how many songs do you learn at once

[flatwoundjohn]

so i've been out of the music scene scene december and was wondering how many covers/songs do you learn in one day to a week

 

[two fingers]

For me it depends on the upcoming gig. If I know most of the set, I learn a few.

My record is 52 in two weeks. I played a lot in those two weeks.

 

[buldog5151bass]

I've been learning 3-7 songs a week in a band I just joined. Usually I get the basics down on one tune, then do that for a second while I tighten up the first, so I'm usually working on two atonce, staggered.

 

[Stevorebob]

How many songs do you learn at once?

All of them.

 

[saabfender]

I like to do six at a time. More or less.

 

[fhm555]

I get a dropbox setlist with scratch tracks or songs to be learned. I run down it and redline anything i already know, then listen to all the rest and assign them a priority. Low gets hit a little mid a little more and high gets to the front of the queue. After that i’ll run through them all once with the tracks just to be sure i’m GTG then start with the simplest first. The goal is to get as much of the list cold as quickly as possible so i’ll have more time to work on the ones i’m gonna have to work at to get. But every day at least once i’ll run the entire setlist just to get a read on where i’m good and where i need more work. I comm with the BL to let him know if there’s anything i might be iffy on in case he wants to swap it out or tell me to buckle down and get it done. So basically i work on four forty five minute sets at the same time.

 

[Nashrakh]

I'm not the type to "learn" a song in a single day most of the time, it's a gradual process unless it's a simple bread and butter type progression.

Most of the time, I learn what I need to play on a gig, the whole setlist at once (because in one band the conductor likes to change things around... a lot). Which is around 25 to 40 songs (the gigs aren't THAT long), all written in standard notation, within two weeks or so. I start with the hardest ones which may take up most of this time. Some others are so dirt simple root five songs that I can just sight-read them. So these may not even qualify.

 

[hrodbert696]

I would say a good steady pace for a new cover band is to plan on about 4 songs a week. Pick them at rehearsal, everyone goes home and learns them during the week, run through them at the next rehearsal and work on any rough patches. They may not be perfect in a week, especially if they're truly new to the players (not just brushing up Mustang Sally or something), but you keep rotating to them in rehearsal for polish in subsequent weeks while adding additional new ones.

 

[fdeck]

When I was younger, I practiced by playing along to the radio, or whatever records I owned, which weren't many. The result was that I built up my repertoire quite painlessly, and could play pretty much all of the "classic rock" canon. Granted, that was years ago. But what it suggests is that the pacing and repetition of songs on the radio is a pretty good formula for learning tunes. The "top 40" means 40 tunes repeated over and over, with the top few of those tunes in "heavy rotation." The repetition is probably the biggest thing, since the time between repeats is time that your brain is organizing and storing the information.

It also meant that I'd be surprised by a new tune once in a while, which helped to build the skill of picking up a new tune on the fly.

At that rate, I think h-rod's idea of 4 songs a week is a pretty good estimate.

 

[Dave W]

I usually do about 6 per week.

I've been trying to get my band to agreed to a once a month practice where we only add 4 new songs. That's 1 song per week...easy peasy.