Angela Hewitt shares her tactics, strategies, and stories on how she keeps her musical memory strong. It is interesting to note that musical conservatories, like the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, have developed curriculums that prepare the ground for developing and helping to maintain musical memory. 

1. Logical sequencing of material.
2. Repertoire that must be memorized.
3. Theoretical knowledge and application.
4. Foundational skills of techniques and etudes.
5. Historical knowledge
6. Aural skills.
7. Sightreading
8. Score study
9. Assessment

Link to the article: ‘Like sex and religion, we don’t like to talk about memory’: pianist Angela Hewitt on how she keeps hers in shape | Classical music | The Guardian

A student writes, “Hey David, I wanted to check my learning strategy with you. My goal right now is to play better at the jams I attend. Most of them are funky with someone creating a groove, and everyone jumping in.
I noticed the keys players are all very good at hearing the bass and figuring out the progression— or finding a groove within a set progression. At my level, I’m usually asking others what key we’re in (although it doesn’t always work since it changes) and then playing the root chord and inversions of it. I’ll sometimes create groove lines from the respective blues scale, but that’s about it for my understanding.
Taken together, I’m thinking the number one thing I need to work on is: Ear training.
For that, I’m thinking I focus on training my ear to understand:

• Major ii, V, I in every key
• Major I, vi, ii, V, I in every key
• I, IV, V in every key

Does this sound like a good start to being able to jam with others in the scenario described above?
Thanks!

My response.
Yes, this is a good start. Here are some more ideas to consider.

1. Ear training consists of the following elements: chord and interval recognition, identifying chord progressions, learning tunes by ear, learning licks by ear. Furthermore, practicing your scales, chords, and other keyboard techniques using a metronome will be immensely helpful in learning to play with other musicians’ time feel. This is another aspect of ear training—staying in place.
2. Keyboard skills. Always be working on basic piano skills separately.
3. Repertoire knowledge. There is an old say that goes, “they that know the most tunes wins.” Practice jamming with songs that have less than four chords in them. Here are some searches to get you started. You can approach these tunes in several ways. For one chord tunes, just look up the title without looking at the key. See if you can figure out the key, ditto with the 2 chord pieces. The list below was created from the first link. I can't guarantee that each piece has only one chord, they came from the internet afterall, but it's a start. 

​

• pop songs with one chord - Search (bing.com)
• pop songs with two chords or less - Search (bing.com)
• pop songs with three chords or less - Search (bing.com)
• pop songs with four chords or less - Search (bing.com)

Have fun.
 
David