Upgrading Memory for my music journey - Remembering songs

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

This is the start of the memory journal, so I can get feedback, advice and keep track of where I am at with my journey.

Currently the goal is for my music knowledge to increase, I am learning guitar piano and doing vocal coaching. So some of the main objectives are to remember chord progressions, lyrics and songs to be able to play from memory, as well as pushing music theory into my brain to work on compositions later.

I am not sure how I am going to start just yet, I might need to lay out a bit of a roadmap on what I want to know and by when, I have a list of over 100 songs, but per my guitar plan, I have 5 that I want memorized to move onto the next level of my learning.

I am concurrently studying music theory which is crossing over nicely between guitar and piano, I have a practice schedule set for guitar, and will be following on the practice I use for guitar for my piano, by taking out the guess work of ‘what to practice now’ by using an ‘out of the jar’ method, where I Have a list of things and whatever time I have, I Just pull one out of the jar to practice. No thought needed, as long as I have all of the things I am learning/ practicing in the jar.

This will give me the time I need to spend off the instruments and on the thoery/computer watching the videos and lessons.

I also have a lot to work on with rhythm in practice, so that is an almost daily thing as well.

[metivier (Anthony Metivier)]

I learn quite a bit of music myself. It is tremendously rewarding!

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

So I have essentially stalled before I even started because I had no idea ‘where’ to start, so I am writing this for some guidance, and to put in a starting point.

I think that one of the most obvious places to start is to memorize the notes on the frets of the guitar. I have already memorized the keys on the piano, now it’s just a matter of continual practice. Chords have not come up in my study yet so they will come when they come, and a chord is a chord, so if I learn the notes in a C chord on the guitar, they will translate to the piano, just practice.

So I think my first step will be open strings which I know, then frets 1 2 and 3 to start.

The second most important thing is my song reportoire. At the moment that will be just for guitar and vocals, piano I am not at the song learning stage yet, so I am happy to keep going with the book and exercises I am learning for that.

The first 5 songs are
1 - Hound Dog - Elvis
2 - Walk of Life - Dire Straights
3 - The Gambler - Kenny Rogers
4 - Sing - Ed Sheeran
5 - Three little birds - Bob Marley.

I have Hound dog guitar and vocals, the rest I am working on both.

So now comes to my first few questions on how to go about this.

I have read Memo by Oddbjórn By, which introduced me to this idea of the numbers systems, representing different things.

I have my own picture associations for number 0-9.
Then for his ‘double system’ which I have seen on this forum as I think POA? I am not sure, however I have created the list for 0-99.

Is this the way I should be looking at remembering lyrics and chords? Notes on the fretboard etc?

I have seen some other people on here talking about associations and memory palaces etc, anyway, I would love to get some feedback discussion on best practice, or even something addition you think I should know/learn to help with this memory journey I am taking.

Regards
BK

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

Looking for some suggestions on better note taking. Currently I don’t think my note taking ability is geared towards better memory.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

Aynone?

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

I don’t think I would use memory techniques to memorize the fretboard, but other people here might have some other ideas about that.

I’d memorize the names of the notes of all the frets that have dots on them first. Some of them are easier than others, because they are the same as some of the open strings, like:

• 5th string, 5th fret is a D (the open 4th string is a D)
• 6th string, 5th fret is an A (the open 5th string is an A)
• 5th string, 7th fret is an E (the open 6th string is an E)
• 2nd string, 3rd fret is a D (the open 4th string is a D)
• etc.

Thinking about the relationships can help memorize them faster.

After being comfortable with those notes, I’d expand to this method:

• Choose a note from the circle of 5ths, like C or F. (That link has mnemonics for the circle of 5ths.)
• Find the lowest C note on the lowest-pitched string (the low E). By this point you would know that the 7th fret dot on the 6th string is a B, so you only have to go one fret higher to the 8th fret to find the C.
• Move to the 5th string (the A string) and find the lowest C there. It will be on the 3rd fret.
• Keep repeating on all the strings in order until you find the lowest C note on every string.
• Then go to the next note in the circle of 5ths (or backwards in 4ths). C → G → D → A → E → etc. and find the lowest notes on each string.
• You can mix it up between days by finding them in order from 6th string to 1st string or vice versa.

I would practice that once per day. If it’s slow at first, start with just one or two notes, like C and G. As those become faster, add more. Eventually you will be able to think “C” and your hands will know exactly where to find it on every string.

(If that doesn’t make sense, let me know and I could record a quick video example of the exercises.)

There are more ideas in the music-memorization section if you haven’t already see it.

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

If you post an example of your notes and describe how they aren’t working for you, people should be able to offer suggestions about that. There are also some ideas in the note-taking section.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

ahh thank you. Haven’t gotten to the circle of 5ths yet, but this is super helpeful.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

Attached are 3 pages of my notes. I am currently re-writing my guitar notes in a new book, as they are all over the place, and I wanted to be a lot more organized.

I keep reading about multiple connections and that is a way that our memory of things improves, but not sure I how I can create those. I have never had a great memory, all my memory stuff is usually by constant repitition. I do learn by doing much better than I do by writing or stuff like that, which is why I thought memory techniques might help.

Something I get lost in though is the use of the mind palaces and the Loci etc… I guess because I haven’t used them enough I just don’t understand how you create so many new palaces for new info, or journies for new info.

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

I think the notes look good and understandable. Is there a specific part that you’re trying to memorize?

You could memorize those strumming patterns if you want, but their main goal is probably to train your muscle memory to always keep your strumming hand moving up and down four times per measure, even when you aren’t hitting the strings. I would practice those exercises for at least few minutes every day. Once the feeling gets into muscle memory, you won’t have to think about it.

You can even make up your own patterns as long as your strumming arm always moves like this:

1    &  2    &  3    &  4    &
down up down up down up down up

The reason for those kinds of exercises is that beginners often freeze their strumming forearms, putting the chord upstrokes in the wrong places, and it makes the music sound awkward. They might play the pattern below as down-up-down-up-down (a bad habit) instead of down-up-up-up-up. Doing an exercise where the pattern is mostly upstrokes requires you move your forearm correctly.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

I guess just looking at making sure I’m making the most of my time now…

For learning or memorizing, for guitar it’s noted in chords, placement on the neck etc… and more importantly it’s going to be songs/repertoire in full from memory

[Eroticism]

This is definitely interesting. Personally I grew up with quite a bit of music training, and I would probably use my intuition to gauge what the minimum amount of memory palace structure required to remember it is.

Musical pieces you love tend to be more memorable than average information, so I reckon I would just start trying to memorize music and teasing out the contours of what I find easy to memorize vs the parts which give me trouble.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

Thanks for that.

I am not sure how to do that apart of constant repitition, but i’ll be giving it a crack as of this week, I just finished essentially organizing my guitar life, so ‘hands on practice’ is actually going to be a lot easier now. Time to move onto piano organization which will be a lot less work as I got that right from the start.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

So this is a good thing, the piano book I am learning is now telling us or helping us to start memorizing stuff. This is the first one to memorize.

It is short, the idea I think is to make realize where the repeated items are, which would be labels A and B etc…

Would anyone use memory techniques, or a palace for this kind of memorizing? Because there is now chords for base and trebble, timing and notes, as well as parts.

[Josh (Josh Cohen)]

I think it you practice it daily, it will stick in memory just due to the nature of music.

Instead of adding another layer of mnemonic images in the mind, I would try to look for patterns, because they are going to come up all the time.

When you play it, you’ll see some visual patterns there that are easier to see than when looking at sheet music. The first chord is A-C-E. Notice that the notes are in 3rds. If you count from A to C, you’ll land on 3.

1 2 3
A B C

and from C to E is also 3.

1 2 3
C D E

That’s going to come up a lot when they get into details about chords. Chords are built by stacking 3rds on top of each other, so you can play that shape anywhere on the white keys and you’ll get a nice chord.

ACE is a word, so that can be used as a mnemonic. (It’s an A minor chord.)

When you transpose to D minor, the notes will also be 3rds apart, and you could make a word from the notes of the D minor chord: D-F-A. I’m referring to this part:

Things like 4/4 probably don’t need to be memorized, because if you can play the melody back in your head, you can count the beats to reconstruct it.

[bkennedy74 (Bret)]

Thanks for that. I did start using words to remember chord letters, i only started at c so far, but it is CEG so I use the K sound, to get KEG which is a keg of beer, that worked so far lol

I guess it’s going to be a lot of trial and error, I am at the place where I really want to put stuff in my memory to keep playing, but as I mentioned earlier finding it hard…