Reddit mentions of Contemporary Music Theory - Level One: A Complete Harmony and Theory Method for the Pop and Jazz Musician

I'm known to have strong opinions against memorization in general, but mostly because of the approach people take. People who memorize music in a pop sense do it very differently from how most classically trained people think of it. Realistically those who are doing it very well for like a piano bar type situation are barely memorizing in any tradition sense. So let's break down some of the process.

Both should be using theory to help them along. The fundamentals of understand how to spell chords quickly lets you chunk ideas together. I don't see C E G B... I see Cmaj7. That's a single ideas rather than 4 different notes.

Some people on both sides will just learn and memorize shapes as a method of chunking rather than actually understanding how to spell the chords. They just think, "Oh it's a stack of thirds so I'll play one finger on every other note." This especially is likely for those who stare at the page to decode the notes once... then stare at their hands to repeat it until they feel like they've got it. They start to memorize how their hands look.

I'd recommend against that. I mean, being aware of it itsn't bad, but long term it's going to help more to know how chords feel than how they look even in various "shapes." This will help you play in every key more easily when paired with something I'll get to in a bit. But if you literally are just learning C E G B as 4 white keys that you know how they look, but you don't have it tied to a theory concept or even note names in some extreme cases... then it becomes a very non-transferable skill.

G B D F (G7) is also 4 white keys with the same spacing, but it doesn't function the same way. It's like a screwdriver and an ice pick. They look similar, but one won't do the job of the other very well. Cmaj7 is more like Dbmaj7 in function, but they look nothing alike. So if you are only memorizing the way something looks, you're gonna have a bad time.

So this is where we start getting more into how pop/jazz musicians "memorize." Understanding function within keys really helps. If you tell me I'm in the key of C, I instantly make a ton of assumptions. It will be all white keys (more specifically, for any key, I know exactly what is flat and sharp). In C I know that the primary chords are C, G, F, and Am. I also know a lot more about substitutions, secondary functions, etc. that are likely to show up in that key.

But I can do this for any key. If you tell me a key (or I figure out the key some other way) I pretty much instantly am already thinking of the I, V, IV, and vi chords.

And as a result of this with pop music, I'm no longer just chunking notes into chords... I'm now chunking chords into progressions. I-vi-IV-V-I. That could be dozens of notes, but I'm not having to think about any of them. And further, since I'm thinking in Roman numerals (which largely denote function), I can now play that same song in any key pretty easily... because I instantly know those chords in every key.

Now, let's take a step back for a moment. That Cmaj7 chord... to a lot of musicians it's a fixed thing. If they see C E G B in the music in a block... that's how they play it and that's how they memorize it. But because I think of it as Cmaj7... that could be almost anything. I can play it in a dozen voicings all over the keyboard. I can (with an understanding of functional harmony) substitute it for another chord to spice up my progression. I can spice up the chord itself for the same reason. I could add a D to that chord and it will still function the same and maybe sound a bit jazzier. I some contexts I could add a lot more notes, or alter some of them... because I know which notes I can do that with.

But all of that freedom is because I don't think of it as a single set of notes... C E G B. I come to it with an understanding of function.

So getting back to memorization. Pop/jazz musicians take all of this, but go another step forward with ear training. Not only do they have the theory down, but they know how stuff sounds. They can play melodically by ear to a certain degree and they can play harmonically as well.

So at this point they aren't really memorizing it.

Could you quote me one of your favorite lines from a movie or TV show or a passage from a book? Most likely. Did you take time to memorizing which letters are in each of the words. No. Did you memorize and practice how to move your mouth for each of the sounds to be able to say that line back to me? No.

Essentially, you just know how it goes. You can hear a sentence and repeat it back to me. You could even give different delivery or inflection. You could say the phrase "I love hot dogs" to sound like a question, or to sound sarcastic. You don't even have to think about it. You know how that sounds and you can just do it.

But when you combine all of these skills, you essentially do that with music. If you've heard a song and know how it goes, you likely could sing back some of it. While you're singing it, you probably hear the accompanying harmony inside your head.

So you just use the mentioned skills to translate that to piano. If you can sing it and you have a decent ear, you can translate that to the piano through melody. If you can hear the harmony in your head and understand enough about functional relationships and how they sound then you can replicate most of that harmony on the piano as well.

So for the best pop/jazz performers, they aren't memorizing notes any more. They are just speaking music as a language. They've heard lots of songs and they are just repeating them and rarely the exact same twice. They just know how the songs go.

All that said, that's like years of work to be able to do that passably and requires a lot of fundamental technical skills and such. But hopefully that's a lens into the process of memorizing from the pop side.

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In your case I'd just start at least focusing on basic chord theory. Find out what key you're in. Find out which chords are diatonic (naturally occurring) in that key. Start at least using the chord names as a way to chunk groups of notes together.

If you want a very solid resource for this, I'd highly recommend this book.

I think you should learn more of the basics like chord theory and what not, [this] (http://www.amazon.ca/Contemporary-Music-Theory-Complete-Musician/dp/0793598818/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457024157&sr=8-2&keywords=contemporary+music+theory) is what I recommend.

Harrison's Contemporary Music Theory isn't free, but it's inexpensive, and I often see it recommended to non-classical musicians (I'm mostly a classical musician) as a theory resource.

I also like the free app Functional Ear Trainer as a tool for getting better at recognizing pitches within a key, but that's far from a complete theory education.