{"id":330,"date":"2019-04-22T04:02:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T21:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/?p=330"},"modified":"2019-04-22T04:02:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T21:02:08","slug":"mastering-musical-memory-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/22\/mastering-musical-memory-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Mastering Musical Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the greatest areas of struggle for most guitarists is\nremembering the numerous chords, scales, chord progressions, and other odds and\nends that we must employ to reproduce our favorite songs or to improvise. While\nthere is no way to make memorization of large amounts of information easy,\nthere are things we can do to make it more predictable and consistent and thus\nproduce better results and faster progress in our playing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Psychologists advise that lifestyle greatly affects memory.\nWhile this article is specifically directed at musical pursuits rather than\nmemory in general, it is worth mentioning that a healthy diet, regular\nexercise, and adequate sleep allow our memories to function at their maximum\npotential. If you want the best results from your musical endeavors, take good\ncare of yourself! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For musicians, we need to focus specifically on two\ncomponents of memory: <em>procedural memory<\/em>\nand <em>declarative memory<\/em>. Procedural\nmemory, for our purposes, refers to that aspect of recall pertaining to executing\nphysical tasks. In musician lingo we often refer to this as <em>muscle memory<\/em>. Declarative memory is\nthat aspect of memory that allows us to recall facts and figures, such as chord\nshapes, scale patterns, and the intervals of the root notes of chord progressions.\nSo now that we have a view of the two aspects of memory we need to master,\nlet\u2019s look at some specific strategies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Improving Muscle Memory<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Repetition<\/strong> \u2013 there is no substitute for repetition. You may have heard something of the old adage among guitar players about \u201cplaying until my fingers bleed\u201d. While this may sound like a ridiculous hyperbole, I have in fact literally practiced extreme bends for certain licks to the point that one of my fingernails began to separate from the nail bed and seep blood. While I don\u2019t recommend this, it does illustrate the point that repetition is the key to muscle memory. The more you repeat good executions of a given technique, the better you will play it. This is also incidentally one of the keys to overcoming \u201cstage fright\u201d \u2013 embed your skills so deeply into your muscle memory that you can execute them accurately regardless of any distractions. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Consistency<\/strong> \u2013 <em>you will get much better results from your muscle memory by practicing\na moderate amount of repetition daily as opposed to trying to cram in a large\nblock of repetitions on the weekend or the day before your next lesson!<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Focus <\/strong>\u2013 repetition of slop leads to\nplaying slop. It is extremely important to pay attention when practicing\nscales, for instance. Be sure that you are relaxed and using the most efficient\nmotions possible for each note. When you are learning something new it is\nimportant to practice it at a speed that will allow you to play it accurately\nand efficiently. That often means \u201cexcruciatingly slow\u201d. If that is what it\nmeans then do it that way. You will never have speed without slop until you\nthoroughly train your muscle memory to execute the required motions as\nefficiently and accurately as possible. Then gradually increase speed,\nmaintaining a balance between speed and accurate execution. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Test<\/strong> \u2013 it is critical that you push the\nlimits of your muscle memory by testing it routinely. Once you have learned a\nscale pattern then work on playing through it without looking at your fret hand\nfingers. Likewise, once you have learned a new chord then get started with\napplying the chord in a chord progression without looking at your fretting\nhand. Observe mistakes, correct them, and repeat. This will greatly increase\nyour speed in mastering technique. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Improving Recall <\/h1>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Focus<\/strong> \u2013 as with muscle memory, focused attention on the details of new information will greatly increase your ability to recall that information. While this may seem obvious, it is important to be aware that we all have a tendency to allow our thoughts to drift randomly. For maximum understanding and recall it is imperative to willfully interrupt the random flow of thought and focus your attention while trying to digest new information. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Focus<\/strong> \u2013 see item 1. This is so\nimportant that I am repeating it to help you remember it! <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Relation<\/strong> \u2013 as often as possible, try to\nrelate new information to things that you already know. For instance, if you\nknow the first position A Major chord shape then it is not so difficult to\nrecall that the A7 is simply A Major minus the middle note. Likewise, all of\nthe A form bar chords are an offshoot of the A Major chord shape, so if you\nknow the A Major well enough then the various bar forms are not so hard to\nremember. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Isolation<\/strong> \u2013 break complicated sets of\ninformation into parts and memorize the individual parts first, then assemble\nthem into the complete set. For instance, with a new scale pattern memorize the\nnotes on two strings. Then move to the next pair of strings, then the next.\nThen go back and put them all together into the complete pattern. For a tablature\nscore, learn one line. Then move to the next and learn that one. Then play the\ntwo together. Then learn the next line, and then add that to previous two.\nRepeat until the song is complete. Then repeat until your fingers bleed! <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>&nbsp;<strong>Consistency<\/strong>\n\u2013 as with muscle memory, recall responds well to repeated exposure to the same\ninformation. This is why it is much more productive to practice a half hour a\nday than to run practice marathons on the weekends. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Vocalize<\/strong> \u2013 where feasible, find some\nway to say out loud what you are trying to memorize. Speaking things aids the\nmemory in storing them. Example: when trying to memorize notes along the\nfretboard, say the notes out loud as you are playing them. This will greatly\nspeed up your ability to recall the names of the notes. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Following these recommendations will greatly increase the rate of speed of your mastery of all things guitar. We all struggle with memory, but these strategies will assist you in increasing the rate at which you conquer various elements of musicianship. Remember this: never give up! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Copyright \u00a9 2005\nPalmetto Music Institute<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor One of the greatest areas of struggle for most guitarists is remembering the numerous chords, scales, chord progressions, and other odds and ends that we must employ to reproduce our favorite songs or to improvise. While there is no way to make memorization of large amounts of information easy, there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,36,59,23,62,22],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chad-crawford","tag-greenville-guitar-lessons","tag-guitar-lessons-near-me","tag-guitar-teacher","tag-memory","tag-palmetto-music-institue"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}