Music Memorization Tips and Tricks

 

Tips on Memorizing Choral Music

    I was looking through the music that we have listed on Chorus Connection for our upcoming November 2025 Reunion concert, and realized a few things.  First of all, nearly half of the pieces are ones that I have done before in the past 3 years that I have been in the Chorale.  Second of all, they all look absolutely fun, with a few difficult ones.  And last of all, there are a few that are necessary to be memorized, due to clapping and what-not in the music, and there are some that are easy enough to be memorized.

    So it go me to thinking, what are some of the ways that could help members of the Chorale to learn how to memorize their music easier.  I started my online research and realized that there are A LOT of tips and tricks to music memorization.  A lot of these I have employed myself over the years in the choir organizations that I have been in.  But as I have gotten older, it has also become a lot more difficult to memorize the music.  So I hope that some of these tips will help you with your memorization skills.

    I have decided to list each tip under a different header, though they may not seem to be in a particular order of importance.  I feel it is up to you to look through the list and determine which of these tips might help you with your specific learning style.

Learning Styles

    Before I start with the actual tips, I wanted to spend a little time on learning styles.  There is a quite famous educational psychologist, Howard Gardner, who theorized that their are eight primary intelligences.  When teachers and students can identify their specific intelligence, they become much better at learning using that particular intelligence. If you want to better identify your own intelligence, check out the following link:  MentalUp Test

    The 8 intelligences are Linguistic, Spatial, Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist.  The ones that correspond most closely with musical memorization are Linguistic, Spatial, Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, and perhaps Interpersonal.

    We can use the knowledge of our specific intelligences to our advantage.  Take the online test referenced above.  Then you will know which areas you will need to focus on the most! For example, I scored really high on the Musical and Spatial Intelligences, with Linguistic coming in a close third place.  I pick up on the musical side of things very easily, and can figure out how chords and melody/harmony lines work together, which is the spatial side.  Linguistic is a little more difficult for me, as I have difficulty learning the lyrics.  So, knowing that, I don't need to focus as much on the music.  That will come fairly easily.  Instead, I need to work more on the lyrics.  More on that below.

    I challenge you to do the same.  Each person is different and each person learns and thinks differently.  Educators are taught Gardner's theory to try to understand their students better.  When you can see another's intelligence style, it is much easier to help them learn.  We can be our own teachers, though, and learn which intelligences make us tick, and which we need to work on.

On to the Tips and Tricks

    Listen to the music!  One of the first things we need to do when beginning to memorize our music is to understand how it all goes together.  If we just rely on listening to our parts and practicing certain areas of the music, it will be much more difficult to memorize the music.  Before you even get to the first rehearsal, listen to the music all the way through, several times.  Take note of key changes, rhythm changes, dynamics, and lyrical quality.  Do this with your eyes closed and with headphones or earbuds on.  Focus on the music without distractions.  Put the song on repeat and listen three or four times. Then take a break.  Don't immediately start with another song.  Take a few hours, and then put on the next song and do the same thing.  

    By doing this, you are getting to know the music.  Your brain is already making the connections that will help with your memorization of the song later.  After you have listened to all the pieces over several days, then make a playlist of the music and run it through once a day when you're driving to and from work, or doing the dishes, or before you go to bed, or while you work out.  The more you listen to the song, the easier it will become to memorize it.

    Read the music!  After you have listened to the music, read through the music as you are listening to it.  You know much more intimately what the music sounds like.  Now it will be easier to read the lyrics and see how they fit with the music.  Look for specific rhyming patterns or phrase repetitions.  You still aren't actively attempting to memorize the music, although your brain is making the connections and is already starting the process, even though you may not even know it yet.

    Test yourself!  Once rehearsals have started, give yourself a week or two to really learn the music, but then start testing yourself.  When we practice a given phrase or section of music, put down your music after going through it once or twice, and see what you remember.  You'll be surprised at how much your brain has digested and has in its memory banks.  This works especially well if you've spent time on the previous two tips.  It's like radio songs.  You listen to the same song on the radio or spotify and soon you are singing along.....although sometimes with the wrong lyrics.  I'm definitely guilty of making up my own lyrics.  But once you've had your curiosity piqued and you look up the lyrics to that favorite song, soon you are singing along without having to read the music.  It's the same with the music you are singing at rehearsal, though just a bit more difficult because you aren't always singing the melody.

    As we get closer to our concerts, put down your music more and more often, especially with those easy songs that are really repetitive, like THE STORM IS PASSING OVER.  You may not get everything memorized, but the more and more you practice at memorizing, the easier it will become.

More Tips I Found on the Internet:

Write down the lyrics

    One of the things I learned when studying for classes in college was the way to use as many intelligences as possible to learn something.  For example, just by reading the textbook, I was seeing the words.  But if I read the textbook out loud, I was seeing the words AND hearing the words.  If I then wrote down notes of what I had learned for each section, I was reading, hearing, and writing. At the end of each chapter, I would go back through my notes to read and hear what I was reading, while creating flash cards to work on throughout the week.  Each of these steps compounded what I was learning and helped me to understand the concepts.

    With learning a new song, it is much the same.  You rehearse and sing the music and hear the music, but rarely do we do any writing.  I would like to encourage you to take out each piece of music and write down the lyrics, line by line.  Really look at them and see if there are rhyming patterns.  Then check for syllabic patterns for each line.  Often, different lines will have similar syllable patterns as well.  Then label each section based on whether it is a verse or a chorus or perhaps a bridge.

    Once you have this homework done, then start memorizing the music.  The mobile app, Memorize by Heart, on both Android and Apple, has a free option for memorizing poetry or verse.  You can use AI to print the lyrics for one of the songs we are working on, then copy and past that into the Memorize by Heart app.  Then there are a number of games and memorization tools to help you memorize the lyrics.  Once you have the lyrics mostly memorized, the music will just help to solidify that.

(on Apple Store or Android Play Store)

Get a Memorization Buddy

    Working with a friend on memorization is a great trick as well.  Working with someone who is singing the same part as you will help to boost both of your confidence.  As you work together, you also help each other to put down the music and sing from memory.  It is much easier to put down the music if there is someone there to keep you honest!  That is why so  many people go to the gym with a workout partner.  The partner is there not only to help out and give encouragement, but they are also there to make sure that you aren't "cheating" along the way because they know that a good workout is tough.  It's the same with memorizing music.  If your memorization buddy pushes you, and you push them, though it is tough, you will both learn much more in the end.

Repetition is the Key

    The more you go through the music and the different variety of ways you go through the music, will only help you to memorize your music more effectively.  Use the Memorization app referred to above.  Listen to practice tapes and YouTube videos at home or in the car.  Sing out loud as you learn the lyrics.  Just repeat, repeat, repeat!!!!!

Interesting Memory Trick

    This is an interesting psychological memory trick I picked up decades ago when I was teaching, called neuro-linguistic programming.  When we would teach students how to spell more difficult words, we would have them look up and to the left, and then trace out the shape of each letter as they spelled the word, in the air where they were looking.  It is from a study (I don't know the source) where educational psychologists learned that when students memorized that way, it was like they opened a passageway to the brain specifically set up for storing long term memories.  And I've seen it work.

    When it comes to trying this with music, I don't recommend spelling out every word, but you might try learning each line or phrase and once you've got it down, then repeat it again several times, OUT LOUD, while looking up and to the left.  See if that opens the mental passageway for you too.  It's worth a shot, right?

Conclusion

    In the end, it's all about trying to learn the music better.  There are young people in the choir who will be able to memorize music very easily, and there are a bunch of us old geezers in the choir who will have a more difficult time memorizing the music.  That, unfortunately, is due to our brains slowly getting crammed full of stuff throughout the years.  Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to learn new things.  As we get older, the neuroplasticity of our brains slows down.  But most of the time, it doesn't fail completely.  There are still things we can do to memorize more.

    My parting advice would be to start with the easiest songs that are highly repetitive.  This next concert, the easiest song will be THE STORM IS PASSING OVER, because half of the choir learned this by memory for the NYC tour, and it is a few short verses, followed by the same phrase over and over again.  So start with that one.  Get it memorized.  Then go on to CINDY.  It is a more difficult song, but there is a point where we are stomping our feet and clapping like a hoe-down.  It'll be so much better if we can have that one memorized.  Then start with the next easiest one and work your way on to the more difficult pieces.  Start early and work on it a little every day.  Get the Memorize by Heart app and use it when you're at the doctor's office, or in the pharmacy line.  Just do a little every day.

    I hope that these tips and tricks will help you out with your memorization this year.  Remember, even old dogs can learn new tricks.  We just have to find out ways to make those tricks stick easier.  Feel free to contact me and I can try to point you to further research or help in any way I can.

    Can't wait to see you all on August 20th!