JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Microphone and Vocalist Forum Trouble memorizing some lyrics

The best way for me to remember lyrics is to focus on the "story" to the song. Once I fully picture the story in my mind, then the lyrics fall in order because if I do them out of order the story is messed up. It is the strongest memory device I have.

I had a friend many years ago who went to a memory clinic to learn how to improve his memory and the one trick he pulled out of there that was very effective for him for remembering a long list of things in order was to first pick a subject that would be his "carrier" memory and learn it, then when he had a string of things to remember he would attach each thing to his carriers and the order would be there. He chose racehorses as his carrier memory. Each horse's jockey in his mind wore a different number and color, like color blue-1, red-2, green-3, etc. and he had at least 25 of these he worked on and had down pat. Whenever he was given a list of things to remember he would in his mind's eye attach the thing to one of the horses, so he could visualize the thing with a number and a color. Later, he could recall everything in exact order and it worked everytime. I saw him demonstrate this for people all the time, and most people when testing him would not even come close to the total list of items he could remember accurately.