10 Science-Backed Steps This Opera Singer Uses to Memorize Music

I bet a few will surprise you.

Maren Montalbano
10 min readFeb 21, 2013
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

Back in 2013, when I was rehearsing La bohème, I got this text from a fellow chorister:

Many of us had been furiously studying our music over the past week, getting ready for staging rehearsals, when we had to be off-book.

I had also spent almost the entire month of July memorizing the role of Dame Quickly in Falstaff, so good memorization techniques had been fresh in my mind.

Step #1: Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Usually when people ask me how to memorize something, I tell them to repeat it over and over again. It might sound a little obvious, but it’s the only way that you’re guaranteed to remember something.

You know how some television and radio ads repeat a phone number so many times that it is annoying? It’s because they are trying to get you to remember it.

In the marketing world, it’s called the Rule of Seven; in the psychology world, it’s called Miller’s Law.

Hold a strand of regular thread between your hands. If you apply a small amount of tension, you can easily…

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Maren Montalbano

Mezzo-soprano & business coach for creatives. Singer, dreamer, Ren Faire nerd. You can hear me on 3 GRAMMY-winning albums. https://marenmontalbano.com/links