A few years ago, I set myself a goal of having enough music in my head so that I could play a three-hour background gig without sheet music.  This was largely driven by my innate laziness –  I just didn’t want to have to pack up and carry a music stand, a binder of music, a lamp, an extension cord, laundry pins, and whatever else I might have needed to read music to fill the time.  And, to be honest, I also liked the clean look of just a set list, no music stand cluttering up the place.  But mostly I liked not having to carry all that stuff.

Some of you have asked me how you could memorize all that music.  And you’ve likely seen the questions of memorization come up repeatedly in forums.  So many people believe that they must have sheet music.  That they cannot possible hold music in their heads.  One or two of you have indicated that it is impossible for you to memorize music, that you must read, you cannot depend on recalling anything. 

You say that you can’t memorize, but clearly you can memorize some things – e.g. how to spell your name, how to spell my name!, the recipe for your favorite cookie, the names of the days of the week, the rules for bridge, etc.).  It has been my observation that often what you think is a failure to memorize is often something very different.  

Memorization is the ability to recall information from memory.  Learning, on the other hand, focuses on the content of the music, the relationships between the notes, and the structure of the tune. 

Memorization is fragile.  Learning is resilient.

Memorization, because it is fragile, will desert you when you most need to be able to rely on it!  this can lead to gaps in your ability to deliver a tune when you’re stressed (like on stage!).  Sometimes failure to memorize is actually just a crisis in confidence.  In lessons, when I turn the music over and ask you play, often you do a good job – maybe not perfect, but usually fairly accurate.  That suggests that you actually do have it memorized, mostly, you just think you don’t. 

Sometimes it’s a crisis in speed.  When I teach tunes aurally, we always want to go faster.  When I ask if you know it, I ask in two different ways.  One is that, even though your fingers aren’t keeping up, you know where you mean to go (and if you’d slow down a little, you’d be fine!).  This is a lack of confidence.  The other is that you have no idea what comes next!  So, you haven’t learned it yet – easily fixed by spending more time.  This is a lack of information.

When the tune falls apart (when the music is turned or you have no idea what comes next), it’s easy to move on and continue to work – the tune is not yet learned!  But we often skip the learning step.  In a wild-eyed zeal to memorize the tune, we brute force our way through it. We repeat and repeat and repeat.  And we bash it into our hands and our heads.  But we don’t actually know it.  And when you come back tomorrow, you’ll have learned a part of it, but you’ll just have to keep bashing away to get more of it in your head.

What if we spent more time learning the tune?  Figuring out – for ourselves – where it goes, how it gets there, why it works?  This would allow time to think about the tune as a whole (or at least large sections) rather than focusing on each individual note.  We can learn the relationships between them rather than each individual note of the right hand and each note of the left hand.

Be honest with yourself – have you learned your tunes?  Or have you just bashed them into your head?  Have you given yourself the time to be thorough and careful, to identify the relationships and to make them meaningful to you?  Have you used your time to identify how the harmonies work and what you like (and don’t like) about them?  Come at them different ways and build strength in the learning so you have a cogent foundation.

Start today.  Build a collection of tunes you have learned, not memorized.  From that you can build your go to set list that can be as long as you need for each event.  You can even go back to tunes you know you have bashed into your head and specifically work on learning them.  You’ll be surprised how much easier they will be to play!  Be comfortable that those tunes will be there when you need them – and you can lose your music stand too!