More Tips for Memorizing Music

The article "Should Choruses Memorize Their Music?" shares memorization techniques that choruses have found helpful. In this followup piece, Gary Holt, artistic director of the San Diego Gay Men's Chorus, expands on how he gets his singers "off book" quickly and efficiently.

From my days as an actor, I learned that writing out entire sentences or copying full sets of lyrics was a monumental waste of time.  Instead, I frequently demonstrate to my chorus how one's brain has the amazing ability to recall and fill in all the surrounding words when prompted with only one key word in a lyric. 

Currently, we're working on "Turn, Turn, Turn" as part of a concGary Holt and the San Diego Gay Men's Chorusert of 60s folk music. Two-thirds of my singers are too young to be familiar with the song. So, in the "list" part of the song, I ask them to highlight and memorize only the words "born", "plant", "kill", "laugh", "up" and "dance". I show them how effective this is by making them close their music before they really know the song. I feed them only those six words as we approach the phrase, and they are amazed that all the rest of the surrounding words just come out effortlessly. Sometimes I'll walk through the room and look at their folders, heaping praise on those who've applied the technique and have strategically highlighted only the most important words in other songs.
 
For most purposes, I also don't use rehearsal tracks that include a live voice singing the words.  I'm okay with part-predominant midi tracks generated from notation software, but I caution my singers to use those tracks the first three times only when they're sitting down and following along with their music open. The brain is so wonderful in its complexity that it actually works harder to absorb the visual word scanning that accompanies the act of following along with the track. But I've seen studies over the years which demonstrated that a singer's brain works less hard when simply listening to a sung rehearsal track, say, when driving in your car or at the gym on the treadmill, away from the printed score.

There are singers in my chorus who can't be convinced, but an important part of my job is to move them in the direction of an enhanced level of musicianship, and away from being just a chorus of "apers" who perform exactly like the guy on their rehearsal track.
 
Finally, singers are slow to acknowledge just how much they do know. When you ask them to try something without their music, they do everything in their power to keep you from seeing that they're peeking at their music. They leave it open it on the floor at their feet, or sometimes I'm convinced they tape it to the back of the person in front of them. So, I rarely set memorization deadlines. Instead, I make sure they know on day one that we perform without music, and then one day I spring it on them! Two or three rehearsals before the time I'd really like them off music, I have them stack their music folders along the wall and with great determination we slog our way through everything without music. I reassure them that I'll give them lots of help, if they'll only agree to trust me and focus on me 100%. I feed them an occasional important word, and they discover that they really do have things pretty well memorized. We go back and clean up a few rough spots with music, but they know that every subsequent rehearsal until the concert will be "off book".
 
I loved Robert Shaw's holistic approach to memorization, and I inculcate my singers with his concept that we're there to give them much more than entrances and cutoffs.  Those are right there in the music along with all the notes and squiggly lines, so I ask them to just memorize those entrances and cutoffs along with the other "stuff". 

Then, in a very calculated way, I reduce my execution of entrances and cutoffs over the rehearsal process. I certainly don't eliminate them altogether, but by concert time I will have successfully transferred to the singers their responsibility for every single building block of a piece of music. And in a self-effacing way, I tell them that my job in concert is to get out of their way and let them do what they do best - to sing every word, every note, every nuance, every entrance and cutoff, and to deliver every musical message expressively, confidently, with clarity of purpose and with great beauty.  And it all makes the process of memorization feel so insignificant that they truly "get it".