New Project: Memorize 150 composers in chronological order, along with their birthdates

So now that I'm done with school, I've picked up a new hobby: memorizing stuff. My latest project involves building a list of composers. I'll document and explain how it works and my progress here. You're welcome to join in! It's a great way to learn a bunch of mnemonic techniques at once.

So!

This project takes advantage of 3 mnemonic techniques as well as spaced repetition to get it all into my head. As you'll see, the hard part isn't really memorizing all this data, it's converting it ahead of time into a storable format: pictures and stories.

To memorize names, I will be converting each name into an image. Chopin -> Shopping bag, Mozart -> moats, etc. The images must be as vivid as possible (a paper shopping bag from Trader Joe's, for example)

To memorize dates, I'll be using the Major system (insert wikipedia link here) which converts numbers into consonants. I've been practicing this for a few weeks and now it's coming pretty naturally. For Mozart (1756-1791), I convert 56 into L + Sh, and 91 into B + T. So leash is 56 and bat is 91. So now I link the name to the dates and I get a couple of castles with Moats filled with a bunch of Leashed Bats.

Now to make my chronological list, I'm going to use the method of loci, one of the oldest mnemonic techniques. I need to design a mental journey with 150 stops. I'm going to do this with the help of a camera, and I think I'll be taking the trip from my bed to the conservatory. If I don't get enough loci, I may leave the conservatory and go to the other building on Singerstrasse, and if THAT's not enough, I may go to Stephansdom. But I found 50 locations just on the way from my bed to the front door, so I might be fine. I've never made one this big, so we'll see how it goes. The method of loci involves placing image markers along the route you've picked. So my first location is my bed, my first composer is Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). Because so many composers have the same birth years, I'm going to link the location to the date first, then to any composers during that date. Hildegard is alone for this date, so it's a little simpler. Birth Year: 1098: S P F - so we'll go for high SPF sunscreen. I'm in bed, I wake up and grab my high SPF sunscreen. Name: hildegard -> hilt guard (top part of sword handle). I take the sunscreen and smear it on my hilt guard. Death Date: (My main goal is to do birthdates and names, but we'll do a death date here for fun) 1179 - th g p - The Gap - in my substory about my Hilt Guard, I grab my well-oiled Hilt Guard into The Gap and slay the well-attired staff.

Last step, review and decoding. I need to practice going through my route (1-5 would be Bed, nightstand, robe holder on wall, chair with clothes in front of bed, bedroom door), I need to practice the initial hooks (Bed - high SPF sunscreen), each substory (bed - spf - hilt guard - the gap) and decoding back to useful data (#1 - 1098 - Hildegard von Bingen - 1179). I'll do this in my favorite memory tool, Anki, which will quiz me at regular, manageable intervals and figure out how easy or difficult each part is and adjust accordingly. Given that I have a week off, I might get the major body of the work done (150 coded stories like the sunscreen hilt guard one) this week, plug it into Anki, and get that into my head within a month or so. Once that framework is there, I'll be able to add to it without much trouble (if I want to add some facts about Hildegard, I can put them in at The Gap)

Wee!

As I go, I'm going to make an excel file with the data I'm memorizing and the stories it codes into. Here's where you can join in; feel free to grab the file and make your own changes. While I'm going to be publishing a slideshow of my 150 stop journey, if you want to do this too, you'll probably want to make your own journey (though you're welcome to take the same journey, just start from your own bed, not mine!)