Look for patterns in the music. Sometimes, phrases are just a part of a scale or part of the same chord. Use this to your advantage.
- If you're in marching band, know where your part fits in with the drill. This can also help you remember your part.
- If you're trying to memorize something for the first time, give yourself plenty of practice time before your performance. Once you figure out about how long it takes you to memorize a piece, you can base it on that.
- Ask others for help if you need it. If you have a section leader, ask them for tips as well.
- In addition, music commonly repeats a phrase and then adds a small change to it or after it. Memorizing the repeated parts first, and then the small variations after each section can be helpful. Also you can give yourself hints as to where each variation by thinking of phrases that relate to it. ie.: the 1st repeat, then the scale goes up, 2nd repeat then the scale goes down (hint: what goes up, must come down)
- When learning music, you want to learn one phrase at a time. When doing so, try to learn backwards. Start with the last note, then another note back, etc. When you learn it backwards, your brain finds the music unfamiliar and it is no longer out of reach.
- It has been scientifically shown that you will remember you piece easier if you go to sleep after practicing your piece.
Warnings
- Be positive and patient; just because someone else can memorize music faster than you does not mean you cannot master it also, it just means you need more time. Some people are better at memorizing music than others.
- Remain calm and focused if learning this doesn't happen as soon as you want. If you find yourself getting frustrated, go away and do something else for awhile and come back to a fresh start. Getting frustrated at how many mistakes you make will only cause you to make more mistakes.
- Avoid bragging about how fast you can memorize music. That is not only impolite but it is also boring to others.
- For marching music, it is likely that you will play it a lot during band and marching camp. If this is the case, it may not take too much effort to memorize it. However it may be extremely difficult for people to learn music that don't have a past in music. But, always practice extra on parts you don't know, and don't show off if you get it right away. You don't want to be the one to think you know it and then be clueless on parade/football game day!
- This will not happen overnight. It requires lots of practicing and performing to be able to fully memorize it.
