Dogs and Tricks 

If you have enjoyed the luxury of getting older (so far), you might have noticed that things have changed. Some of those things are no big deal – if you’re not as tall as you were before, you can adjust your bench and your harp.

But if sometimes it feels like you’re the proverbial old dog and every tune is a new trick, it can get discouraging. What if you feel like you can’t learn tunes like you used to? Or you can’t remember them when you do learn them? Ugh. That would be frustrating.

Well, no one wants to go down without a fight, so what are some things you can do to help improve your capacity to learn and memorize music? Here are a few ideas:

1. The Ground Rules

   1. Be confident – you can keep learning and memorizing music!
   2. Your brain is not static and will continue to develop and make new connections. This continued growth and development is greatly improved by learning and memorizing.
   3. Do you (don’t worry about how fast you learn, just keep learning).
   4. Failure is essential for learning to happen! Those aren’t mistakes – they’re part of a process of developing connections that are essential to learning.

2. To keep your brain sharp

   1. Take a walk. Yes, I know I sound like a broken record, but research in a variety of fields points to the utility and importance of taking a walk. It doesn’t have to be anything huge – just take a stroll, in the fresh air, at a pace that you can comfortably maintain for about 20 minutes. You can also break that 20 minutes up into a few walks. This one is hard to wiggle out of – you won’t be sweaty, you don’t need to change, you just need to put on some (appropriate) shoes and go. Walking will help refresh you and clear your mind so you can focus on the task of learning.
   2. Follow grandmotherly advice. You know that a French Fry addiction is not healthy (or M&Ms or Coke, or what ever your vice might be). Eat well and care for yourself – better overall health will improve your cognitive health and capability.
   3. Check your hearing. As we age our hearing declines. But we also have so much noise in the world that loss of hearing is all but assured. Having healthy, supported hearing will make learning tunes easier and will be good for your overall health. When you can’t see, you wear glasses and if you need to have hearing aids, just do it.
   4. Get rest and take care of you. Let me summarize a lot of research – smart people get sleep and sleep makes you smarter. *

3. To improve your intake and retention of tunes

   1. Acknowledge that age is changing how you take in, process, and put out information. It’s not good or bad, it just is. And this is true whether you are a relatively newly minted adult or a very seasoned human (in your red hat age) – we are always aging and changing so rather than expecting yourself to be the same as you were when you were younger, know where you are now. (and if you’re reading this and younger – make a note, might as well get used to it and adapt from the start)
   2. Embrace where you are now – now that you’re older, notice how you see the world – and process the information – differently. With age comes more neural connections which support being more able to see the whole (even if you can’t read the fine print!). If you know this about your processing, you’ll realize that you get the gist quickly and can fill in the details later. When you were younger you were able to hang on to details (e.g., a longer string of notes), so now, focus on larger segments (maybe phrases) and be assured you’ll be able to fill in the gaps later.
   3. Speed is only one measure of learning. If you don’t learn as quickly, do you notice that you learn more thoroughly now? (psst you probably do, whether you’ve noticed or not)
   4. Focus on what you’re learning. Don’t try to task switch or multitask. Do one thing and pay attention.
   5. Simply learning will make you better at learning (practice!).

4. Strategies for learning

   1. Build a map. I help my students learn a tune in all their sense modalities. We listen, we play, we shut our eyes, we squeeze. Ok, we don’t smell or taste but if I could figure out how, we’d do that too. Having all these different sense “paths” for the tune means that we have built “maps” in each of these modes, and this strengthens memory for all those modes.
   2. Take notes to help you remember. Record if possible so you can review.
   3. Build your brain muscle. Do other activities that benefit your memory – do puzzles and word teasers, memorize your grocery list. Do these “brain games” consistently and regularly, so that you stay sharp (or become more so).
   4. Only compare you to you, today. You’re not the you of 20 years ago. And you’re not the hotshot sitting next to you either. Just focus on learning and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.
   5. Keep learning – the more you do, the better you’ll be at it.

5. Strategies for recalling

   1. Start where you find yourself. If you can’t remember how a tune starts, play what you do remember. Listen to the tune in your head and play along. See if by playing what you do remember you can pull yourself along to the next bit – until you’ve played the whole tune. I do this a lot – I just play the phrase I do recall and keep playing it until the next phrase comes to mind (etc.) until I have the tune again. I also check any sources I have if I really get stuck (sheet music, recording, phoning a friend).
   2. You already know a lot – which gives you a good platform for storing new information. Use it and leverage any similar phrases to help you build better “maps” of the tunes.
   3. Keep practicing from memory – the more you do, the better you’ll be at it.
   4. Focus on what you’re recalling. Work on remembering one thing and pay attention.

Remember too, that you had to learn to learn, and this is simply one more step. This is a start – give some of these a try and see how you go and let me know in the comments how you get on!

*Yeah, no researcher would write that in a scientific journal, but like I said, I’m paraphrasing!

In December, I wrote about learning versus memorizing.  You left some great comments, and one of you asked how one would go about actually doing this (learning rather than memorizing).  You graciously waited through the madness that is the holidays and the reset that is the new year.  But now, it’s your turn!

Let’s start by acknowledging that learning music is not really different from learning anything else.  And just like in school, when you try to brute force memorize – everything deserts you when the pressure is on.  And because memorization is so fragile, you can’t even salvage the memory gap – because there is noting of substance behind it.

So we’re back to learning.  The first thing to understand is that learning is not passive.  You have to be engaged, checked in, and thinking to learn!

The easiest way to do this is to do some analysis.  I don’t mean a big research study.  To analyze – ask yourself some questions.  these questions will help you make connections and discover patterns.

1. Does any of the piece remind you of anything else?  That could be anything.  Those of you who have had lessons from me have experienced this – “chocolate chords”, “the Oreo phrase”, “the donut part”, “the walk in the park”, and “this is just like in that other tune”.  These are all just things the tune remind me of (never mind that most of them are food!).  Do parts of the tune bring something to mind – waterfalls? sheep? fairies? storms at sea?  If so, these are all things you can connect to that bit of the tune which will help you hang on to it (learn it!).  You can also say the connection (e.g. “this is the Oreo part”) out loud while you’re playing that part will also create another connection that you can learn.
2. Find the shapes.  This can be as basic is up or down.  Or as complex as “this reminds me of Katahdin” – I didn’t get that, but he did, and that’s what matters.  If you’re reading, you can see the shape.  You can also see the shape when you put your hands on the harp.  Have you already learned the shape in some other tune?  Does the shape repeat through the tune.  Learning the shapes is another way to learn.
3. Find the story in the music.  If you’re not sure, make up your own.  That story can be another set of connections.  Tell yourself the story as you play.  You can also do this with songs.  Sing the lyrics as you play – they are another set of connections that will help you learn the tune.
4. Break it down.  If you are more advanced, you may be able to learn an entire 8-bar phrase in one go.  If you are less experienced, you may need to look at one measure at a time.  Size doesn’t matter – break the music into pieces you can successfully ingest.  Because….
5. You’re going to stick those pieces back together eventually!  As with breaking it down, stitch it back together in portions you can handle.  Don’t overdo it.  These are more connections…and patterns – and you have a chance to connect the patterns!  This is true for challenging tunes, but its also true for “easy” tunes with their nearly identical phrases which come together differently in parts of the tune.  Make specific links between the parts – be sure to connect the various pieces to each other.
6. Savor.  Take it slowly We are always in a rush.  We want it to be instantly performance ready, faster, more complicated, showier than anyone else – we want to have the tune now!  But rushing leads to a half-learned tune that is wobbly with wishy-washy fingering and phrases built on momentum not confidence, all of which can lead to heartache. 

Need more specifics?  How about:

Fingering is one of the greatest losses of not analyzing your music enough before you start and then moving out too fast.  I wish I could remember who taught me this trick (and if you know who it is, tell me so I can give credit!): place the shape (all the fingers needed in that direction…all of them, even the 4 if needed!); squeeze the strings a couple of times; then play the shape.  Think about the shape, where it sits in the phrase and the tune, where else you might use that same shape in the tune.  Replace the next shape, and repeat. Yes, it can be frustrating (especially if you didn’t actually analyze it first). Yes, it means you can’t just bang out the tune. 

But equally, yes, you will get the fingering.  Yes, you will be preplaced and ready to go.  Yes, you won’t be chasing strings with fingers that weren’t quite ready.  And yes, you will learn the tune more quickly – because you don’t have to relearn any of it!

That might sound suspiciously like practice.  Because it is.  Learning must be active.  Analysis is not a nice to have – it’s one of the things will distinguish your learning.  Each time you run through the piece you will be building connections – in your brain but also you’re your eyes, ears, fingers, and your entire body.  If you have some knowledge of theory, that will also help you make connections and notice patterns.  Talking out loud creates connections in another modality.

The more connections you have and the more patterns you have found, the easier time you will have learning the tune.   And by extension, the more confident you’ll be when you play it – because it won’t desert you under pressure!

Give some of these ideas a try and let me know what you think.  Do you have any other ways to learn you’d like to share?  Make the connection via the comments below!