Best way to learn music from memory i play saxophone and need to find away to learn music from memory!?

Question

I will give best answer lots of points!!!!

Answer 1

Practice, practice, practice .... and do it every day for ever less than 2 hours. There's a sax player who lives next door to me. He's very good, but he practices every single day without fail. Learning a piece of music is like learning anything else. You have to do it over and over and over again until you've got it burned into your memory. Just think of all those classical concert artists who have to learn long sonatas and concertos and then play them flawlessly from memory. You have to put in a lot of hours in order to make good music. There aren't any shortcuts.

Answer 2

First off, you have received good pointers, and the majority will agree that repetition helps. I’ve been playing sax for over 25 years, and taught public, private, and college for about 15 years. It is true practice makes perfect, if you know how to practice and what to practice. If all you do is repeat something that doesn’t make sense to you, you’ll never get it. I try to explain to my students the approach of “feel” when playing. Your body also has what is called “motor memory” which is why you see a lot of great musicians play seeming that there is no effort involved. Mind you, a lot of time was spent to reach that point. Not everyone can memorize at first listen, others need to play a line many, many times. Everyone is different.
Based on your question, I get the impression you have tried repeating over and over, and are still having trouble memorizing songs.
One thing you can do, which has always helped me a lot, is be able to sing, or at least hum the song you are trying to memorize. If you notice that you can sing most of it back, the next step is to divide the song into its’ basic sections. Usually, INTRO-VERSE-CHORUS (or bridge)- SOLO (if any)-ENDING. Most songs follow a similar pattern like this. Listen to parts of the song that sound the same or repeat a lot. Usually, there will me slight variations on the melody. You don’t have to learn it in order, pick the part of the song that really sticks out in your head the most, and start there since it will be most familiar to you. Record yourself if you can, and really listen. Little by little start to add up the different sections of the song. You might take a very long time, sometimes even a few weeks depending on the complexity of the tune, but as you keep doing it, you’ll notice that there are a lot of parts to many songs that are quite similar. Keys may change, or a different rhythm, but you’ll start picking it out. If you really follow through, you’ll even start to anticipate where a song is going, even if you never heard it before. It’s not 100% all the time, but it’s worked for me in many concerts and recording sessions I’ve done. Apparently, I must be doing something right ‘cause I’m still called to record and play live concerts. Hope this helps!
In God’s Harmony,
RODDY

Answer 3

Throw the music away. Just kidding, but not really. I heard a guitar player say he showed up for a gig some years ago and had forgotten his book. At first he freaked and then he just played. After that he did give his music away. He went to the college and gave all his fake books to students.

When I was learning this on flute, I made a list of songs with the keys they were in and the starting notes, then proceed to make my way through the list. When I got really stuck, I'd switch songs and keep coming back to that hard place later. I wouldn't start at the beginning of the song, just a few bars before I fell off. Then I'd take a running start at the problem and lots of times the muscle memory in my fingers would carry me through. It's a mindset, really. Like learning to walk without crutches.

I hope this helps you. It was my beginning of getting off the page.

Answer 4

Just practice over and over again. It will sink in!