How to memorize...?

[pencilart3]

I would recommend listening to the piece over and over until you can play it in your head 'forward and backward'. I think that's the most critical part of memorizing any piece.

[louispodesta]

I would recommend listening to the piece over and over until you can play it in your head 'forward and backward'. I think that's the most critical part of memorizing any piece.

Thank you for a very good observation, and I would add the following:

1)  I never learned how to read until I was in my 50's!  When I was young and stupid "dcstudio," my teacher would say:  okay, this is your piece (usually one or two pages) for your next lesson.  Then, I would go home and immediately memorize the piece.  Conversely, my late father could sight read anything and transpose in all 12 keys, at will.  However, he could not memorize any lengthy piece.!

2)  Regarding the OP, I am sure that no one has urged you to join a choir, or to take voice lessons.  In my opinion, melody is melody, and phrases are phrases.  And, all basic composed works emanated from vocal music.

Accordingly, when the OP can sing two pages of a simple song (hopefully knowing the chord changes along the way), the exact same epistemology/thought process can now be applied to memorizing "any piece of music."

3)  Once you can master this very basic skill, then you need to write chord analysis symbols above every major cord in whatever piece you are learning.  When I use the word "epistemology," that is exactly, in my opinion, what this involves.

4)  Finally, in regards Artur Rubenstein, Walter Gieseking, and Jorge Bolet (who all supposedly sat in a chair and learned their music away from the piano), I would remind you that Rubenstein never had a piano lesson after the age of 16, and Gieseking did not after the age if 19.  Glenn Gould claimed the same skill, and, in my opinion, it is all BS!