See the forest from the trees, and making music is a breeze
FACT: We do not memorize individual items well
Here are a string of numbers below, look at them for 10 seconds, and see if you can recite them from memory:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233
OK -has it been ten seconds? Look away from the screen now and see if you can recite all 14 numbers (in order) in 14 seconds or less - go ahead and try it, don't worry -We'll still be here after you finish :)
It's very difficult to do. We've tried this on multiple people, and have yet to find anyone who can remember the whole sequence in order after looking at it for just 10 seconds. Unless....the person can recognize the pattern in the first ten seconds. So....take some time now and see if you can recognize the pattern that the series of numbers is.
We can remember patterns!
Now, if we describe the previous numerical pattern to you, assuming that you have a good mastery of the pattern, you will not only remember these numbers now, but also 2 years from now! You can "remember" all of these numbers because you remembered the pattern! So here is the pattern:
Start with 0 and 1, and then the next number is the sum of the previous two.
- 0 + 1 = 1
- 1 + 1 = 2
- 1 + 2 = 3
- 2 + 3 = 5
- 3 + 5 = 8
- 5 + 8 =13 and so forth
This is the holy grail to making music! A solid mastery of various patterns! This makes "memorizing" really just a working knowledge of musical patterns (a.k.a. Theory). Understanding musical patterns and combining this with the skills of AUDIATION means that you can play anything you hear. WOW! Now granted, this does not mean that you will be able to play a piece of music IDENTICALLY to how how the artist composed it, but it does mean that you will be able to play and understand the basics of the music. And here is the best part of this, you can remember a pattern 5, 10, or 15 years from now. Learning the patterns in music is teaching you how to fish, rather than just giving you a fish.
To be able to then apply various patterns and play music at the next level then requires understanding and experimentation within the next pillar - Improvisation.
