For 35 years, I've resisted memorizing tunes...

but a few years ago, when I moved to the NY area, I started to show up at jam sessions with my Real Book (or Pocket Changes) in hand. I soon learned that this practice is looked down upon somewhat in these parts, and I guess there are some good reasons for it.

First of all, it's great to show up at a jam session, say "what tune do you want to play?", and then all jump in without anyone fumbling for books or groping for music stands. It makes everyone look more professional, makes the flow go smoothly, etc.

But, more importantly, memorizing the tune (a) lets you really learn it and get inside it, and (b) learning the melody in particular improves your ear and gives you a readily-available musical vocabulary for quotes.

So, now that I've started going back to a regular weekly jazz jam session (great Wednesday night sessions at the very friendly and comfortable Cornerstage Music & Spirits in Middletown, NY, led by the fabulous bassist Robert Kopec and the great house bands he brings. You have to check it out if you're in the area.), I've finally bitten the bullet and embarked on a program of memorizing a tune each week, both chords and melody. Sometimes I fall short of that goal, but I am making steady progress.

One of the big issues is how do you pick the next tune to memorize? Well, first of all, it's a good idea to make a list of all the tunes that you've nearly memorized, and work on really getting those down. After that, what I do is to try and identify one or two tunes (depending on difficulty) from each week's jam to memorize (I do bring my Real Book to play tunes that other people call that aren't yet in my list).

Next, how do you memorize a tune? This is an extremely important and interesting question, with no really simple answers. I'll be covering some aspects of it as we go on. But practicing it a lot with Band-In-A-Box (see below) is a great place to start.

Resources

Before I sign off on this entry, let me recommend the one critical piece of software for practicing jazz tunes: Band-In-A-Box from PG Music. (disclosure: PG Music does distribute some of my own software, so the sales of certain BIAB packages yields a small amount of income to my stream, but this recommendation has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the way I practice myself). What's really cool about BIAB is that the arrangements are more-than-good-enough for practicing, the speed and looping are easily altered, and there's a vast library of jazz tunes available for free if you join the Band-In-A-Box Files Group over at Yahoo

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