Everybody talks about learning tunes. I mean everybody. It’s the one common thread that pops up at jam sessions, on gigs, in music schools and in conversations with great players. Hey, what tune do you want to play next? Do you know this tune? What tunes are you working on? I really need to learn this list of tunes…
It’s not surprising then that a lot players quickly develop an anxiety about learning tunes and dread the entire process. What was once a fun project in the practice room gradually becomes a long drawn-out chore that never seems to end.
For years I was stuck in this mental box forcing myself to memorize tune after tune from a piece of paper. I somehow never knew enough tunes yet I spent countless hours trying to force feed these melodies into my brain.
And when it came to performing these tunes, I was hanging onto those mental images from the page like a stranded swimmer holding on to a life preserver. If I couldn’t think of those note names I memorized or that sequence of fingerings, I had nothing to keep me afloat.
This is not ideal for any musician. When you are learning in a situation like this, building a solid repertoire can seem like an impossible task. And even when you do manage to learn a tune, are you sure that you truly know it and remember it?
If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably had the same thought I often had: There has to be a better way to learn tunes…
Get to the root of the problem
The players that have trouble learning, memorizing and retaining tunes are the same ones that go into the practice room with a page from the real book and try to commit those notes and chord symbols to memory.
You might be able to get the notes into your short-term memory and perform them once, but you’re not going to remember them for very long. The hidden trap with this method is that you have no connection to the tune; it’s not a melody that you know by heart, it’s a string of memorized fingerings and hazy mental recollections.
Remember, in the heat of the moment your short-term mental memory goes out the window. If it’s not ingrained in your ear or your muscle memory, it’s not going to come out of your instrument.
So why is memorizing tunes so hard?
Well the problem is not with your ability to memorize information, it’s with the way you’re inputting the information from the start. The melodies you’re trying to learn never get completely ingrained in the first place. You don’t even give your memory a chance to grasp this musical information.
Don’t treat tunes like some plain old, impersonal, dry information like a tax form that you’re memorizing from a piece of paper. Treat it like something that you love. Connect to the interest, emotion and excitement that drew you to music in the first place. Music is personal and fun and it connects to all of your senses.
So take away all the mental clutter, get rid of those external pressures and just focus on the music! Make a mental, aural and physical connection to the tunes you’re learning and you’ll immediately see a huge difference.
If you approach it like this, you can learn a tune in a surprisingly short amount of time. Below I’ve outlined the 3 steps you should be using to learn melodies if you want to get them down for good, and even better it will take you 30 minutes or less.
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