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How did you learn songs before the internet?

#141
Datsgor said:
Like many of you, the turntable is what I used to figure out tunes. Also, think back at the dedication that was needed. The time involved in just making a mix tape. Playing each song, one after another, until the 90 minute tape was filled up. looking at each song for it's time and figuring out what was going to fit on each side. A lost art really. Too bad.
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Oh man, this brings back memories. I always hated cassettes, but I do miss the fine art of making a mix tape: figuring out the time totals, having to press pause after the final fade out & right before the new track started on the LP ... trying to blend them as seamlessly as possible. When somebody made you a proper mix tape complete with hand drawn covers it was a very personal labor of love. I've tossed out all of my purchased cassettes, but still have a shoebox full of mix tapes made by myself & others.

BTW- I've only been playing since recent years. I've always been able to appreciate how helpful the internet is to my learning. Much respect to the Old Schoolers way of doing things, though :cool:
 
#142
Ric5 said:
33 45 and 78 rpm

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:hyper:

Still do only its CD's now... I always found tabs mostly useless and wrong.
 
#144
When I first started playing, and didn't have the money to run out and buy whatever "tape" I wanted to learn a song, I had to do the following. My brother owned a little "boom box" that was able to record onto cassette right from the radio. So, I would have a cassette in the player with the record and pause buttons pushed at the same time. Whatever I was doing, it was near the boom box. When a song I wanted came on the radio, I RAN over to it and pushed the pause button to release it and start recording. THAT is how I learned songs.

Funny story about learning lyrics before the internet. I was in a (pretty successful regionally) classic rock band bak in the late 80s and early 90s. We did Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers by ZZ Top. You remember those lines of vocals during the stops just before the chorus? We never could figure out one of them. So, our singer literally sang "Fries at MdDonald's sure taste good yeah....... Beer drinkers......" Nobody in the audience ever figured it out. We laughed every single time.
 
#145
two fingers said:
When I first started playing, and didn't have the money to run out and buy whatever "tape" I wanted to learn a song, I had to do the following. My brother owned a little "boom box" that was able to record onto cassette right from the radio. So, I would have a cassette in the player with the record and pause buttons pushed at the same time. Whatever I was doing, it was near the boom box. When a song I wanted came on the radio, I RAN over to it and pushed the pause button to release it and start recording. THAT is how I learned songs.
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Me too.
 
#148
goneflyin said:
This^
And LP's.
Got fed up with the things playing back out of tune, and little tuning differences between songs so I opened up the tape deck and took apart the motor. Added a remote potentiometer to the motor speed control trim pot and mounted it to the back of the machine. So a slight turn of the knob would speed up or slow down the playback and I wouldn't have to retune the bass. LOL
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I didn't go so far as modding my tape machine, but yeah...we didn't have all these electronic tuners and stuff. You tuned your instrument by ear, which I think everyone should still be able to do.

You figured out what key a song was in by getting close and listening for the structure of guitar chords or what was likely an open string and then tuned to the song.


All these modern conveniences of today are, well...convenient, but I think a lot of them are more of a hinderance than a help when it comes to developing an ear.
 
#150
1) I guess my little garage band was the odd man out -- we'd buy sheet music or popular music books that had collected 'hits'. $.75 if you really had to have sheet music
some music stores were naturally better at gauging current taste than others
2) we'd watch other bands and figure out the chords they were playing; go back to the basement and work it out. Every band had to play the same 15-20 base repertoire. Most guitar players were self-taught and using barre chords; it wasn't hard to figure out.
3) Because we had sheet music, certain patterns emerged and it got easier and easier to figure out new songs.
4) We also learned 'real' guitar chords form the chord diagrams, so we sounded different from a lot of bands. Some sheet music introduced us to whole new keys -- it was an age of discovery.
 

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