Memorizing songs?

[DWBass]

IJS.....if your band has been together for several years, playing the same material, there's no reason at all the music /lyrics shouldn't be memorized. I, personally, don't want to see a band all looking down at sheet music/lyrics! Definitely NOT paying for that. As I mentioned.....I give a pass to orchestra and school settings.

 

[yaksonator]

Only time I advocate for sheet music or charts in stage is in a cram situation. I had to learn 90ish songs in three weeks and so I chatted them. I eventually got them memorized but I had to have the help.

 

[MuseChaser]

When I was on the road playing with a variety cover band gigging 6-10 times a week with about 150 tunes to draw from in our repertoire, we were completely memorized and never had set lists.. we read the crowd and segued smoothly into each new tune in the moment. Our act required it... No time for shuffling sheets.

Jazz world... Yes, you should know the tunes in the standard repertoire and we do, but a lot of our concerts are one-offs with either just a talk-through or very brief rehearsal with a guest or two, and the performance sounds more polished with specific composed intros, outros, hits, shouts, counterlines, etc. That stuff requires charts, and there's no shame in it.

Play the same 40 tunes all the time, with the same players? Put the charts away, make eye contact, and groove. Playing with a lot of different folks all the time, with different books? Clear charts, look ahead, and still make eye contact as much as possible. Groove.

What's the question?

 

[bherman]

Amen to that, mate.

Hey, I'm 68 and can definitely affirm that age-related memory loss is real.

 

[Michedelic]

Rock n roll rebels with your sheet music on stage!! Usually memorization comes with practice, so.... But maybe it's a confidence or habit thing?

Who is a Rock’n’Roll rebel anymore?

 

[Febs]

I've done pit gigs where the music director expected the score to be memorized by the time rehearsals were over.

Why?

 

[Artman]

No stand for me either.

I have an iPad with the setlists and my iem mixer running.
I keep it off to one side so the audience usually doesn't see it, and I'm not looking at it during songs.

I agree. If it's classic rock or country, and the songs aren't new to you, no need for the great distractor known as the music stand.
Most Rock and Country is easy enough to memorize, and easy enough to improv if you get lost.

Nobody wants to watch you bury your nose in sheets in between verses, or for two minutes of dead air between songs.

 

[SteveCS]

you wouldn't go see a play where the actors all have scripts in their hands on stage would you? If they can do it why can't musicians?

Well, would you go watch a symphony where every musician had their part on a music stand?

They are totally different scenarios. In a stage play the actors' dialogue is generally sequential, taking cues from each other in a linear 'he said; she said' manner to create a credible impression of lucid conversation. In a 'crowd' scene with a bunch of extras wandering around going "rhubarb rhubarb", it doesn't really matter what they say, nor when and how they say it - in fact the more random the better.

Now imagine a crowd scene with 90+ extras saying the same thing at the same time, in time (billions of non-actors do this every week across the globe so it can't be that tricky). Now pair them off and give each pair a unique but related scripted conversation that they have to deliver in sync with every other pairs' scripted conversations - not so simple.

Now give everyone a unique line upon which the success of everyone else's lines depend, in terms of pitch, tone, volume and time. Place some of them so far apart that they can't hear each other, and put the chap with the really loud voice just behind the ones with the soft parts so they can't even hear themselves!! That's the Symphony Orchestra. The only reliable cue is the score and your ability to follow it according to the central source of time - the stick.

 

[Bass Motifs]

Who is a Rock’n’Roll rebel anymore?

A slow descent into respectability perhaps (to paraphrase Christine Keeler)

 

[Medicine Man]

Why?

No idea. I guess he thought his compositions were that good? Delusions of grandeur? I was surprised, but the pay was good enough to not rock the boat. I did three different shows for them and the pit folk all went along with it every time. The pit had costumes too.

 

[Smooth_bass88]

I've done pit gigs where the music director expected the score to be memorized by the time rehearsals were over.

I've done pit gigs whereby I'm handed the score in the middle of a run- as the subbing bass player. If you can memorize the entire score AND show itself, wow i'm impressed

 

[Core Creek]

No stand for me either.

I have an iPad with the setlists and my iem mixer running.
I keep it off to one side so the audience usually doesn't see it, and I'm not looking at it during songs.

I agree. If it's classic rock or country, and the songs aren't new to you, no need for the great distractor known as the music stand.
Most Rock and Country is easy enough to memorize, and easy enough to improv if you get lost.

Nobody wants to watch you bury your nose in sheets in between verses, or for two minutes of dead air between songs.

“Most Rock and Country is easy enough to memorize, and easy enough to improv if you get lost.”

That kind of approach doesn’t fly in my current gig. There is little room for improv - what is someone going to improv over “come on Eileen”? Either you know the bass part or you don’t, and if you don’t nothing you improv is going to cut it.

While I’ve simultaneously been told that I’ve settled into the band faster than any previous bassist, I still get scolding looks from the BL if I hit a bum note. There is little room for mistakes and less for improv. Which is why an iPad has been essential for getting up to speed and why no one in the band has an issue with me using one.

 

[Artman]

“Most Rock and Country is easy enough to memorize, and easy enough to improv if you get lost.”

That kind of approach doesn’t fly in my current gig. There is little room for improv - what is someone going to improv over “come on Eileen”? Either you know the bass part or you don’t, and if you don’t nothing you improv is going to cut it.

While I’ve simultaneously been told that I’ve settled into the band faster than any previous bassist, I still get scolding looks from the BL if I hit a bum note. There is little room for mistakes and less for improv. Which is why an iPad has been essential for getting up to speed and why no one in the band has an issue with me using one.

Well, fortunately I haven't had any problems memorizing all of the songs for our three and four hour gigs yet, but if I did, I am pretty confident that I could play it well enough to keep everybody else from getting lost, and the audience would likely never know the difference.

Now if it was a cruise ship or orchestra gig, I say bring on the sheet music.
Recording session? Show me the chart.
Bar band playing the same old bar band "hits"? Shouldn't need it, and it's in the way.

One of our guitarists always has a stand and sheet music out, which is fine for rehearsals, but it looks crap on stage.
He also owns the p.a. gear, so the rest of us let him slide, with the occasional joke about age and fading memory.

Now if anybody gave me scolding looks for hitting a single bum note in a single song, he or she had better be paying me very well for the gig or session, otherwise they can stuff it.

 

[Tony Bassplayer]

Funny how I wouldn’t be caught reading a tablet or sheet at a bar gig but I wouldn’t think twice about doing so at a wedding.

What makes the distinction? They’re both gigs…? Is it just that one gig expects perfection and the other doesn’t?

I've been in both types of bands, currently in a classic rock cover band playing mostly bars, and I was in a long-time (14 years!) wedding/corporate band playing all kinds of stuff. It's not about one expecting perfection, it's about why you're there and why the crowd is there. In a rock cover bar band, we're putting on a show. The crowd...well, most of the crowd...is paying attention to us, so music stands and iPads are not welcome. In a wedding band, we're the background. People are paying attention to each other, whether on the dance floor or at the tables. We're entertaining them, sure; we're playing music to help them have a good time, but they aren't there to see us. So music stands and iPads are no big deal.

As far as the music stand thing goes in general, that's also about context, as others have stated.

 

[turf3]

“Most Rock and Country is easy enough to memorize, and easy enough to improv if you get lost.”

That kind of approach doesn’t fly in my current gig. There is little room for improv - what is someone going to improv over “come on Eileen”? .

Are you serious?

The verses are all roots or fifths with a dotted-eighth-sixteenth-quarter pattern, a few walkups and walkdowns, and the chorus is just eighth note walking bass over the changes.

I guarantee you that any competent bassist could listen once to that song, take a couple notes on an index card and once the key's called out, can nail a perfectly convincing rendition. No, not all the exact notes will be played, but they don't have to be.

 

[RandomKaren]

No, but I saw smart alic comments on sale.

<pedantmode>
"Smart Alec".
</pedantmode>

I once quit a band who refused to allow music stands at gigs. If they'd announced that little verordnung earlier I'd not have joined in the first place (2-hour set of original material with complex arrangements).

 

[FRoss6788]

I'm in a band with one 39-year old, and the rest of us are over 60. I'm 65. My past understanding has been that rock and roll bands memorize songs and don't go dragging music stands around. I'm the only member of this band that knows all the songs. We sound pretty good and have a small local following, but I hate to see people looking at cheat sheets and tablets and whatnot all the time.

Some of these songs are relatively challenging on bass, and since I don't read music (well, not really), I learn the parts and play them. Many of them have "signature" bass lines, like "Wild Night", and "Valerie" (I forget which version, but it's the faster one with the cool bass line, not the Mark Ronson arrangement), some Stevie Wonder tunes, and so on.

It's weird to me that after 18 mo. or so together, the lead singer forgets the words, the keyboardist plays chords wrong, and the guitarist has to look at his notebook between songs. Is it because pot's legal here? I don't understand.

We get a good reaction from the crowd, so maybe I should get over it, but I'm not bringing a stupid music stand. This isn't Lawrence Welk.

Didn't read the whole thread yet, but preach it!

IMHO- rock-n-roll= no music stand, learn that stuff and commit it to memory.

Stands drive me nuts! Not a good look, IMHO.

 

[Core Creek]

Are you serious?

The verses are all roots or fifths with a dotted-eighth-sixteenth-quarter pattern, a few walkups and walkdowns, and the chorus is just eighth note walking bass over the changes.

I guarantee you that any competent bassist could listen once to that song, take a couple notes on an index card and once the key's called out, can nail a perfectly convincing rendition. No, not all the exact notes will be played, but they don't have to be.

What exactly is “improv” then? In my book it’s making stuff up when you don’t really know the song.

You’re right - that’s a song with a relatively simple part - but it’s the part!! If I tried to “improv” that one the band would not be happy and I wouldn’t blame them.

 

[turf3]

What exactly is “improv” then? In my book it’s making stuff up when you don’t really know the song.

You’re right - that’s a song with a relatively simple part - but it’s the part!! If I tried to “improv” that one the band would not be happy and I wouldn’t blame them.

What I'm saying is that a competent bass player who had a general idea of how it goes (basically the description I gave above), and the key, and listened to it once, would be perfectly capable of making something that sounds good and approaches what the recording (the one I listened to) does. Without memorizing "THE" part.

I mean, how do you think "THE" part got created in the first place? Do you think someone sat up late at night with staff paper and pencils to write out each and every note? Or maybe, when the person who wrote the song brought it in and banged it out on the piano, the bass player said "yeah, I can work with that, let's try it" and MADE SOMETHING UP on the spot. Over the following gigs it got more stable, as he played it more and more and dropped stuff that didn't work and added things that did. But the whole thing was improvised from beginning to end, is my bet.

 

[FRoss6788]

I wasn't saying that it was.

The thread is about memorizing lyrics, not great stage presence - thus my thoughts.

Those two things go together, IMHO. Reading off a music stand doesn't lead to great stage presence.