In the list below, I describe eight techniques for memorizing a jazz tune through reciting or singing various aspects of the tune. While I am writing about these techniques with jazz tunes in mind, techniques 5 and 6 could be useful for memorizing a melodic line in other musical styles and genres, techniques 1 through 4 could be used to memorize chord progression in many styles, and techniques 7 and 8 could be useful for songs in many styles with melody, chords and lyrics. These techniques can (and should) be practiced in at least three ways that do not involve actually playing the tune. You can use these techniques to recite or sing the tune:
1) away from your instrument and without accompaniment, and/or
2) away from your instrument along with a recording of the tune or a playalong, and/or
3) at your instrument while silently fingering the keys.
The goal of all these approaches is to be able to physically and audibly perform the tune while being guided by an ‘inner monologue’, or what psychology calls ‘self-talk’, that one has developed through the recitation and singing techniques. The goal of this ‘inner monologue’ is to guide oneself through the various stages of performing a tune that chord players need to be conversant with: the ‘head in’, an improvised solo with chordal comping, a chorus of the kind of comping one uses to accompany another soloist (for pianists, this means some kind of two-handed chord playing technique) and the ‘head out’, which in jazz means a return to the melody with some kind of improvised variation (different rhythms, ornaments, fills, or even melodically altered phrases) that makes it different from the head in.
This kind of musically methodical self-talk can also be used to counteract performance anxiety, which can often manifest in the form of negative self-talk, a phenomenon that has been discussed often by psychologists in recent years. Even when one is performing a tune that one has had memorized for a long time, focusing on the nuts and bolts of the music itself leaves one with less time to dwell on potentially anxiety-provoking extraneous factors.
While the ideas below are numbered and groups of them, or all of them, could be used as a step-by-step process, they are also a collection of ideas that can be used individually and in any order or combination. A particular approach may work better for a particular learning style. To use terms from Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, if your strength is in verbal-linguistic intelligence, you may find singing and memorizing letter names of chord roots and melody notes (#1, 3 and 5) more helpful. If your strength is in logical-mathematical intelligence, memorizing melodies and chord progressions numerically (#2, 4 and 6) may be more helpful. If your strength is in spatial-visual intelligence, associating melodic and harmonic moves with images in the lyrics (#7 and 8) may be helpful. You may find that a particular technique works well for you to memorize a particular tune, or that that a particular technique is useful for a particular stage of performing the tune.
1) recite or sing letter names of chord roots through the chord progression
2) recite or sing chord roots with numbers reflecting either roman numeral analysis of chords or the root’s position and/or the position of each root in the scale of tune’s tonic key or (in passages with harmonic modulations, aka key changes) in the scale of the ‘key of the moment’.
3) recite or sing chord changes with letter names of roots and abbreviated qualities – abbreviate chord names by singing/saying root for a major 7th or 6/9 chord, root and ‘minor’ for minor 7th, root and ‘seven’ for dominant seventh. Abbreviate longer chord names. For example, for minor seven flat five chords, say root and ‘minor’ and think ‘seven flat five’. For altered dominants, say root and ‘7’ and think alterations.
4) when typical chord groupings that can be analyzed with roman numerals occur (ii-V, V-I, Ii-V-I, iii-IV-ii-V, etc.), say chord numbers instead of letter names of roots and qualities
5) learn to sing or recite/chant the melody with letter names of notes. The melody can also be broken down conceptually by speaking its melodic rhythm using rhythm syllables (‘1 and 2 and’, the ta language, scat syllables etc.) or reciting the sequence of notes either by singing or chanting non-melodically. This singing or chanting can be done without the melodic rhythm and then with it. These two steps can be combined into speaking or singing note names in rhythm.
6) learn to sing melody with numbers reflecting chord degree analysis of melody, or scale steps of the tonic of the key of the moment, or solfege
7) learn lyrics to melody – look for connections between the pitch direction, melodic shape, dynamics, etc. of the melody and the what the lyrics are describing at specific points. For example, the first four notes of the melody to ‘Autumn Leaves’ ascend, but the four-note motive that they introduce is then transposed down twice diatonically and a third time into the melodic minor scale of the relative minor, reflecting the opening lyric (‘The autumn leaves fall by my window’).
8) look for connections between chord progression and lyrics – for example, in Autumn Leaves, major ii-V-I progressions are generally associated with neutral or happy images, thoughts, or actions (leaves falling, kisses, winter’s song) and minor ii-V-I (which occur more frequently than major keys) go with sad or foreboding thoughts or images (red and gold, sunburned hands, days growing long, ‘I miss you’). In How High The Moon, the minor ii-V-I in m. 10-11 is accompanied by a sad thought in the lyrics (‘love is far away too’) and the major ii-V-I in at the corresponding point in the second half of the tune (m. 26-27) is accompanied by a hopeful thought (‘the darkest night would shine if you would come to me soon’).
Here are a few techniques that are somewhat more abstract than the ideas on the list but which I have found useful at various times:
If spatial-visual intelligence is your strength (or one of your strengths), the memory palace technique may also be helpful. This involves locating pieces of information in specific locations within an mentally visualized space (a landscape, a building, etc.). As the BBC article I linked to mentions, the mentally visualized space one uses for memory palace can be based on a memory of an actual place, or can be generated via computer modeling or one’s own imagination. The article describes how certain episodes of the BBC series Sherlock. In my blog post on the bebop tune Ornithology, I explain my theory that this classic bebop tune, which evidence suggests is more likely composed (or mostly composed) by Charlie Parker superfan Benny Harris than by Parker himself, is itself a memory palace for summarizing Parker’s career up to the point when the tune was written. In the comment section of my post on Wall, paper and cardboard pianos as practice tools, my response to a comment from a piano student includes links to a scene from a TV show that dramatizes the use of an imaginary chessboard for chess practice and a scene from a film that shows the use of an imaginary piano for piano practice.
If your strength is in interpersonal intelligence, finding ways to test or build your memory of a tune with a partner or a group may be helpful. When I play the bridge of Erroll Garner and Johnny Burke’s ‘Misty’, I often remember a particular change by thinking of a gig a number of years ago where bassist John Lilja reminded me of it when I asked him just in time.