Hi all, One thing I forgot to add in my previous message is that the other thing I have tried to do of late is to play music away from the page as much as possible. Since I have two small children running around the house now (one is 3 years old, the other just turned 1), I don't have a lot of opportunity to sit down with music in front of me (and not have it snatched, ripped, or pages turned when I'm not ready!). Instead (since they are still too small to reach the instrument if I play while standing!) I spend time playing tunes out of my head, or at least trying to "hear" a tune I'm familiar with aurally and recreate it on my instrument.
I have found that this has greatly assisted my memorization skills in that I am now equating "sounds" with "locations" without regard for notes on a page. It becomes the synthesis of body and mind! This is, of course, what all good musicians do (instinctively or otherwise) and is also the basis of improvisation. I use this technique along with the hearing/visualizing I mentioned earlier. Of late I have been sight reading the tablature to get a sense of what the piece is supposed to sound like. Once I have the "piece" committed to memory as "sound," I spend the rest of the time seeing if I can figure out how to recreate that sound on the instrument until it is memorized. In some instances this has resulted in me fingering phrases differently than the notation (which, once I've discovered this, allows me to look back and see *why* it may have been written the way it was) or playing runs or other phrases in the spirit of the piece rather than what is written (the "making music" not "making early music" that Kevin referred to earlier). I could not agree with Guy more about the importance of sight reading skills. Tablature is a near-perfect medium for sight reading; unfortunately, I feel too many (myself, for one!) have probably fallen into the trap of not being able to escape the reading! Two more cents for a total of four from me, Andrew To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
