Learn to Memorize New Music

Private Voice Lessons

Welcome to omegabone.com. In this video I’ll be discussing how I learn new music. Thank you for joining me. I currently have a jazz trio and I am looking for some more things to get into. Every time you join a new group that means that you have to either write new material or learn other material. Here in Germany cover bands are very, very, very popular. Last year I was in a Mothers Finest cover band, and Mothers Finest is a interracial rock band from Georgia and they were hot in the 70’s.  They weren’t big in the United States, but they were huge in Germany. They made an album, a live concert album at the Rockpalast and that still sells today.  If you want to see some people rocking out, you need to check them out. They are an awesome band. But anyway, so to join that I joined a cover band, a Mothers Finest cover band called Another Mother. And it was short lived in that they didn’t want to perform, they just wanted to play in the basement. Every time there was an opportunity to perform someone would say oh well, and anyway. So I learned 2 hours’ worth of music for them just for them not to perform. I will not do that again. I will only work with professional bands from here on out. But anyway, that leads me to my point today. When I take a piece of music, I listen to it and listen to it, it takes me a week to learn a new song, but in that week I can learn maybe 10 to 15 songs.  In a month I can learn maybe 30 songs in a month. I can have them memorized down with steps and really understanding them. I have my journal here and I have at the top “luck favors the prepared” and the second quote is “Go! Confront the problem! Fight! Win!” That’s from The Incredibles, the little super designer, she wrote, she said that to Holly Hunter’s character the mother superhero when she didn’t know where her husband was.  This kind of just tells me that if I want something I have to go get it. She wanted her husband and, you know, she was kind of cowering at the designers house and the designer was like enough of this, you know, go get it. Anyway, so this is me going to get it. 
Here is Baby Love, and these little markers here kind of identify the form for me so that when we rehearse I can quickly look down oh there’s the, I know I have to go back to the purple star, I know that I’ve missed at this point, so I have all my notes in here. When I go through this I can sing with the band exactly as the record plays. And if they perform their part exactly right, I can do my part exactly right and we sound perfect. Yeah when that happens right. But anyway, so I would recommend writing the lyrics down, not just copying them from the internet and having the piece of paper, but the whole act of writing it down helps me to put it into my muscle memory by writing it down. If I write it down 3 times, the first time I’m writing it I’m transcribing the song. Syllables, full on syllables. Let me see if I have an example of… This is Truth Going To Set You Free, this is in pencil I don’t know how well you can see that 🎶singing🎶 Right, so but because I wrote it down like that, I knew exactly what it sounded like. Just boom, because I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I know I had to sing 5 oh’s before I go into the Yeah. 

The first time I’m writing it down I’m transcribing it. Whatever I hear on the record, that’s exactly what I write. Whoever I’m transcribing, whichever voice I’m transcribing. Then the second time I write it, I’m copying it so that it’s neat. And so I don’t do this in this book, I do this on a separate piece of paper that I throw away, it’s kind of like homework. The third time I write it it’s from memory. And I probably do that at the end of the week. The beginning of the, like if the week is 7 days right, on the first day of the week I’m listening. The second day of the week I do the transcription. The third day of the week I’m practicing with my transcription. The fourth day of the week I’m copying my transcription. The fifth day of the week I’m practicing with my transcription. The sixth day or the seventh day I’m writing it from memory. 

Now you don’t have to do this, but this is what works for me. This helps me to memorize new songs. And if I have a show where there’s some choreography, I will write the entire show including the steps. On 1, 2, 3, 4, you know, for 3 measures I’m doing step toe touches, I’m doing, not that I can do toe touches, but you know, whatever my movement is I write that down in the transcription. Then there’s an interlude, there’s a costume change, then there’s the next song, and then I’m doing X, Y and Z. Enter on this side of the stage, enter on that side of the stage. Whatever I have to do it’s all written down for that number. If the number has 3 songs in it I have to write down all the words, all the interludes, all the steps, and if I write them down 3 times I have it. You know, it’s very important to write things down. I hope these tips help you to learn your next piece of music. Thank you for joining me.

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