Best way to memorize solos?

Playing Technique
#1

Good people from this forum,

What do you think is the best way to memorize solos?
I wonder how pros memorize complicated solos so fast. How do they memorize large pieces of music so accurately?

Usually, when I learn a new solo I listen the solo a lot of times, sing it and learn its harmony. Although, this help me to learn the solo, I feel that I’m missing something to memorize it efficiently and fast.

A friend told me that I need to take an ear training course. According to him, pros can memorize large pieces of music because they have unblocked their ears (they have a good relative and perfect pitch).

Right now, I’m taking an ear training course, and I feel that it’s helping to understand the relation between the notes that I play and the harmony that is behind. Singing scales and intervals are helping me to expand my music vocabulary.

I’ll apreciate if you share with me the best techniques to memorize solos fast.

1 Like
#2

For me this is definitely the best strategy:

Basically memorising what it’s supposed to sound like will help you tons when you then go and try to learn the tabs and whatnot. You’ll have instant feedback when you put your fingers on the fretboard: “does this sound/not sound like the thing I have in my head?”

Another idea, if you are not interested in 100% memorisation: identify what parts of the solo are a “must”, and what parts are just decoration (for the latter, you can replace it with your own similar-sounding licks). To get an idea, you could compare live VS studio recordings of the artist you are studying, and see what parts are played the same live, and what parts are improvised.

#3

I agree with listening to it a lot. This helps you internalize and learn while away from the guitar.

Ear-training is good, but is more useful for transcribing solos than memorizing them. I guess it could help a little in terms of fingerings etc if you have effective chunks for various intervals, but this is not where you’ll solve your main memorization challenges I think.

If it’s important to play something from memory I find it useful to start playing from memory as early as possible. Say you’re learning from tabs: Chunk it up into licks or manageable pieces. As you work through these, try to stop using the tabs as early as possible. Follow the tabs through a lick/bar/theme once, and then try to replicate without the tabs. Don’t look at the tabs until you’re stuck.

Once you can play the solo at a slow tempo, if you’re still relying on the tabs, try making it more difficult, this will force your brain to work, which helps encoding. One way to do this is to play all the notes of the solo as eight notes, ignore the written rhythm. This will force you to focus. When that is easy, different rhythmic patterns can do the same.

The bulletproof musician has some good stuff on memorization also, check out this article for a starter: https://bulletproofmusician.com/musicians-seem-memorization-naturals-can-become-one/