Memorizing Songs Can Be Very Difficult at First
Source: Guitar Basics
I have found over the years that people have (3) differing abilities for song memorization. You and your kids will find that you will fall into one of these groups:
Instant Memorization:
These are lucky people indeed. The can play any song right on the spot, without music or any aid from anyone. Usually these people have a talent called “Perfect Pitch” as well. What Perfect Pitch is is this. You can play any note and they can tell you exactly what that note is. This is a very small group of very talented people.
Relative Memorization:
These people can memorize a song, but is memorized similarly to memorize a bible verse or a poem or the pledge of allegiance or something like that. If you fall into this group you have to work very hard to learn a song.
Once you have it memorized and can play it smoothly, vary it and learn different versions of the song. Memorization is quite hard at first for these people, but with work it gradually becomes easier.
People in this class are usually referred as having “Relative Pitch”. Relative Pitch means if I sing a note, a person with relative pitch can sing the next note up or down in the scale.
Forced Memorization
This group of people often has problems memorizing a song or passage of a song – or it may be virtually impossible for them to do so. I’m not saying they are tone deaf, but if you can’t tell the difference from one note to another note, you probably won’t be here anyway. So don’t worry too much.
The largest number of people fall into the middle group and that is where most guitar students fall. So we will concentrate on teaching you Relative Memorization students how to best memorize a song.
Step 1 Find the Sheet Music:
The first step is to find the song written in notation (sheet music). You will be able to find that right here in our weekly lessons. So you can download a group of lessons and print them.
Step 2: Play Through Several Times:
I would recommend that you play the song from beginning to end several time looking at either the notation on the top Staff or the TAB staff. Once you start to feel comfortable with it (and this could take several days – or weeks at first) you are ready to begin the memorization.
Step 3: Direct Memorization Measure 1:
Maybe you do not realize it yet, but if you finished step two above. Play the first measure of the song until you know it by heart. Be able to close you eyes or look away from the music to do this. This is only 4 beats and probably 4 notes, depending on the song you choose.
Step 4: Memorize Measure 2:
Next play through measure 1 and ADD measure 2 to it. If you have a lot of trouble with measure 2 go over it several times and then start with measure 1 – going on to measure 2 again. As in Step 3, play until you can look away from the sheet music and “nail it” be able to play it smoothly, all of the right timing for the notes, use the correct left hand fingers and of course play the correct notes.
Step 5: Memorize One More:
Now only do this measure if you clearly have the first two memorized. If you don’t have them memorized, you could loose almost everything up to this point. From not on, only add a measure if you have the previous measures nailed. Our goal here is to play one complete passage or verse of a song.
Step 6: Try It A Day Later:
The big discouragement is that the next day you may have forgotten nearly everything. If you are lucky and didn’t, you are in great shape. For those of you that need to start at the beginning, just know this is very common. I have this as well, and I’ve been playing a long time. What you will find is that the second day goes much faster than did the first day. This means your brain did retain some of the information.
After the 2nd day you should find that each day thing get a bit easier. You will get setbacks and get discourage from time to time. Just keep it up and your will develop your memorization skill and build your song selection as long as you practice not only on new songs but continue to practice the old ones – or you will loose them.
Tags: how to memorize songs. kids guitar lessons, learn how to play the guitar
