How I Learn and Memorize a Piece of Music (Without Feeling Overwhelmed)
I recently got a really interesting comment from someone who bought my arrangement of Just the Two of Us. They asked something I hear quite often: how do you actually approach learning a piece of music? How do you memorize it? And how do you not feel completely overwhelmed by it?
Before anything else, I want to say this. If you feel overwhelmed when learning a new piece, there is nothing wrong with you. That feeling is very human, and I still feel it sometimes too. What follows are seven things that have helped me, and that I keep coming back to.
Watch the video
Before reading on, here is the full video where I walk through these ideas:
Change the goal
The first and maybe most important thing I do is change the goal. My aim is not to play the piece perfectly. My aim is simply to get to know it.
I approach a piece the way I would approach a person I have just met. I don't expect to know everything right away. I just start listening. Literally listening, over and over, until the piece becomes alive in my mind. By the time I pick up the guitar, I can often already sing or whistle it. That alone lowers the stress around learning it, and that matters more than people realise. Memory works much better when we are relaxed.
Make the chunks ridiculously small
Most overwhelm comes from looking at the whole piece at once. Our brains do not memorise long streams of information well. They memorise chunks.
So I make things almost ridiculously small. Sometimes I will work on just two beats. Or one chord change. Or only the right hand pattern for a section. And I allow that to be enough for the day. I often separate things into layers as well: right hand alone, left hand alone, bass line, melody, and only later do I put everything together. I let the piece come together slowly instead of forcing it into one piece on day one.
Don't practise in a straight line
Something that helps memory a lot is not practising from beginning to end every time. I often start at the end of the piece. I jump to the middle, to a difficult transition, to the last page.
This does two important things. The ending becomes the most secure part of the piece instead of the shakiest. And my brain learns how to enter the music from anywhere. The piece starts to feel less like a long corridor I have to make it through, and more like a landscape I already know. Nonlinear practice also makes memory more stable under pressure, which matters a lot when you perform live.
Memorisation is a side effect of understanding
People often ask me how I memorise a whole piece. My honest answer is that I don't really sit down and decide to memorise it. Memorisation happens as a side effect of understanding.
I ask myself things like: where is the melody going? What harmony is this built on? What stays the same and what changes? Once you understand the story of the piece, your hands don't have to remember every detail alone. The structure carries you.
Use more than one kind of memory
This is where a little science comes in. When we play, we don't rely on a single kind of memory. There are several systems working at once:
Motor memory: the muscle movements that become automatic through practice.
Aural memory: the ability to mentally hear the next note or chord before it arrives.
Visual memory: remembering what the score looks like or the shapes your hands make on the fretboard.
Analytical memory: understanding how the music is built, the harmony, the form, why one section leads to the next.
The more of these systems you involve at the same time, the more stable your memory becomes. That is why I like to sing the melody internally, hear the harmony, and know where I am on the guitar, instead of only repeating the movements. If one memory system slips during a performance, another one steps in.
Slow down, then sleep on it
I spend a lot of time playing very slowly. Not because slow practice is virtuous, but because it gives my brain time to actually register what is happening. Things settle into memory at slow tempo in a way they cannot when you are rushing.
And memory does not only form while you are practising. A lot of it forms during rest and sleep. The brain often does its best work after you have stopped. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is put the guitar down and let the practice settle on its own.
Be kind to yourself while learning
Maybe the most important point of all. Some days you will feel deeply connected to the music. On other days your fingers will feel clumsy and nothing will sit right. That does not mean you are going backwards. It just means you are human.
If a piece feels overwhelming, try to take that as information rather than judgement. It might be asking for smaller steps, or a different kind of attention, or simply a day of rest. Go slowly. Stay curious. And try to enjoy the process of learning the piece, not only the moment when it is finished.
If you'd like to share what piece you're currently working on, I'd genuinely love to read about it. And subscribing to my YouTube channel is the best way to stay up to date with new videos on practice, composition, and life as a guitarist.
