Everyone is impressed when you walk up to your instrument empty handed, sit, and proceed to play a zillion tunes – without sheet music.

Your audience just thinks, “Wow, where did they put all that music?!” and You think, “Yay – if I’m not reading, I don’t have to worry about getting lost on the page!” and Everyone thinks, “That’s impressive”. And we all swoon at the wonderfulness of carrying all that stuff in your head.

And let’s be honest, even if you try not to be, it’s hard to avoid smugness when you just waltz to the harp and start to play. Almost all of us think that having memorized all your music is the most important skill to have. While that is debatable, many of us do struggle to remember music.

While it’s debatable that memorization is the most important skill to develop, it is important that we all work on having a strong memory of our music. Problem is, memory can be tricky. It can be solid for a coon’s age and then all of a sudden it can skip town on a whim, leaving you stranded.

There are many reasons for being deserted by your memory – poor preparation, stress, injury, illness, age. You might have experienced one or all of these (and others). Some are preventable, others are not. Let’s take a look:

Poor Planning – no matter if you learn tunes lickety-split or need years to really get a tune in your head, you need to know how you go – then you can plan appropriately and leave yourself enough time. If you do need a great deal of time and repetition, make sure you leave it for yourself! Don’t think that this tune will be the one that you soak up like a desiccated sponge – be reasonable and give yourself enough time to learn and be comfortable with it before you must be able to play it in public!

Stress – nothing will knock you for six like stress. If you’ve ever been stressed, you know that it feels inevitable and unending. Your heart may pound. Your hands may shake. The strings may swim in your vision. None of that helps you remember what comes next. Stress will get you every time, so you have to work around it (more on that in a sec).

Injury – this might be the most challenging of all because sustaining an injury can be frustrating for many reasons. Whether it’s a concussion or a stroke, brain insults will definitely impact your ability to form and use memory. You might not even know you’ve sustained an injury, you just notice you have a problem you didn’t have before. If you have a bigger incident, you may well know that you have had an injury and now have to deal with “fixing” it. Being a musician is very helpful for recovery because it requires using your whole brain. Working on playing will help you heal (both physically and spiritually). It can be slow and frustrating and difficult and you might not return to your previous proficiency, but you can keep playing and stay mindful of your progress.

Illness – like injury, illness can also impact your ability to remember your music. Whether it’s an infection, a lack of sleep, or a chronic illness, you may find that your memory is impaired (even if briefly). Your best defense is to know to expect a dip in your recall and plan ahead.

Age – it happens to everyone – even when you think it won’t happen to you! Forgetfulness is a natural part of aging, but other aging related things can also affect your memory such as your medical status, medication affects, and major life events. Your thinking will slow down as you get older, which can alter how well you can do complex tasks (like playing the harp). All those things you already know to do will help keep yourself in the game – like eating appropriately, getting exercise, and taking time to be creative (at least I didn’t suggest a list of additional tasks, just one’s you already know!).

There are other impactors, but these are the biggies (and the ones you’ve asked about). So, what can you do about it? Well, we already said you can:

Plan ahead and give yourself enough time to learn

Take good care of yourself to stay healthy and whole.

But there is one more thing you can do that will help you get through? You can overlearn your music.

Overlearning can you be more prepared and to fill the gaps when your memory is faulty. Overlearning is what you get when you continue to study and master a tune past when you have “learned” it. “Knowing” a tune (tenuously) will not help you get past memory desertion. I know, by the time you “get” the tune, you just want to play it. But have you noticed that the longer you play a tune, not only does it get easier but we also discover all sorts of stuff about it? If you specifically overlearn a tune (rather than maybe letting it happen over a very long time) you will have a strong depth of memory for it. Each repetition builds more paths you can follow to find the tune when it escapes. The combination of well knowing how it goes, how it’s phrased, how the finger patterns fit together, how the chord structure underpins the melody, and more can all be built by continued study of the music.

To overlearn a tune, first you have to acknowledge that you might know it (superficially), but you don’t r-e-a-l-l-y know it. When you add more repetition, you are making a good start on overlearning. And then it’s time to really lean into the tune – actively look for its nuances, it’s nooks and crannies, and plumb them for a better understanding of the music…and then work on repetitions of each of those unfolding nuggets. Once it’s overlearned, you’ll have multiple ways to find your way if you get lost, pull a thread when you can’t remember how it starts, or bringing in the next chord when it has left the building. The more ways you can remember all the elements of your music – the more overlearned it is – the more likely you can recover when you can’t remember what comes next.

I’m not going to try to kid you, overlearning takes time, so you need to add that to your preparation time. It also requires that you stay engaged and curious about each tune you play while you’re learning it (which, oh by the way, never ends). And that will help you be a better musician!

No method of patching the leak will be foolproof, but overlearning stands as a useful tool for getting through those times. Have you actually overlearned all your tunes? Do you have other ways to build a strong memory of your music? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to have new ways to fix things!