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How did you learn songs before the internet?

#21
We played the song on a cassette tape, and wore out the section we had to listen to over and over to get right. If I didn't have the tape, I would call up a radio station and request the song, and tape it off the radio IF THEY EVER PLAYED IT. (a lot of times THEY DID!)

As for lyrics, they still get them wrong all the time on the internet. When you go to tab/lyric sites, you are relying on someone else's transcription. Tabs are usually wrong. Lyrics are often wrong.

I had a friend who sang "Maggie Mae," by Rod Stewart, and the songbook said "You Lured me Away from Home."

Now, that may be the official lyric, (or it may not,) but it sounds like Rod is singing "You Led me Away from Home," and it sounded awfully funny when he would clearly pronounce "Lured" in that spot.

Man, that used to bug me!

In fact, all these years later, I'm STILL a little irritated about it.

That same guy used to sing "He's Not Heavy (He's my Brother,)" by the Hollies, and he always missed the note...

The road is long with MANY a winding turn

He squawked that thing like Alfalfa.

You kids, turn away. There is no chance you can make any sense out of this post at all.
 
#25
I had a subscription to Hit Parader and Song Hits magazines which published lyrics for the latest songs. See the links below. The bands I was in usually did some lesser-known songs so we had to decipher those lyrics by listening to the record line-by-line multiple times.

In the old days I had to buy or borrow a record. Vinyl 33-1/3 albums could be slowed down to 16 to figure out difficult parts. Later on I transferred the albums to reel-to-reel tape and then played that back at half-speed to get the hard parts. In the 80's to the mid-2000's I used cassette tapes. Then I went to CD's with a Tascam trainer to slow down the fast parts. I still use this when needed but mostly learn off YouTube now.

http://www.google.com/search?q=song...4fde3916&q=hit+parader+magazine&sa=1&tbm=isch

http://www.google.com/search?q=song...AGl94DICQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1440&bih=685
 
#29
Ah yes....the lyrics. That was always fun. I always heard "douche" in that song too. :)

Not to brag or anything, there are a bunch of folks here who can play rings around me, but one thing that's helped me a lot in bands is learning parts extremely fast. Listen to a passage and play it back.

I attribute a lot of this from the way we used to learn songs strictly by ear. By the time you went through it enough times to write down all the lyics and chord changes, you knew the song through and through and had memorized every last lyric and chord change, arrangement, etc. and knew what everybody elses part should be as well.

The more/faster you could get before having to rewind, the quicker you learned the song and the more songs you could learn in a day!
 
#31
guy n. cognito said:
Don't miss the days of making "tapes" for bandmates. Spending hours copying the "master" of the songs we were going to learn one at a time, at normal speed..
Click to expand...

Later on, some boomboxes started coming out with a highspeed dub feature where it would run the tapes about 3x speed.....warbling through the speakers. :D

Also had a pause button that put the brakes on the tape. What time savers these were. :D

And yup, the tape speed.....Is this tune in C, B or Bb???
 
#33
will33 said:
Later on, some boomboxes started coming out with a highspeed dub feature where it would run the tapes about 3x speed.....warbling through the speakers. :D

Also had a pause button that put the brakes on the tape. What time savers these were. :D

And yup, the tape speed.....Is this tune in C, B or Bb???
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had one of those, too. Once, when making a tape for myself and my bandmates, I turned off the 2X speed. In the recording, you can hear the song warble. To this day, I still get surprised when I hear "This Night has Open My Eyes" and it doesn't warble......
 
#34
Since I don't read music, I learned via tape, CD, now MP3 - whatever's handy. Luckily, I had a music teacher in the early 70's who helped develop my ear, so I can not only pick out bass parts but also multiple harmonies and voicings. My band mates joke that I'm the only person they know with Dolby Surround hearing.
 
#36
33-1/3. 45. (Dang, am I old...)

Listen to the record, try to hear the chord progression, try to imagine the line on the bass, then play along and check how well I heard it. Uh, repeat to fix the notes I hadn't heard correctly.

Yeah, it was good ear training. Serves me well to this day--although the tunes are in MP3 format now.
 
#37
bass_monkey_by_axevat.jpg


Shock Therapy
 
#38
My ear is awful and it's never developed or improved. In the 1970s/early 80s version of myself as a bass player, I used to have weekly lessons with a Berklee student who had perfect pitch. I would give him a list of the songs I wanted to learn and he would listen (once!) and then teach me the bass lines.

If anyone is reading this and lives anywhere near me and wants to be my teacher in such a capacity again, get in touch.
 
#39
Played along to records/cassettes like all the other old dogs on here. We learned licks and riffs by close approximation, which seemed to force us to learn our own licks. Tab was a godsend in the '80s when it was ACCURATE. Now i will check out stuff online by ear and if i hit a problem spot, i will look up some tab and/or lyrics. So much of it is WAY WRONG and repeated on site after site.

I was still using a 4 track cassette recorder to write songs up until '06 when I got an Imac. Macs have changed everything for me and my band.

I still think learning by ear teaches you so much more than just being shown every single finger placement. It makes you learn to hear pitches and teaches your mind to figure things out by hearing instead of seeing.
 

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