Festival Preparation: Memorizing Your Music

 With Parkland Music Festival coming up, I'm going to spend the next three weeks focusing on preparing for Festival. This week I'll talk about memorizing. Next week I'll talk about nerves, and for Week 3, we'll cover Festival do's and don'ts. 

   I'll admit, as a child, I never gave a thought to how I memorized. And I'm not just talking about music. I was in AWANA, I had to memorize Bible verses to get through the books and on to the next level, and with Mom there to help me, I wound up not only getting through the required books with flying colours, but also doing extra, optional work -- and subsequently getting extra rewards! But, lest you think, "Obviously she had an exceptional memory" -- Mom was also an AWANA leader. When I moved to the next level, she did too, so we could be together. When we moved up, a lot of the girls in my new class were really having a hard time just getting through Book 1. Mom didn't waste time. She began personally coaching the girls under her, using the same methods she had used to teach me. 

   Her methods worked. 

   So today I'm going to share the tricks I learned from Mom, as well as some other tips that I pulled off of Connolly Music's website, and a fascinating concept that I heard about from someone at church. The most important thing is that you find what works for you, and use it. 

• Work in small sections. Your brain can handle working on the first measure, or the first two, or the first line. But don't attempt to play the whole song from memory at once. 
•  Know what you're playing. Since we're talking about music, make sure that, whatever it is you're working on memorizing, you can play it correctly. Believe me, you do not want to memorize a mistake! Un-memorizing a mistake is a nightmare. 
• From Mom: Repeat, repeat, and repeat again. Take that first small section. Play it with the book. Play it without the book. Play it without the book again. And again. You might find that muscle memory will take over, and you'll wind up playing past the section you were working on. That's good if it happens. If it doesn't, you know what you need to work on. 
• Speaking of muscle memory, what is that? It's when you are good enough at playing with the right fingering that your hand just knows where it needs to go next. You can reinforce this by watching your hands while you play. Also think about how your hands feel when you are playing this song -- which is good for watching your hand position too! Finally, try the opposite of watching your hands -- play with your eyes closed, or with the lights off, so you have to rely on touch and sound. 
• Use your imagination -- both ways. Take your book and read through the music, humming or imagining what it sounds like, imagining how you would play it -- but without actually playing it. Then switch. When you try to play without the book, imagine a picture of the music in your head. Pretend there's a little line, like the red-grey bars at the bottom of a YouTube video, marking approximately where you are. 
• There's another way you can use your imagination. Create a story to go with the song. This will help keep you on track and feel the music better. Double-bonus! 
• Finally, there's a really cool technique called Memory Palaces. This might be useful if you're having a lot of trouble with a piece. I've never actually tried this while memorizing music -- I never needed to -- but I use a similar technique when there's something I will need to remember later on, like where I left my phone when I went to do gardening. 😉Here's how I think it would work with memorizing music: Give each tricky spot a picture in your head that is funny and that you will definitely remember, like an ice cream cone playing soccer, or a dog riding a skateboard. (If you can make it connected to the music somehow, even better!) Now picture a house, your house or an imaginary house, and start putting your funny pictures in the house. The picture to go with the first tricky spot -- let's say it's the ice cream cone -- will be right inside the front door. Then the picture to go with the second tricky spot might be just inside the first room to the left, and so on. 

   Do you have any memory tips and tricks? I'd love to hear your thoughts below!