Reader,
I embarrassed myself playing cocktail hour at a wedding a few years back. A lady came up with a request (and a $20 tip) for a song I’d played many times. But I got nervous, and I had to pull up the sheet to refresh my memory.
There’s nothing wrong with glancing at a chart. But the truth is, we play freer and more confidently when the music lives in our head.
As I drove home, I knew I had to find a better way to memorize tunes. And that’s what we’re working on right now in our Friday afternoon workshops.
Memorizing Body and Soul
This past week, we started memorizing Body and Soul by looking only at the melody of the A section.
Step 1 - Listen Obsessively.
First, put the sheets away. Then, find 3 recordings of Body and Soul and listen to them at least 5 times each. Pay attention to how they phrase the melody. What articulation do they use? How do they embellish it the second time through?
Here are the 3 I picked:
You should know these recordings so well that you can sing the melody with the same phrasing and articulation, without needing the track in your ear.
It should live in your head just as well as your favorite song from high school.
That’s our first clue to building a strong memory. We remember how it sounds, not how it’s notated.
Step 2 - Find the Key Centers
Next, open up the sheet, and take a look at the melody. Can you identify what key center we're in? In the A section of Body and Soul, its Db major:
The entirety of this melody is composed of notes from the Db major scale, except for one minor-3rd at the very end.
What can you observe about it to help you remember?
- It starts on the 2nd note of the scale
- The first 2 bars are a motif, which is repeated in bars 3&4.
- Bar 5 is a Gb major arpeggio shape.
- The final line starts and ends on the root of the scale, with the minor 3rd as the exception.
Play through this melody with the notation, and as you do, notice each those observations in action. Then turn over the notation and try it yourself from memory.
We're not actually going to memorize the observations. This is just my way of guiding you through the active listening exercise. When you find those things, your aural recall of the melody will be much stronger.
When you are doing this right, you are playing the melody by ear.
And this is our 2nd clue to memorizing songs. We are only memorizing the way the melody sounds in our head. Then, we are trusting our ear training to recreate that melody by ear when we play.
## Step 3 - Prove it to yourself
Once you've gone through the steps above, put the notation away, and try to play it in C major. Remember, its starts on the 2, uses only notes from the major scale, except that minor 3rd at the end. Sing while you play if it helps.
🤯
Let that sink in... Memorizing songs isn't about memory at all. You and I have thousands of songs stuck in our heads. Superstition by Stevie Wonder? Yesterday by the Beatles? Your national anthem?
Memorization is NOT the bottleneck. Ear training is.
Watch Last Weeks Replay
If you missed it, don’t worry. As a member, you can watch the replay and catch up before Friday. In just 60 minutes, players went from reading the chart to playing the A section of Body and Soul by ear.