Hey friends, welcome back to The Singing Studio. I’m so excited to be here with you today because today we are talking about something extremely important: how to properly and effectively memorize a song. Right now I’m in a musical and so there are lots of songs that I have to memorize. As I’ve been running my lines and my music, I thought, “Hey! You know what? I should make a little video and give you guys my top three tips on what I do to memorize a song!” So here we go.
My first tip for you is to write down the lyrics of your song. You can do this in a notebook, journal, or you can do it on note cards. I personally like doing note cards. I like to separate the verses per note card that way I can split it up and be able to categorize and section it off that way. Notecards are great because it also gives us an opportunity to focus on specific sections of the song. I also suggest writing this out in different colors because sometimes colors can help us remember certain words or phrases. Plus it’s fun to use colors! Use a notebook or use note cards – just make sure you write it down.
My next second tip for you is to memorize at night. What?! They say that if you decide to practice or memorize right before you go to bed, you’ll have an easier time remembering it the next day because your brain has an opportunity to let the information sink in while you’re asleep. I know it’s crazy, but let me tell you – it works and I do this all the time. So as you memorize throughout the day, make sure to take a sneak peek at those note cards or wherever you’re writing it down. Look at that music right before you go to bed and I think you’ll be surprised at how much you remember it the next day.
And finally, my number three tip for you is to do a little bit every day. Sometimes I think when we need to memorize, some of us think that we need to memorize everything all at once. Especially if you’re in a musical, like I am right now, we feel like we need to learn all 10 songs in one sitting. That’s not true. We need to do a little bit every day over a longer period of time versus a lot over a short period of time. So if you’re trying to memorize a song in two weeks, taking 10 to 20 minutes per day to work on memorizing that song is so much better than doing 2 hours a day 3 days before you have to have it memorized. So it’s all about time management. I know it may seem tedious and it may seem boring. Why do I have to memorize this in two weeks and why do I have to do this 10 to 20 minutes a day? Let me tell you, it totally pays off in the end and you won’t regret it.
So my tips for you today, just to recap: number one make sure to write down those lyrics and use different colors. Number two, review and memorize at nighttime before bed so that your brain has an opportunity to rest and really let that sink in overnight. And finally, do a little bit of memorization work every day for a longer period of time.
I hope you enjoyed my video today about memorization. You guys are awesome. I hope you have a wonderful day and if you have tips on how you memorize make sure to submit those thoughts on jskstories.com. Thank you so much and we’ll see you in our next video.
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.