Hi Jesse 😊

This is such an interesting question and one that I could’ve asked myself a few years ago …..

I’ve been playing classical piano for years and can read music well but couldn’t play anything at all without sheet music . My mum has a piano at her house and I am always asked to play something whenever I visit …. It was so embarrassing having to say “I can’t , I haven’t got my sheet music ” 🙈 in the end I took some music round and left it there for such occasions 😆

Anyway , when I started having lessons with Arthur I was very attracted to his method of teaching without music but I really didn’t think I would be able to do it . I even told him as much at my first lesson 🙈🤣

However , it turns out that I can memorize boogie and blues just fine and I think there are two reasons for this …

I’m not sure if you’ve learnt all of Arthur’s 8 licks on his YouTube ? For me that is key . Every song I learn , I no longer think of individual notes , but in terms of licks and big sections of music .

Using Chorus 3 of Pinetops Boogie as an example

For me this is ….

Lick 2 for 8 bars

Then a G7 chord

Then lick 5 going up and down but using G instead of A

Then lick 1 into 5 into lick 3

I don’t think “Eb - E - C&E “ etc etc 😊

Last year I learnt Arthurs Lick etude with boogie bass , I decided to learn it using the sheet music 🤔 because it’s short and I thought it would be quicker than trying to copy his video. After spending a fair amount of time working on it I noticed that it just wasn’t sinking into my memory and I had literally zero idea of what came next if I wasn’t looking at the music ☹️

It then dawned on me that it was precisely because I was using the sheet music that I couldn’t remember it 😮 I had gone back to looking at each individual note on the page and not making the connection regarding which licks were in use at any given time . So I looked at the music and analysed what I could see . Once I spotted the licks and their variations I put the sheets away and forced myself to remember it by thinking, for example….

Intro . Lick 1 , lick 5 , the lick etc etc , and I had it memorised in about an hour 😅

So my very long winded advice to you is to learn all the licks first ( if you haven’t already ) and then if you like to initially learn songs from sheet music (which is absolutely fine 😊) , analyse the music to find out which licks are in use at each point 😊 then turn the sheets over and try to play it thinking of those licks instead of individual notes 😊

Finally , also very important, lots and lots of listening to the song you’re trying to learn 😊

I hope this is useful 😊 good luck 🎹❤️🎹