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For me anyway I would have to break it down into small three or four note phrases, and just build the lot up slowly, I have a nice little android app that will do that.
For someone with really good musical ears will be a lot easier, and that person can be rare from my experience of going to guitar lessons in the past.
Eg I was learning the instrumental parts of the Mavericks song "Dance the night away" a few days ago, to play on the guitar and there is a short instrumental before the main song starts, took me a good day to get that.
Last edited by musiclover; 01/23/25 04:59 AM.
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There are people with amazing talents who can listen to a single musical passage and instantly repeat it - note for note. There are similar people who can momentarily be shown a detailed scene, and then instantly redraw it with amazing accuracy.
I have always been in awe of such skills.
It's a good test, but child's play for those with such talents.
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In a way it can be compared to learning a language, say a whole sentence in a different language and most people will have difficulty repeating it, a few words, maybe not.
A good musical ear comes into it as well.
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In general, I can hear and playback about seven notes, perhaps a bit more if I have listened to the song before.
Listening to the song more than three times does not help to figure out the note sequence.
At that point, I have to break it apart to figure it out. If the sequence is complex, meaning it is fast and contains many note values, sometimes I can loop it, but most of the time, I have to find the standard notation to figure it out.
I now have software called Synthesia, which is also useful but requires converting the song to Midi.
Some note sequences are a bit less trouble to remember, such as those in a scale that I recognize.
Recognizing chord progressions is pretty easy for major and minor chords, major 7th, dominate 7th, and most of the time, 6th chords. Other chords, like flat five or #9, are much more difficult for me to recognize.
My memory ability seems to change with age. From the 1950s forward, I can remember the melody and some of the lyrics to a large number of songs that I listened to on the radio but never played.
Certainly, things that stay in key are less trouble, but I think this has less to do with memory than having a good idea of what may come next.
I think it would be unusual for most nonmusicians to be able to remember more than a few notes.
As Trev said, there are people who have the ability to listen and repeat music note for note. I think those people fall into two categories: those who can do that naturally and those who learn to do that after much study.
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One of the best ways for me to learn is to use either the old Riffstation app on the computer, and I have the free Music speed changer app on the phone, simple app, will slow down the song loop a section, pitch change the song.
I have an old phone I have loaded a lot of MP3 songs onto, and that app helps a lot.
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Well… The world record for the most digits of pi memorized is 70,030. Apparently it took the world record holder 17 hours to recite them. Maybe, as musicians we aren’t taking the right approach to memorization.
Jazz hands!
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Hell if I know. There are a large number of scows and operas that I can conduct from memory—still though I learned my first one in 1970.
As long as I learned it before 2009, that is. I lost my ability to memorize when I suffered a stroke that year.
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