How do you memorize music?

That sounds great.    Have always had trouble with memorisation but it has improved in later years using some of these methods that I learned from a course I was doing.    You have some other great ideas I will implement,    Thank you

Lots of interesting posts here. Thanks to all for posting, I'm learning something useful from virtually all of you, and share many of the same struggles..

My memorization process has been "whatever works" and is rather haphazard. I would really love to systemitize it and make it more organized, as I think it would speed up my process.

Right now, there's the muscle memory that comes rather natrually to me after playing something over & over, but we all know that it's very hazardous to rely solely on that. Then what I seem to do is form associations in my mind with anything at all that I can make meaningful in some way.  These include the strucutural signposts and cadences, the chord patterns (like Roy, as a jazz player, I am especially attuned to chord patterns and recognizing them in  piece is a great way to lock a passage into memory), or a musical element like a melodic minor scale, or a place that illustrates some theoretical point, e.g. the difference between the upward and downward versions thereof, or a particular motif that reappears, or  difficult fingering, which after I've worked it out, often cements it in my memory, or something that contradicts my expectations, and then sometimes the actual specific notes, Whatever works.

I have zero ability to look at a printed page and sense how it would feel under my fingers, nor can I sense how it would actually sound, notwithstanding that I have a pretty good ear.  Nor can I do vice versa -- hear something and visuallize how it would look on a score. I can work out via slow solfege any individual passage, but not at a pace that allows me to "hear: the flow of the sound.  I am very envious of those of you who can do that and would love to be able to cultivate that skill. 

I remember a basketball player named Jerry Lucas (forget his pro team but he played for Ohio State in the early 60's) who could perform amazing feats of memory.  It was said he had memorized the Manhattan phone book (remember those?) and he would demonstrate that on various talk shows.  He said he did it by attaching specifi associations to the details and sequence of what he was trying to memorize.  That seems to be my methodology, for better or worse.

My teacher in college, Miklos Schwalb, used to say "first I memorize a piece, then I learn it".  I always found that concept rather dumbfounding, but now I'm consciously trying to proceed that way in my trek through the Well Tempered Clavier.

There are some great Tonebase lessons on memorization, including some offerings from the  brilliant impresario of our community concerts, a/k/a Dominic.

I would like to touch on one more thing. This might be the most useful information I am able to offer since I think it explains the "why" of how this works better than anything else I said so far. I feared that because I couldn't sight read that I was going to be very limited in how many pieces I would ever learn to play. As I said earlier, I can read music. But when I try to sight read while playing, my hands and my eyes are never in the same place. Maybe it is partly because I never played a musical instrument my entire life, and here I was at the age of 67 and I wanted to play piano. Ouch! But I was determined. I quickly learned that sight reading was going to be a very long and tedious process to learn. I had no desire to do that or even try. At 67 I didn't know how many years I had left to play and there is always the issue with my hands lasting without my arthritis becoming an obstacle. (Playing piano has actually been very good for it.) I have always been very good at memorizing by repetition throughout my whole life, but it never lasted. But I never needed it to. At least until I started playing piano. I knew now that I was in trouble. So, I got to thinking after I happened to come upon this fellow's videos about memorization. I was deciding if it was worth a try. I have always been a thinker when it comes to why something works or doesn't. I then thought to myself, Maria, just think of all things you know and remember. I know an entire language with hundreds of thousands of words, I know many people and many things about them. I know tons and tons of stuff! So why can't I memorize tons of songs! Well, the reason is clear. I haven't memorized all of this stuff I know throughout my 71 years of life. I remember it! And that is why I still know it and why I believe this method works so well. And the fellow who teaches this on youtube has never said this, but I will. Skills and knowledge that work long term may not be memorized skills at all. They are things you remember! I believe this is successful because you are not really memorizing a song so much as you are teaching yourself how to remember it!  That is why the struggle to remember that I talked about in my original post is so important. 

When preparing practicing for a live performance, we have to accept that the "muscle" memory will go MIA at unexpected times during the performance. This is guaranteed to happen during live performance, no matter how advanced you are. If you're well prepared it may happen less often and for shorter times than otherwise, but it will happen nonetheless. We have to practice to minimize the episodes, and in such a way that whenever they occur we are able to use the other parts of our brains to "reconstruct" the music on the spot.