Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic devices are very valuable in my life because I use them all the time when I am playing piano. When I first started taking lessons I learned the "Every Good Boy Does Fine" mnemonic to remember the notes on the lines and the "In the space spells a FACE" to remember the notes in the spaces. Now as I've gotten older and have to take theory tests I use the mnemonic device of "Fat Cats Go Down Alleys Eating Birds" to know the sharps in a key of music which is F, C, G, D, A, E, B. For instance, in the key of G Major I know there is one sharp and it is F sharp because I take the key, in this case being G, and go down two words, so down to "Fat", which is F, and so F and everything to the left of it would be my sharps, but since F is the last letter, there are no other sharps. Another example is for the key of A Major I would have a F, C and G sharp. I simply take A and go down two steps to G and then C and F are to the left of G so I have G, C, and F sharps. You may be wondering what happens for C and F because you can't move down two steps from them. Well, C has no sharps, so it does work, and F is a key with flats, not sharps, so a different mnemonic device is used.

Another time I used mnemonics was for my biology class when we learned "King Henry Died While Drinking Chocolate Milk". This was used to memorize Kilo, Hecto, Deca, Whole (grams), Deci, Centi, Milli. It worked really good and I still remember it.