pick up new songs faster?

[mambo4]

so, last weekend I was auditioning for an originals band. I Had 2 songs sent to me and had them charted out, but I had four more songs thrown at me at the audition. The new ones were "let's play the recording and you try to pick it up" sort of affairs.

after the audition, the drummer's assessment was "the ones you learned ahead of time were great, but the other guy picked up the new ones faster"

So what can I do to improve my ability to learn new songs quickly?
how do you practice that?

[gre107]

Learn as many songs as you can that follow common progressions. Learn different types of styles i.e. rock, funk, latin, jazz, blues etc...

Get your ears in tune and attempt to "read" where the music is going before it happens.

You will find with 99% of the "pop" music is following a progression that has already been done.

A good way to practice this is turn on the radio and play along with all of the songs that a station is playing for about 10-15 minutes. Then change the station and do the same for the next 10-15 minutes.

Do this everyday for a month or so and you will start to realize that there are common themes and or patterns that you can recognize and BS your way through with "licks" or better yet phrases that you have already learned!

This is actually a good practice to come back to from time to time because you always learn somthing new and keeps your improv "ears" ready.

Good luck!

[stedtale]

^ what he said.

[bearfoot]

And also just jamming, which is very similar, following chords by ear. Only when it's a jam, you get visual info from the guitar (if you know guitar chords) as well.
Personally I'm always highly annoyed by songwriters who don't chart anything out. It's kind of like screwing up the whole class by not doing the homework. You want to be Mr. Original songwriter, and have us play your music, chart the !@##$ songs out. Dang. Especially if it's something chromatic that is nearly impossible to anticipate. It's always the guy with the tritone chord progressions that has a religious aversion to writing anything down. Maybe they're afraid the satanic power of their chords will be diluted if it's written. Anyways, I rant.
Good jam skills are a good thing to have! Bass it up...

[RiddimKing]

I agree it's good to improve your ability to pick up songs on the fly, however, if that's the main criterion that band used to judge your ability, then I think you're lucky you "failed" the audition. Coming up with appropriate and interesting basslines develops with time playing a song over and over (at home woodshedding and group rehearsal) and it's totally unrealistic to expect anyone (other than a studio session cat) to achieve that instantaneously. I mean, let's say you're able to nail the changes as they're happening...so what? Can you really anticipate the dynamics/syncopation/stops etc of a song you've never heard? I've been on both sides of the audition fence--decider and decidee, and really believe that it's sheer arrogance (and maybe a kind of stupidity) to expect to know much beyond whether there's basic chemistry, mutual-interest and basic chops as the result of a "come jam with us" audition.

[DocBop]

A matter of learning lots of songs. The more songs you transcribe, chart, and learn the more you start learning the common root movements of chord. At same time you start developing your ear to recognize root movements and chord qualities. All this adds up to better predicting where songs are going.

Also just turn on the radio or some TV show with lots of music and try figure out the songs as they popup. That is great practice and help you learn to cover a missed change. Remember as a bass player you don't have to luxuary of a guitar to just play chunka-chunks or drop out, you drop out or even down and everyone knows it.

Most bands understand that if you are trying to play a song you never heard the first time thru you aren't going to catch most of it. Second time thru they expect you have pretty much all the chords down and started to pickup on lines and other details.

One of those things that lots of doing it is only answer.

[ajb]

Originally Posted by RiddimKing

I agree it's good to improve your ability to pick up songs on the fly, however, if that's the main criterion that band used to judge your ability, then I think you're lucky you "failed" the audition. Coming up with appropriate and interesting basslines develops with time playing a song over and over (at home woodshedding and group rehearsal) and it's totally unrealistic to expect anyone (other than a studio session cat) to achieve that instantaneously. I mean, let's say you're able to nail the changes as they're happening...so what? Can you really anticipate the dynamics/syncopation/stops etc of a song you've never heard? I've been on both sides of the audition fence--decider and decidee, and really believe that it's sheer arrogance (and maybe a kind of stupidity) to expect to know much beyond whether there's basic chemistry, mutual-interest and basic chops as the result of a "come jam with us" audition.

Well said.