Musical memory

[40Hz]

Not much of a problem for me. But I have this clock and programmable drum machine in my head, so I can "hear" and feel a backing rhythm track anytime I want one. And syncopation always came naturally to me. Anytime I hear a rhythmic beat (e.g. machinery, windshield wipers, etc.) I'll start automatically "playing" a mental bass line against it. It's almost impossible for me not to.

I always assumed everybody could do that. But I guess it's not as universal a thing as I used to think it was.

My GF has the same problem occasionally. She just suggested one potential way to get around it is to try singing it more to yourself. Something about "internalization" and "state dependencies" and "gestalt" that I'm not going to bother trying to recap. (She has a graduate level background in experimental and cognative psychology so she thinks about things like this a lot.)

Makes sense to me because that's how I learn bass lines. Once I can sing or hear it in my head I can play it.

 

[silvertone]

IMHO it's the reason to practice.
This is to get as close as possible to muscle memory taking over more than being mentally driven.

I played with a Swing Jazz band for 15 straight years which included a lot of gigs.then we hung it up.

Over the subsequent years we have had a once year - pull the musical jalopy out of the garage gig at a local bar.
When these gigs happen it's bizarre to me how the music seems to play the band.
I don't think about keys, or theory - my muscle memory just seems to take over and I can play songs I haven't thought about in months and sometimes years.

 

[George1962]

Hey Welcome to TalkBass! Don't be surprised if a mod moves this to (perhaps) the misc category or some other heading. Not a big deals but it just doesn't belong in the "basses" section. You'll get used to what goes where as you (hopefully) stick around.

As for the topic, I get it. I have hundreds of bass lines swimming around in my head. I can probably play all of them pretty well with the band or along with the original track. I bet I would stumble a little in a game of "Pop Quiz the Bass Player" where someone simply called out songs and I had to just play the line by myself with no band or track.

That being said, one of the ways I "practice" is to listen to my songs over and over again. I am able to listen at work sometimes. So I make playlists of what I am currently learning and they are constantly playing even if I am busy. That way the song is pretty well imprinted into my tiny little brain. All memories have to fight for space in that little sucker. So the ones I hear over and over again get the best chance of a permanent spot.

Try memorizing at 54 ! That is a big problem for me. I'm lucky to find my car at a crowded parking lot!

 

[fhm555]

I'm in the repeated listening catagory. I get a set list and put it on a little MP3 player and listen to it constantly for a couple days and run over it a few times a day until it begins to flow, then i cut back to once a day so as not to become too married to it i have trouble making minor adjustments when it comes time for a full band rehearsal or performance.

Something else that works well for me if i don't have the opportunity to prepare is write out the lyrics and note the chord changes above/between the word(s) where they occur. I can take most any tune like this cold and play bare bones for a minute to hear where it's headed, then fill it out enough to provide a convincing fake if i've never heard the song. This also works with Nashville numbers although it's been quite some time since i've used anything beyond a simple chord progression so i'm more than a bit rusty on the performance codes.

Lastly, i'm self taught and never bothered to learn to read standard musical notation so i'm one of those guys who needs a little priming to get me in the groove. I can however get with a drummer and quickly come together with some kind of groove based on whatever the drummer is doing, or if i start it off the quicker the drummer gets what my intent is, the better i can begin to flesh out my part and not stray too awfully far off track.

 

[mambo4]

Do you ever have trouble playing songs you have learned without the rest of the track? ... Is this an issue for anyone else?

Back when I was gigging in an originals band
I did not consider a song "learned" until I could execute it solo against a metronome.
recordings were used only help get an accurate chart, then dispensed.

backing tracks will carry you over your weaknesses so that you don't have to learn from them.
grooving with only a metronome is much more difficult, but your execution will become that much stronger.

 

[theschnitt]

There is a concept in psychology called State Dependent Memory. Meaning your memory of a subject is dependent of the the context your learned the subject in. Tour post seems like a good working example of this concept

Sort of - "state dependent memory" refers to the learner's emotional (internal) state when the memory is encoded. What's going on in the OP is "context dependent memory," meaning the retrieval of the memory is improved when the context (external) is more similar to the context in which is was encoded.

 

[svlilioukalani]

Sort of - "state dependent memory" refers to the learner's emotional (internal) state when the memory is encoded. What's going on in the OP is "context dependent memory," meaning the retrieval of the memory is improved when the context (external) is more similar to the context in which is was encoded.

Your right on. I can't argue with your reply.

 

[BassholeKI]

There is a concept in psychology called State Dependent Memory. Meaning your memory of a subject is dependent of the the context your learned the subject in. Your post seems like a good working example of this concept

I totally agree! I spent my senior year of college going to class really high. I was taking all 400 level sociology classes that required critical thinking and were blue book exams.

I had made some butter and would have a bagel in the morning before class then walk there burning one. Did all my reading and wrote all my papers in the same state, and got straight A's.

Not that I'd recommend that now...

 

[Badwater]

I play in terms of verse, chorus, and the bass' melody or song's melody. If I can't remember these elements of the song, I'll have a hard time playing the bass lines for it. It happens all the time unless, I play it regularly.

There are people who have incredible ability to memorize a lot of tunes and retain that information for a long time without referring to it or playing it, and can instantly recall and play the part without problem. They may have the photographic memory.

 

[Mike Tonks]

I remember seeing an interview with Christian McBride / Sting where Sting had said that, during rehearsals, if someone else sung instead of him, or the full band wasn't playing, he couldn't remember the bass part - he needed to "hear" the song so that his memory was triggered to play the part exactly right, because he couldn't just remember the bass part in isolation.

 

[Bondobass]

The quickest most efficient way to nail a bass line to my memory banks, is to use the amazing slowdowner. Using focus and patience, using tiny slivers of the music, I can get a grasp of what a note is, it's length, tone, however deep I want to get into it. Go to the next sliver, start piecing them together. And of course writing all this down as I go, don't want to make the mistake of having to go back and redo work already accomplished. I can eventually get to the point of playing it with no accompaniment. I like think I could cover any song this way, given the time, energy...of course this is not yet proven.

 

[Bondobass]

Of course I am the polar opposite of Photographic Memory