How to Memorize Music: Memory Tips and Two Strategies

The Two-Chair Technique

Equipment required:

• Your instrument and normal practice equipment (Regardless of whether you sit or stand to practice, we’ll call this Chair 1.)
• One extra music stand and one extra chair (We’ll call this Chair 2.)

Memorization Method:

1. Arrange the extra stand and chair (Chair 2) so that the music on the stand is not visible when you are in your normal playing location (Chair 1).
2. Place the music to be memorized on the extra stand at Chair 2 and leave your instrument at Chair 1.
3. Sit in Chair 2, and try to memorize the pitches, rhythms, dynamics, articulations, and tempo markings in a short segment of the music. Be able to access it intellectually (recall the notes), aurally (imagine the sounds), and kinesthetically (imagine yourself playing it).
4. Move to Chair 1, and, without peeking, recall the music and try to play it slowly. Even if you forget part of the passage, try to reconstruct it or fake it until you get to a part that you remember.
5. If you faltered on any part, go back to Chair 2 and study the music again before returning to Chair 1.

Notes:

• The purpose of the two chairs is to enforce the principle of never playing the music with the score visible. You should not be using this time to practice your sight reading. Instead, you need to learn to play from memory without the music front of you as a crutch.

• Make this technique into a game where you try to stay in Chair 1 and never go back. This will help you figure out how to internalize the music more deeply.

• If you are a singer, it is still worthwhile to have the two chairs. This is so that you can enforce the “no peeking” rule. When you are in Chair 1, you may sing, but in Chair 2, try not to vocalize. Imagine yourself singing the music instead. As a singer, you have the added responsibility of memorizing the meaning and pronunciation of the text as well.

Staff-Paper Flashcards

Equipment Required:

• Manuscript Paper (I recommend a landscape page for cutting into quarters in step 1)
• Pencil
• Scissors or paper trimmer
• Music to be learned
• Your instrument

Memorization Method:

1. Cut staff paper in quarters. (All should be the same size.)
2. Write the name of each passage to be memorized on one side.
   • If your staff paper is lined on one side, write this on the blank side.

3. 

   Copy the music to be learned on the other side.

   • Take your time and write legibly, longhand, with no simile marks .
   • Make it a game: Try to write as many notes as possible from memory without looking back at the original.
4. When your flashcard is complete, try to play the excerpt slowly from memory with the passage-name side up.
   • Never play with the music-notation side visible.
5. Once you have copied all passages to be memorized onto flashcards, shuffle the deck. Use the cards to quiz yourself on playing the passages from memory.
   • Never play with the music-notation side visible.

Notes:

• You could use an app to generate these flashcards, but the process of copying the music out is so enormously helpful to the memorization process that it is absolutely worth doing this work.
• Make sure to copy everything in the passage.  This includes tempo markings, dynamics, articulations, lyrics, piano pedal markings, and your own pencil markings.
• Make your label for the passage both descriptive and colorful.  This will help you more easily remember the music on the card’s backside. “Melody in m. 4” is not a good passage name, but “E major arpeggios leading up to the climax” and “The ‘circus’ theme where it appears in the development with intervallic alterations” are better.

Try it

Give these techniques a try on your next piece to memorize. I’d love to hear your successes, difficulties, and revelations, but only after trying my techniques for memorizing music quickly. Send me your comments using the contact form on the right.