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What do you do to learn songs ?


minimoog

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For me - it's essentially a four stage process.

First - there's the dissection phase. This is time spent taking the original tune apart to understand the chord structure, format and lyrics of the original.

The second phase is the documentation phase. I write out a simple chart for the tune. Even the simple stuff gets written out in one manner or another. The act of writing it down is a crucial memory tool for me. Being able to "see" the chart helps me when it comes to committing format / chord structure to memory - and visualizing it in my head when I play it later.

Once I've got the chord structure and format down - it's onto what I think of as the "design" phase. I go though and work out how I am going to play the tune - my choices about what parts from the original need to be covered (i.e. right hand piano part, left hand strings, etc.), my chord voicings, my rhythm patterns, my choices in terms of sound (patch) selection, etc.

Once I've pretty much figured that out - it's simply the task of getting it to the point that I can play my design from end to end - smoothly, in time, with authority and on demand. Over the years, I've come to recognize that the on demand thing is important. I realized that in my practice regime - I played the {censored} out of most stuff - the 2nd time I played it as any sitting ... the 1st time, not so much. I've since taken to constantly jumping around between tunes when I'm learning them - so that I'm constantly challenging myself to play the tune right when I come at it cold.

This four step process may sound like overkill to some ... in reality, a simple tune might run through the 4 phases of the learning cycle in just a few minutes. More complex tunes obviously may take a little longer ... but it's the framework for how I approach all tunes.

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1. listen through song, stopping starting, figuring out which keys to press to sound the same (I can't read, write, or really play music from notation)
2. make a CD of MP3s to play in car to pound it into my head every day during commute or other trips
3. if singing, write out all lyrics - that's my way to see and cement lyrics if I have hand written them out, then practice every night with the song, and lately entertaining the idea of using a tablet/pad for scrolling lyrics

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Quote Originally Posted by SpaceNorman View Post
This four step process may sound like overkill to some ... in reality, a simple tune might run through the 4 phases of the learning cycle in just a few minutes. More complex tunes obviously may take a little longer ... but it's the framework for how I approach all tunes.
I'd say it's a very good approach. I especially identify with the part where you talk about how you intend to play the piece -- the design phase. And you're right. Being able to play it on demand and with authority takes time, and work. It's important to be able to slip quickly into the groove (in the 'well-worn' sense) for each piece. I've seen live players fail to get that frame of mind and have to abandon a tune after several false starts. It's painful to watch. Building up a repertoire of pieces that you can play with unselfconscious ease is the mark of a seasoned player.

For me, the approach varies depending on the type of music I'm figuring out. If it's a classical piece, then original sheet music will tend to be a spot-on reference that combines well with studying recorded works.

But popular music is a whole other matter. I've known both gigging professionals and skilled amateurs who trusted sheet music as a final authority, and almost without exception they ended up with something that was easy to learn but completely out of touch with the recorded original that people want to hear. I've seen some pretty horrendous sheet music versions of pop, rock, and soul with just awful rhythm and chord arrangements, a different key, and even incorrectly notated melody (?!?!), that made it barely recognizable. For comic illustration, imagine a Motown tune written in some folksy piano style a la Stephen Foster.

In the long run, you get it by listening, and you get better at listening by listening some more. It's an art in itself -- being able to decipher a piece of music by reverse engineering it with your own ears. It's a strength of mine, and it didn't come easily. I've known many musicians (especially classically trained) who found it too daunting to even try to learn a piece this way since they had become entirely dependent on sheet music. I sort of feel fortunate that I grew up learning to play my favorite songs by just listening to the radio and my 8 track player and phonograph. Later, when cassette players allowed you to RECORD your favorite music off of the radio, I was in heaven.

Nowadays, they even have MP3 software that will slow down the playback without changing the pitch, making it a lot easier to figure out fast and complex arrangements.

But in any case, my advice to anyone is to learn how to listen. Become good at figuring things out with your own ears. It'll take you far.
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Quote Originally Posted by zoink View Post
I've known both gigging professionals and skilled amateurs who trusted sheet music as a final authority...
Yeah, I've run into a couple of those folks too. I've never understood it - my experience has been that most "commerically available" sheet music is way off - structure, rhythm, chords - hell usually even the key is different than the original recordings. Chord charts gleaned from the readily available guitar tab sites is a crap shoot as well. Filled with missing chords (yeah, I realize that an oxymoron - but you know what I mean) as well as lots and lots of what I call "guitar player" chords (partial chords that don't convey the song's REAL chord structure ... i.e., an Em chord - when the real chord is in fact a Cmaj7 once you factor in what the bass player is doing). Using sheet music to help you get started when you're first learning a new song if fine - but ultimately, you've got to use your ears to truly piece songs with any degree of complexity together.

Quote Originally Posted by zoink View Post
In the long run, you get it by listening, and you get better at listening by listening some more. It's an art in itself -- being able to decipher a piece of music by reverse engineering it with your own ears.
Agreed - learning to listen with a purpose is at the crux of being able to learn any new tune (especially for a cover band player).
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Quote Originally Posted by wwwjd View Post
Make a CD of MP3s to play in car to pound it into my head every day during commute or other trips.
My experience with this approach is that even after listening to a song a million times - all I come away with is a passive familiarity with the song (i.e., I can follow the changes, the format ... but not necessary take a blank space and recreate the entire song from scratch). The other drawback that I run into with this approach is that I become subconsciously dependent on having the musicians around me play their parts exactly like the original so that all the little nuances present in the original that setup changes, etc. are there. Let somebody play their part a hair different than the original - and it throws me off (if this is the approach that I use when learning a tune).

For me, it's critical that my learning process move me beyond having passive familiarity with the tune while the original is playing - and to the point that I have an active ability to play the tune - i.e, play my parts, front to back, in time, and with authority - without any aids (i.e., playing along with the original, playing with a band recording, etc.)
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sheet music son

if that's not available for one reason or another I'll play it by ear, might record it on my phone or something at practice. afterwards I'll write the parts out and make notes like normwar

it's always important IMO to have a written copy of the music for future reference

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Sitting in front of my boards with paper, pencil, and an iPod or CD, then doing pretty much what SpaceNorman outlined above with his four-step process. Especially the bit about charting the song, as that goes a long way towards cementing the song structure into long term memory. And since I play in a few tribute acts, the sound itself is as important as the notes played, so step five is often sound design and tweaking to imitate the original recording.

Repeated listening, as was mentioned by wwjd, is helpful too, but only after you've actually learned the basics of the song properly.

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To be honest, I only use the Real Book for the changes. I pretty much always do the melody by ear. If I get ambitious, or the song isn't in the Real Book, I'll learn the changes by ear. Since I pretty much only play jazz, the only time I'll ever learn something note for note is when I'm trying to cop or attempt to figure out someones technique.

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By ear, basically. Listen to it. Play along with it. If there are some tricky chord changes, usually I'll start by figuring out what the bass note is. Play along with it. Compare what I have to some charts on-line. Usually laugh at how wrong they are. . . guitarist. . . then U-tube search it. Play along with it. . . All along the way I'm setting up patches, figuring out where each part might go on my keyboard. . . Is there a strings part, a horns part. . . .

If it's a heavily produced arrangement with many parts, I'll usually make a list of all of the sounds I need on a scratch pad: Horns, Piano, Strings, Weird Synth Pad Sound. . . like that, then figure out each part, and what patch I'm going to use, and where it should be on the keyboard. I have some fairly complicated setups. And I'm rehearsing all of the parts over and over again as I'm testing out patches and where they might go and how they might be controlled.

SpaceNorman is pretty much all over it. . . I just don't write the chords down usually. And I kinda do all of his steps at the same time.

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SpaceNorman pretty much hit my method. Of course a lot depends on how complicated the music is. Whether or not I've heard the music before makes a big difference too--if it's some tune I've heard a million times over the years I may "trust the subconscience" and skip doing any kind of chart.

Since I pretty much only play rock stuff my typical process might go:
- google " chords", which 99% of the time brings me to Ultimate Guitar biggrin.gif
- make sure the key of the song (UG has a handy transpose feature)
- copy the lyrics/chords into a Google document, edit and reformat to my liking, rename and categorize. (While I've given up on having an entire band use Google docs--there's always at least one neanderthal ;-)--it's awesome for me to be able to pull them up from any computer or my phone). This document I call a "chart", and has chords over the lyrics and any notes ( eg "2 bars intro, 1 bar drums only") that will help during confusing parts. Just making this chart helps me learn the tune even if I don't refer to it later.
- find (the correct version of) the song on youtube and listen through to it making sure my "chart" is correct, making notes etc.
- finally I'll start actually playing the song and working out my parts.

A big part (to me) of being able to play a song is getting it into my head by listening. Basically I've got to get it to "lizard hindbrain" status so I'm not thinking about it biggrin.gif

Edit: I also maintain one document (spreadsheet) that has the songs with their key and whatever patches I'm going to use on various keyboards. This I print and bring to practice/gigs in case my memory fails me, which seems to happen more often than before (?)

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I do a combination of what SpaceNorman & Strenge do. I start by downloading the song in iTunes, then play along with it to get the overall 10,000 foot view and the basic changes. I may or my not write these down at that point depending on complexity. Once I have the "structure" mapped out, I then focus on replicating the instrumentation I may or may not need to cover. In the country project I'm currently doing that may mean working out the banjo part, fiddle, pedal steel, or harmonica stuff. Then I will start constructing "Combis" or "Performances" that incorporate these sounds I may or may not need so that I can play them live. It gets really hard when you have a banjo doing a rolling part while the fiddle's playing and then pedal steel comes in. If that's the case I try to figure out which part is dominant and focus on that. I then go to lyric sites and download the lyrics because I know my boys and they aren't going to take the time or use the technology we have to get it themselves so I enable them by bringing lyric sheets for all those singing. I do intend to try Strenge's suggestion about the Ultimate Guitar site so that we could have the structure laid out better. As it is, we all make notes on our lyric sheets with intros, bridges, turns, modulations, strange note sequences, etc. and use those until we've played the song enough that we don't need the training wheels anymore. Also, I agree that listening to the song over and over way from the keyboard will have you hearing parts that you just don't hear the first few times through. I don't read myself, so sheet music wouldn't be of much use for me, and most of the people I play with are ear players too. I can read Nashville charts and they work great if he vocalist isn't sure what key he/she will be singing it in.

So that's my take on it. Probably not the most professional approach but it's worked for me for the last 40 years.

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I usually start by making sure that all band members are learning the same version of the song- preferably THE classic, definitive version, if there is one. Alot of musicians are too cheap to pay for a music subscription service so they find what they can on YouTube- which may be a cover or an "evolved" live version by the original artist.

Then I play the song long enough (using the Rhapsody app on my phone) to chart it out using the Nashville number system. This is (as Norman said) a memory aid, to get it organized in my brain and to get a sense of what is going on, theory-wise, irrespective of the key which may change according to the limitations of the singer. If I'm carrying the intro, I make sure that I write down the BPM.

After that it's a matter of deciding what the most important, substantial parts are and transcribing any "signature" licks, before worrying about the bells and whistles. I'll put effort into learning how to play 2 independent, interlocking parts at the same time- although most of the time I just play a pad or B3 with one hand and comp with the other. Then I play along with the song until it's takes root in muscle memory (hopefully). Of course, I have to decide what patches to use and make sure I can get to them in time, but I'm a preset guy so that process is not very time-consuming.

To avoid "brain fart" when time to play the new song live for the first time, I associate the groove or main riff of the new song with that of a classic "oldie". There's usually at least one example that fits that bill. Billy Currington's "Let Me Down Easy" for example, is similar to "Easy Like Sunday Morning". Miranda Lambert's "Baggage Claim" seems to be equal parts "Mississippi Queen and "Feelin' Alright". But it may be easier to do that with top 40 country than with say, Lady Gaga.

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Quote Originally Posted by midinut

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In the country project I'm currently doing that may mean working out the banjo part, fiddle, pedal steel, or harmonica stuff. Then I will start constructing "Combis" or "Performances" that incorporate these sounds I may or may not need so that I can play them live. It gets really hard when you have a banjo doing a rolling part while the fiddle's playing and then pedal steel comes in. If that's the case I try to figure out which part is dominant and focus on that.

 

Looks like we live in the same "world", midinut! I struggle with that, too- I had to buy a new keyboard (M50) just to have a decent banjo.smile.gif
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I sit down with the tune and a keyboard and notate the arrangment- verse, pre chorus, chorus, etc. Then I pick out the chords for each part. (Sometimes this means looping a 1 bar phrase over and over to get that one note I can't figure out. Other times it's 1-2 run thrus and I have it down.) Then I pick up any additional parts that are key to the song. Finally, I create patches/programs to capture the recorded sounds as best I can.

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I don't really care about you gig, it's an interesting thread.

I first figure out the key and the chord progression by the chord number ie 1, 4, 5

Then I learn to play it in several different keys. As a pro i am regularly asked to transpose on the fly. Understanding the chords of the scale and being able transpose on the fly makes you a much more employable musician.

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If its a rock, pop or country song, always by ear. I tend to retain it easier and longer if I do that.
If I am in the studio, and no one has scribbled out a chart, I will quickly make my own.
If I am on a time constraint and there are multiple songs with intricate lines, I will jot them down and create a makeshift flash card file.
I had a pick-up gig once for a private party ( 3K people) in Turner Field ( the Atlanta Braves) and the band played EWF, Steely Dan, Beatles, Paul Simon etal- all of which have specific voicing, sounds, lines, and I had to perform string, synth and horn lines. So they gave me an ipod with their sets-list and I just crammed the hell out of it making a mini folder that gave me the key, the number of the preset, and whatever musical info I needed.

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Download a program called "Transcribe". It can help you make practice loops, slow stuff down without changing pitch, change pitch without slowing down, and in the case where you're really screwed, it has a spectrum analyzer that displays peaks above a piano keyboard.

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