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David's Tip of the Day: Imagery to Help with Song Memorization

David Barrett Admin's picture

When students reach the last stage of dialing in a song for performance they work on memorization. The common tool used is to list the first lick, or just the first couple of notes of the first lick, for each chorus. The goal is to have a quick bullet-point list of each chorus, but just enough written that it helps you to recall what that chorus is. It doesn't take much, and the goal is to be very brief. Instead of using hole number TAB, you can also use a shape (we tend to remember objects better than abstract numbers). Take a look at https://www.facebook.com/bluesharmonica for a hand-written example of the first lick of "Juke" (also note the cool paper... last day of my trip to Hawaii :-).

So... either the first couple of notes of the first lick in each chorus, or a hieroglyphic version of the lick that makes sense to you.

Have a great weekend everyone!