How to memorize songs

[lermgalieu]

The paradox is that if you write your own chart, that will help you memorize, but if you play off someone else's chart, it will hurt your ability to memorize. I say get off the paper as soon as possible or you won't be able to memorize. This is on a per-song basis, i.e. there might be one song that you look at the paper too much for, and before you know it you can't get away from it. I do anything to remember a chord progression, including making anagrams from the root notes. If you need to glance to remember a specific chord or progression, do so after you try to get through it without.

 

[Dadum]

Once you can play through a song, it’s a good idea to practice to be able to jump in at any point in the song.

You can make mistakes or someone else could and then you need to follow. Listening to the music from any point and then playing from there requires you to listen and recall from a different point. It gets easy to play from start to finish from muscle memory but jumping in at random places can be a challenge that reinforces the previous memorized song in a new way.

 

[kevindahl]

Remembering the arrangement of a song or remembering the bass notes?

 

[groovepump]

Ahhh, but that's the trick... it didn't matter what order they were in. Contextually i knew the answers because I didn't just write "A B B A C D A C." I wrote the full answers out, so when i read the question, i could just recall the answer, regardless of order. It also helped that i generally knew the material, so you can tell what the answer should be if you have half a brain. Worked for multiple choice. Worked for short answers. Worked for essay problems.

I also used to drive my friends crazy because i'd cheat off them and still get better grades on them. They had no idea how i'd do it.

My wife is a high school teacher and she can't even listen to my stories about what i was like in high school. She said i'm her worst-nightmare-student. Too smart for my own good. Distrust of authority figures. Refused to just accept anything that didn't make sense logically or have a rational justification, and loved to point any any hypocrisy or inconsistency. Would take tests without studying while on strong hallucinogens and get grades in the high-90s while the rest of the class barely passed. OMG i must have been miserable to teach.

Funny. I can feel your wife's pain. Yeah, some of you guys are a challenge to keep within bounds. Fortunately, a minority population! But, it's good to see you did something useful, like join the bass community!!
I gotta say though, that teaching was one of the most challenging and difficult jobs I've held in my lifetime.
Easier to work with wires and diodes than with people, especially since most don't particularly want to be at school anyway. Kinda like being a prison guard in some ways.

 

[Dadum]

Basically.

When i told her this, my wife joked, "Ok. So basically, you cheated by studying." Sooooo, sorta? Some might question whether studying from the book/notes and "studying" the test questions/answers are the same thing or not.

She is correct. Learning typically requires motivation. Since the learner in question is motivated when he thinks he is beating the system, he must use an approach that does that, and ends up learning. Others are not motivated at all and score poorly. Public schools in general are poor at motivating students and recent policies make this situation even worse, which we won’t discuss here.

 

[mrjim123]

I have a really good ear, and for some songs learning is almost automatic.

For others I create "charts", similar to this one. I find that simply charting the song engrains it in my memory so firmly that when it's time to play it live I often don't even need the chart.

By gig time I've pretty much condensed my cheats into one line per song on the night's set list, similar to this:

 

[FullumMusic]

She is correct. Learning typically requires motivation. Since the learner in question is motivated when he thinks he is beating the system, he must use an approach that does that, and ends up learning. Others are not motivated at all and score poorly. Public schools in general are poor at motivating students and recent policies make this situation even worse, which we won’t discuss here.

For real. I'm pretty sure i was way more motivated by beating the system than anything school wanted from me. I even went to a special "smart-kids" public high school here in nyc. I hated it, but knew exactly how to do just enough to not get in trouble, so i could spend my time ingesting "certain substances" and making music, and i still graduated in the top quarter of the class.

I was also that little jerk who'd sleep in class, and when the teacher saw and called on me would give the proper answer without lifting my head. Or when nobody else knew the answer, i'd answer without lifting my head because the teacher repeatedly going "Anyone? Anyone? Did anyone do the reading?" was bothering my half-nap. (I didn't do the reading)

Anyway, still playing bass, still doing music and music technology professionally, and much more engaged in the learning process of whatever i do these days. Was a much different student in my Masters program in my late 30s a few years back than i was in high school in the 1990s. And contrary to what kind of student i was back then, i always loved learning. Just hated high school and how they expected me to learn things.

Which goes back to the OP... It's easier to learn when you actively like what you're learning (which i hope is the case, because you're learning music), and enjoy how you're learning it. So find a way to learn that you enjoy, that breaks things down into small attainable pieces. Don't try to learn a whole song at once. Just start with the intro. Learn the intro one bar at a time. Even within the bars. Learn individual musical phrases. Then put them all together. I'll be like you're speaking in bass, less like you're memorizing notes.

 

[Hurricane Jimmie]

So Anyway, I don't memorize any song.
Print the lyrics and chord sheet from a reliable source and put it in a binder, or device. Get a handle on the bass line.
Then play it with your group.
After a couple of times, you should have a pretty solid working arrangement.

 

[Deleted member 394181]

Play the songs over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, then repeat.

 

[r_bnks]

By playing it.

 

[MrLenny1]

I write out a chord chart, it helps to get the form down
and also visualize it.
Then repeat, repeat, repeat...

 

[JohnnyChatter]

I learn the song. Get it mostly down. Give it a day or two. Come back to it and learn it again. Give it a day or two and when I come back it is usually mostly just stuck in my head. I used to overdue it but realized it’s best to just let stuff sink in. That’s if it’s a difficult one. Most basic songs I just listen to and kinda know when the changes are just from playing over the years.

 

[juancaminos]

I rehearsed at home then listened to the songs on the way to work and on the way home ad-nauseam.

Now that I'm retired I practice two hours a night learning new songs by playing along on head phones.

 

[Rayjay]

In my experience- as gifted to me by oldheads. When the old cats give you advice, always listen to it!

FIRST- the “do not’s”
-Don’t memorize by note names (the song goes from D major to B minor….)
-Don’t memorize by frets (this song goes 3rd fret, 5th fret….)

Both of those are like memorizing the phone book. You’ll get a few memorized but you’ll never develop a repertoire, and you won’t see the relationship between the notes, which is extremely important.

Now, the “do’s”
-Memorize the song in your head. Just the sound of the song. Simply, be able to hum the tune in your head.
-memorize the melody, weather a vocal melody or instrumental
-Memorize the lyrics- very very important!! These give you 1) a point of reference 2) the ability to express the song and its meaning. I once had a guitar teacher who absolutely would not let us play a song until we memorized the lyrics. It was a pain and I hated it. It was actually some of the best advice I ever got!
-memorize (first, be able to identify) where the song has even bar lines, and where there might be a phrase with an extra bar or less bars. This is just a matter of counting/ feeling even 8’s and 16’s (as in number of bars). Same for measures where the time changes (like a bar of 2/4)

That’s most of the work, and it simply involves listening and never picking up an instrument. This can be done driving on a commute, whenever.

Now, here’s step 2, and any real musician that k owns a lot of tunes does this. Carol Kaye describes it- paraphrasing she said, ever wonder how jazz musicians memorize all those tunes with all those changes? They don’t! It’s impossible! Instead, they simply know the sound of the tune, and they are constantly in a state of transcribing the chords in their head.

Once you get the hang of that, training your ear and applying music theory, it becomes very easy, like second nature. You’ll be in the supermarket shopping and hear a song and instantly know how to play it.

Using this method you also won’t be married to key signatures. You may have already discovered that, especially vocalists may need to sing songs in keys other than the recordings. This makes modulation simple to the point where you don’t need to put much thought into it.

Hope this helps!

 

[LBS-bass]

The paradox is that if you write your own chart, that will help you memorize, but if you play off someone else's chart, it will hurt your ability to memorize. I say get off the paper as soon as possible or you won't be able to memorize. This is on a per-song basis, i.e. there might be one song that you look at the paper too much for, and before you know it you can't get away from it. I do anything to remember a chord progression, including making anagrams from the root notes. If you need to glance to remember a specific chord or progression, do so after you try to get through it without.

Doesn’t matter whose chart, really. I’ve had to take paper away from people who just wouldn’t learn something as long as the crutch was there. A drummer reading with no feel is awful.

It’s not going to sink in until you start using the part of your brain that retrieves memory, instead of your eyes.

 

[misterCRUSH]

I play jazz, not sure if that makes a difference, but I play through the chart, slowly with a drum track several times. I slowly speed it up and then play along with a recording. After that I play it with my band. The key to all of this is the beginning. Playing it slowly, allowing my mind to wrap itself around the changes. that prepares me for the up tempo version with live people. I also listen to the recording actively (when I am doing nothing else) and focus on everything. I hope that this helps. BASS.

 

[lermgalieu]

Doesn’t matter whose chart, really. I’ve had to take paper away from people who just wouldn’t learn something as long as the crutch was there. A drummer reading with no feel is awful.

It’s not going to sink in until you start using the part of your brain that retrieves memory, instead of your eyes.

Agree to disagree - just like taking notes, if I created the chart myself, it helps me memorize it, so long as I don't use it as a crutch. "Science" has proven that this works, so it's not necessarily accurate to say there isn't a distinction. Using someone else's chart, you never get that hand-to-brain benefit. However, I do agree that either way you need to take the leap off the paper; I just think that leap is easier if you did your own chart, because you've already done some learning.

 

[Dadum]

Doesn’t matter whose chart, really. I’ve had to take paper away from people who just wouldn’t learn something as long as the crutch was there. A drummer reading with no feel is awful.

It’s not going to sink in until you start using the part of your brain that retrieves memory, instead of your eyes.

For drumming, before you take away the music sheet, I would suggest that you mark it with dynamics and have him practice that way. Some of the perceived “feel” is just technical. After he plays with good dynamics, you can take it away.

 

[LBS-bass]

Agree to disagree - just like taking notes, if I created the chart myself, it helps me memorize it, so long as I don't use it as a crutch. "Science" has proven that this works, so it's not necessarily accurate to say there isn't a distinction. Using someone else's chart, you never get that hand-to-brain benefit. However, I do agree that either way you need to take the leap off the paper; I just think that leap is easier if you did your own chart, because you've already done some learning.

I'll meet you halfway and suggest that writing the chart might make a difference if you're actually committed to learning the song, but I've seen just as many people clinging to their own handwritten charts as anything else. The key, once again, is getting away from the chart and forcing your memory to engage, no matter who wrote it. Does it help at that point if you're the one who just wrote out the changes? Probably, since you still have a memory of that, too. But if you can't get away from the paper none of that matters.

I've known people who played the same charts for SIX YEARS and couldn't play without them. That's incredible to me, but it is what happens when people rely on the charts and won't take the next step.

 

[LBS-bass]

For drumming, before you take away the music sheet, I would suggest that you mark it with dynamics and have him practice that way. Some of the perceived “feel” is just technical. After he plays with good dynamics, you can take it away.

Oh he's got it marked but that doesn't keep it from feeling robotic.