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How to Memorize Music and Lyrics Forever and Ever

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Memorizing song lyrics hasn’t always been my strongest asset. Learning chords, chord progressions, scales and guitar solos were always the easy part.

I’d go through them once or twice and they were stored in my brain for ages. But those nasty lyrics didn’t seem to get further than my short term memory.

Spaced repetition

I ultimately tackled this problem by using a learning technique called spaced repetition.

Spaced repetition works with graduated time intervals. It makes use of the spacing effect where you learn something several times spaced over a long time span.

Instead of cramming (hastily and intense studying at the latest possible moment) which is great for storing huge amounts of information for a short period of time, spaced repetition will pass the information from the short term memory onto the long term memory and make it last indefinitely.

Source

This technique was first discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus, a german psychologist who experimented with the study of memory and did some extraordinary findings. He contributed to science with brilliant insights on the forgetting curve, the learning curve and the spacing effect.

Practice Memorization

While you can apply the spaced repetition technique to any kind of (musical) information, we’ll take “memorizing lyrics” as an example.

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How to Benefit from The Circle of Fifths and Fourths

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The circle (or cycle) of fifths, also called the cycle of fourths is a diagram that gives all kind of handy information on key signatures, chords and scales in a quick and clear manner.

Besides that, it’s an awesome practice tool to improve your guitar playing.

The circle displays all 12 notes of the chromatic scale (those are all the notes in western music) and moves clockwise in intervals of fifths.

An interval of a fifth is equal to 7 semitones or 7 frets on the guitar.

Counter-clockwise the circle moves in intervals of fourths which is equal to 5 semitones or 5 frets.

The circle of fifths is generally used for the study of classical music whereas the cycle of fourth is more often used for the analysis of jazz music, but let that not stop you because there is so much to gain from the circle for any style of music. Make it part of your knowledge of music theory. It will help you in many ways.

Let’s check it out:

Recognizing key signatures
The cycle of fifths is an easy way of finding the key signature of a song. The cycle will show you how many sharps or flats each key contains. At the top the key of C has no sharps or flats. Turn one step clockwise each time and the sharps add up. Next to C on the cycle you’ll find the key of G which has 1 sharp, then D has 2 sharps, A has 3 sharps and so on.

If you go anti-clockwise one step each time the flats up. To left of C you’ll find F which has 1 flat, then Bb has 2 flats, Eb has 3 flats, Ab has 4 flats and so on.

This is useful also and especially if you can’t read music. When you see a music score which makes no sense to you, but you see 3 sharps in the beginning of the note staff, you’ll know that the song is in the key of “A”. Continue Reading

How to Easily Find Any Note On The Guitar with Octaves

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Most intermediate guitar players can find the notes across the neck on the 6th (low E) and 5th string (A). This is essential for learning barre chords, soloing and a lot of other stuff. If you don’t know the notes on the 6th and 5th string yet check out Learn The Guitar Fingerboard Thoroughly in 16 Days

Once you’ve memorized the notes on the 6th and 5th string you can easily find any other note on the guitar. You can do this with octaves. An octave is in essence an interval whose higher note has a frequency of vibration twice that of its lower note.

If you think in notes, an octave is an interval with the distance of 12 half steps (12 frets) in the chromatic scale. For example, if you’re on the 1st fret, 6th string (F note) and go up 12 frets, which will take you to the 13th fret, you will also hit on an F note only one octave higher. You can apply this to every fret and every string.

If you think scale wise, an octave is the distance of 7 notes in the diatonic scale. So if you start on the first note of a scale and you go up 7 notes in the scale you arrive on the 8th note which is the octave.

Each of the diagrams below shows an octave, that means the notes share the same name except one note is higher or lower than the other. Now we can find the name any note or octave on the entire neck.

Let’s take a closer look

DIAGRAMS 1 – 8:
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What is The CAGED System? (The Keys to The Fretboard)

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Whenever you try to deepen your guitar knowledge and you buy a guitar music theory book or look up something on the internet you keep bumping into the CAGED system.

There comes a point when it’s unavoidable, that means it’s time and probably something worth knowing about.

Let me rephrase that “definitely something worth knowing about”.

So then, what’s all the fuzz about the CAGED system?

Well, if you want to be serious about guitar playing and you want to understand how the guitar in relation to the fretboard works, the CAGED system is an absolute valuable tool. Let’s take a good look and see what this is all about.

The CAGED system gives you a logic overview of the fretboard. It makes it much easier to find your way around the neck and understand how chords, chord shapes and scales are related to each other as well as a lot of other things on the guitar. (arpeggios, triads, licks, etc.)

The CAGED system is derived from the five open major chord shapes: C, A, G, E and D. Each chord shape can be moved up on the fretboard. To do so we first have to take the 5 open chord shapes and turn them into closed chord shapes. That means there are no open strings in the chord. By barring the fret and then playing the shape next to it you can easily move the chord up and down the neck and play each shape in all 12 keys.Continue Reading