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| Paul Murin |
Being the leader of a tribute band that effortlessly merges the disparate music of Phish and the Grateful Dead, Paul knows a thing or two about the playing of two of my favorite guitarists – Trey Anastasio and Jerry Garcia (and Bill Frisell!). One thing I'd love to some day study is the music of Phish, especially their improvisations like the unbelievable music they are making on the spot each night on this remarkable summer 2014 tour, if my abilities and comprehension will even allow for this. Since Paul gives Skype lessons, he might be one of the best sources for this knowledge and understanding.
But for now, I thought I’d share several excerpts from a blog
entry on High Country Guitar about Memorizing Music. For the full original post click here.
Memorizing Music
"I found that playing jazz standards and trying to
learn them from memory improved my overall memorization skills because it
forced me to learn to use my ears above all."
"You have to make an effort to memorize music. It does not just happen. You could play a song
a thousand times with the sheet music in front of you, but if you haven’t made
a conscious effort to memorize it, you’re very likely to forget it on the
1,001st time if you put the sheet music away."
"You’re probably
making plenty of mistakes anyway, even with the sheet music in front of you,
and you’ll play whatever it is much better and more consistently if you just
memorize it."
"I find it a lot of work to read sheet music
while I’m playing anyway…it’s much easier to put in the work memorizing a tune
for a little while; then you can put away the sheet music for good and just
play the tune. But to do this, you have to consciously say to yourself, 'I’m
going to memorize this thing,' and really make an effort to do it."
"Another thing I notice is that I can think I have
something memorized after spending some time working on it, but then if I put
it down for a day or two, when I go back to it, I’ve forgotten it all over again.
So when you think you’re done memorizing something, keep in mind that you might
not be as done as you think."
"As I see it, the memorization of music happens on
three different levels: Aural (how it sounds), Intellectual (the theory behind it) and Physical (the fingerings and movements required to play it)."
Aural
"When
musicians refer to being able to hear something, they are really talking about
the ability to recognize what they are hearing, musically. If I had to rank the
three aspects of memorization, I would say that this is the most important, and
in fact as I write this piece, I realize that all three of these methods really
point back, in some way, to your aural skills, a.k.a. your ears.”
"The best musicians have amazing ears. A great jazz
improviser can hear a melody and instantly play it back to you, as well as
instantly recognize a chord (or chord progression) and come up with melodies to
fit it on the spot."
"So, yes, you should be able to learn to hear a G
chord change to a C chord. And, yes, it’s possible to be stone deaf and still
have good ears."
"Once in a while somebody will try
to tell me that they are tone deaf. I doubt this condition even exists; if it
does, I have never seen it, and I’ve taught a LOT of different people. Some
people might have a little more ablility than others in this area; some are
just good at it while others have to work at it. But I’m fairly certain that
ANYONE can learn it."
"In general, good ears, combined with a solid
knowledge of how the sounds are laid out on the fretboard, makes it much easier
to remember a piece of music."
"One of the best ways I have found to practice my
ear training is to try to play melodies
that I hear…TV, radio, Christmas songs, anything. Phish fans may have already noted that Trey
Anastasio has often spoken of this as being a valuable practice tool. It helps
you learn to recognize intervals, and it also helps you be more creative
with your own melodic ideas because it breaks you out of the usual guitaristic
patterns."
"All
in all, I think it is important to be able to sing any melody that you play,
and play any melody that you sing. It follows, too, that if you
can’t sing a melody that you are planning on playing, you probably can’t play
it very well either. Practicing this helps you make a much quicker connection
between what you hear in your head, and what you actually play on your
guitar. It follows, then, that if you can really memorize what a song sounds
like down to the minute details, you can memorize how to play it."
Intellectual
"When I refer to the intellectual aspect of
memorizing, I am referring to the math behind the music, i.e. the theory behind
it. What are the chords? What is the chord progression? If the part you are
memorizing is melodic, are there chords implied in the melody? What are
the interval leaps within the melody? What scale(s) does the melody
come from? This is all information you can use to help you memorize a complex
piece of music."
"In music school, one thing I had to do frequently
was to memorize jazz standards. As
an additional tool to help us memorize the songs, they would have us transpose
them into different keys from memory, without sheet music.
In a 32-bar song where the chords change every measure, or even half a measure,
this can get pretty complicated. It would be virtually impossible to do this on
sheer memorization alone. Instead, you begin to look at the chords in terms of
Roman numerals (the I chord, the V chord, etc.). You also begin to think in
terms of intervals, rather than just chord names. And finally, when you
start to get good at it, you just start to hear the chord change in your
head – and when you get to this point you
often don’t even have to really think about what key you’re in, or even what
chord you’re playing, you just hear the chord and play it."
"It can still be incredibly useful to
think in these mathematical, intervallic terms. Just don’t ever forget to pay
attention to what these chords and chord changes sound like while you practice
them."
"Take
songs that you think you know well, and play the chords in a different key
(without writing them down!). Start simple, with I-IV-V progressions and that
kind of thing, then go to more complex songs. Again, you might be surprised how
difficult it is if you haven’t done it much before, but the more you do it the
better you get at it."
Physical
"The physical aspect of memorization has to do with
the fingerings, fretboard positions, and hand movements required to play a
given part."
"One thing to pay attention to when you are
praciticing a difficult passage: Make
absolutely sure that you are practicing it the exact same way every time. If
you’re paying attention, you might catch yourself using a slightly different
fingering on consectutive passes through the same part (and I’ll bet that those
are often the EXACT spots where you are making mistakes). This will certainly
impede your muscle memory progress."
"Also,
when you find yourself consistently stumbling over a certain part, make sure
you practice that part from a measure or two earlier;
very often when we have problems with
fingerings, the problems are starting during the approach to that point in the
music, and not just at that point itself."
All quotes above are from Paul Murin. Any bolded text is my doing.
All quotes above are from Paul Murin. Any bolded text is my doing.
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