Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0346: Jazz improvization: A memory palace of memorized phrases

Episode Date: July 6, 2015

Simon asks if it’s possible to build a palace of mnemonics for musical phrases, which he could use in jazz improvization. I tell Simon how I would take on this project. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 346. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Simon submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Simon says, clap your hands. Wait. Simon says, as a jazz musician, I'd like to know if it's possible to build a memory palace of mnemonics for musical phrases. These phrases would be used later in an improvisational setting. because it completely defeats the argument that we can always look things up. You want to have these phrases memorized.

You want to have a toolbox of things to pull from because you can't just look up a phrase when you're improvising. It's not just going to be out there for you to look it up. It would be kind of cool if you had a big sheet of paper in front of you maybe to be able to see all these phrases, but that bank wouldn't be as big as the bank that you can have in your mind of phrases. And I'll talk about some ways that you could organize those. First of all, this technique is going to depend on whether you plan to memorize phrases

that you're then going to modify as you play, or if you're going to memorize enough phrases that you can use them all as they are. For example, let's say you memorize a little riff or something in C minor. Are you going to have to memorize something separate from that to memorize something in B flat minor? Or, you know, do you just want to rely on that one? That's something that you're going to have to think about as you put this together. But let's talk about the techniques. If you're going to memorize phrases that you can then modify, this is what I would do. Memorize the rhythms of the music based on the techniques that I've talked about in previous episodes,

particularly episode 212, although you can ignore the palace information for that one because you're not memorizing a whole piece. You're just memorizing a rhythm. So you're turning that rhythm into a number, and that number describes some sort of object, some sort of mnemonic object. And you're basically using binary numbers and turning those into images. Like, you know, instead of a little musical phrase, you're thinking of a tree that's falling onto a car. And that quickly and immediately represents a particular rhythm for you. So the rhythm is one aspect of the little phrase that you're memorizing, but also you'll

do those and organize them based on contour. So it's a rhythm, but it goes both up and down at different times, or maybe it just goes up, whatever. You're going to represent that in your palace as well, using that object, and then going up and down in some way. You're going to represent that. Again, episode 212 will help you with some of this stuff. Now, in the second case, if you're actually going to memorize different licks or different, you know, phrases or whatever for different chords, like you have one that's in C minor, and then if you use that same phrase or a modified phrase that is in F sharp minor, you would have to modify that and use a completely different mnemonic for it. You

know, that works too. You can organize your whole palace actually based on the chords. So you're all in one room. If you're in C minor, you can look around your C minor room and use all of those phrases that you have lying around in there. Or if you're switching to a new key, then you can look around that room as well. Now to get started, Simon, I would actually recommend doing case two, where you start with, let's say, the most frequent chords that you use in jazz. You're probably going to involve some chords like F major, B flat, C major, and, you know, A minor, and a few very simple and very common chords like those. Memorize some of the phrases

that you want to memorize, some interesting phrases that you can use again, but organize them stored based on which chord you're on. So every time you come to a C major chord, there's a phrase that you can pull out of that palace, or there are a bunch of phrases that you can choose from. Then based on the success of that, you can expand either just to adding more and more phrases to that same palace, or just creating a palace of, you know, a big basically toolbox of phrases that then you can transpose into other keys. So it just depends on the results of just starting with case two and memorizing your different phrases based on different chords. So pick a few chords and then pick a few interesting rhythms that you can turn into images

and quickly associate those images with those, you know, rhythms and see if you can get some things into your toolbox that way. And then let me know how it goes because I'm very interested in this. And as a musician, this would be very valuable to me as well. So, you know, do some experimentation, tell me how it goes, and I'd be happy to collaborate with you further on this as well. For everyone listening, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.