Any nice idea how to memorize piano notes?

General Memory Chat
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I had love to know any way to memorize piano notes.

Or just do rote memorization, or just practice, practice and practice to memorize ?

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As you get better at playing your instrument, e.g. piano, the sequences of notes will just “make sense” along with the sound of the music, which is easy for humans to memorize (think of how many of your favourite songs you can sing along to or at least remember the melody).

Furthermore, you get muscle memory.

It could be useful to memorize some detail about the pattern for any starts of phrases that are difficult or that you forget.

If you’re trying to memorize the notes for music when you don’t play an instrument (seems pointless but everyone here is sometimes learning pointless things, myself included), then again, the most effective way would be to learn to associate the music sound to the notes. Otherwise, you’d have to use some sort of memory palace technique (useful for quickly learning meaningless data). For this, I’d memorize one bar at a time.

Using natural memory for any part of this, for example the rhythm, makes the conversion from notes to memory palace contents much simpler.

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Are you trying to memorize the notes on the keyboard, or how to read sheet music and play it on a keyboard?

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yeah, I just don’t want to memorize the notes, I want to play a particular music too.
I am currently enrolling a course (few weeks course)
Complete piano course, And after only things will left is practice , practice.

Let’s see after this course.

Edit : In my first day, I just learned about letters and octave stuff.

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Sounds fun. Playing music is good brain training. :slight_smile:

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I don’t know that numbers idea is useful or not, anyway I guess best way to find , try yourself.

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It’s very useful. I love that topic. :slight_smile:

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hey Josh, believe it or not. Seriously I am feeling like so good and telling myself you did good job in learning numbers system.

now I got 1 new usefulness of it. it works great in memorizing notes, well after practice actually we don’t need that numbers. But before practice in the beginning it helps a lot.

In the end muscle memory wins here. my hands automatically know where to press the keys without thinking about numbers after some time. (telling by experience.)

Hope, I will do more better next time. see you. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Let us know how it goes. :slight_smile:

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Hello there If I understand well. You want to be able to read notes from a music staff? right?

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Have some look at “JIANPU” musical notations

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Have some look at “JIANPU” musical notations used by the Chinese but created centuries ago by a French guy!

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I’m a musician, and I didn’t know about this notation, it’s a very interesting notation.

It’s easy to understand, and I believe it’s possible to store sheet music in a journey. You can use some number system, such as the PAO, and figure out something to represent the symbols. With practice, one can become proficient enough to memorize a new piece in just a few seconds. I think this allows the musician to study the piece and make notes accordingly, and even mentally practice on the instrument.

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You should check the story of this notation system. I was surprised by it! And that system has some existing variant in Europe but they are not really known by the public. If i recall I think that there is a software that can convert Traditional notation into Jianpu. If you are courageous, you still can use the traditional score and add some Jianpu notation on the sheet score and add some colored stickers on your keyboards (what i did) with a specific color for each octaves.

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Thank you all for the tips!
Many years ago I learned to play the piano, and this information remained forever in my memory, but it was distorted. I will apply your advice!

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One problem with remembering individual notes is that any song worth playing has thousands of notes. The solution for me has been to not remember notes.

Most music is made up of chords, either played directly or in arpeggio or other pattern. I try to remember the chords and which inversions are used, and string those together.

After chords, remember chord patterns. Within a particular key, there are usually a limited number of chords you can expect to see. If you are really smart (which I am not this smart), you will remember the chords relative to the key, so you can change keys easier.

Note: Learning jazz theory and putting it into practice should help with these two items.

Another thing to note is that you have a bit of muscle memory when playing songs, so your hands will remember sections of songs where your brain might not remember all of the exact notes.

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Well said. I dabble a little in piano, guitar and ukulele and the points you are making are valid. I think the underlying question also must relate to the reason one is ‘playing music’ in the first place. Obviously someone who is earning their living from being a ‘session musician’ or a ‘music teacher’ would undoubtedly have furthered their understanding of music from a thorough study of ‘music theory’ and certainly in the case of a ‘music teacher’ they would invariably have some theoretical underpinnings of their knowledge of music such as a Licentiate Diploma from the Royal School of Music etc. Turning to the ‘session musician’ they would need to probably have a sound grasp of ‘sheet music’ if they are to function effectively. That being said, probably the most successful group of all times being the Beatles couldn’t read music certainly in their younger days. Perseverance, dedication, belief and boundless amount of ‘song-writing’ talent was key to their success. Of course having a producer who was well verse in music Sir George Martin (often referred to as the 5th Beatle) facilitated the ‘Fab 4’ in getting their ideas transferred onto vinyl.

As mentioned, I just dabble in music for my own personal entertainment, so I get by fine by just ‘busking about’ and singing ‘out-of-key’ most the time but my motivation is solely enjoyment. Worked out a long time ago that I shouldn’t give up my ‘day job’ to become a famous pop star as it wasn’t going to happen. Agree with your idea of ‘chords’ (triads and others) being the most important thing. Having one’s piano regularly tuned and hopefully buying the best piano your budget will allow you too, will set you off on a good course too. The internet is full of ‘free lessons’ too. So go out and enjoy making your music!

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