Memorizing song lyrics. how do YOU do it?

[rasputin1963]

Hey guys, at 51, I am a slightly ancient f***er who finds that all the song lyrics he once knew.... are now "kinda sorta" still there, but, um, not reliably. Lyrics I once knew like the back of my hand 25 years ago are now only about 75% there. (And that remaining 25% is JUST enough, as you know, to occasion some embarrassment on stage).

 

I'm having to go back and re-learn a bunch of song lyrics (even a few chord changes, too, which usually never ever fail me).

 

How do YOU remember all the song-lyrics you'll need for performance? One thing I notice is, the better-constructed the song initially was, the more the lyrics stay in your mind, as their prosody and meaning are inextricable from their melodies and chord changes.

 

Thoughts, reflections, ideas?

[Vito Corleone]

I sing them repeatedly in my head---in the car, lying in bed, while in the shower----until I no longer have to 'think' about what the next line will be. Or at least not past thinking about the 1st line of the next verse. That's really the only way I can do it. And yes, it's harder to remember them the older I get.

[Notes_Norton]

I gig for a living, and have done so for many years (I'm older than you) and gave up on absolutely memorizing everything. We have well over 500 songs in our 'book' and constantly add new ones.

 

I also gig in a duo http://www.s-cats.com that uses backing tracks that I create myself. What that means is that if I hesitate to remember something, the rest of the 'band' will not wait for me. That can mean I either need to recognize a part on the track and recover, or vamp until ending.

 

Now all but the newest songs are memorized. When you do them night after night, week after week, and year after year, it just happens. With backing tracks especially the critical time is when you are singing and playing, and someone comes up while your face is glued to the mic and says, "Can you play $(**$%&!*$* *%$*(!*(@!?" - it's often that unintelligible - or "Can you play Happy Birthday to _____?"

 

That break of concentration can mean you are lost. And I don't mean the conventional concentration, when I'm playing on stage my mind is in that place where there is no space, time, or words - the zone or whatever you care to call it.

 

In addition to that, the new songs aren't memorized yet at all.

 

So what I do is bring a laptop computer on stage with a cheat sheet for every song and cue the song up before it starts. The kind of cheat sheet I need depends on what I'm doing in the song. I sing and/or play saxophone, flute, wind synthesizer, or guitar in our duo, depending on the song. It could be words with chords, sheet music, or whatever.

 

When the song is new, I refer to the computer a lot, but try to wean myself off it as soon as I can. Taking bigger chunks at a time to memory. Especially if the song is currently popular with my targeted audience and I play it a lot, it gets almost memorized very quickly, so that all I need is an occasional glance at the computer.

 

And if someone comes up during a song and breaks the flow using my ears and the cheat sheet I can usually get back on track in no time at all.

 

There is more than one right way to do most anything, and this is what works for me.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[davie]

I don't think just reading it your head or speaking the lyrics is effective for memorizing lyrics. I think the best way to memorize lyrics is to sing them, especially repeatedly. Over time the lyric-melody connection will strengthen your memory of the lyrics since you associate the specific melody along with the lyrics. Another useful thing to do is to interpret and understand the song's overall meaning, it may help you to recall lyrics easier.

[blue2blue]

None of it ever worked for me. I've never done well remembering series. Never really been able to do rote memorization. I learned Jabberwocky one time. It took me weeks of endless repetition. No one wanted to be around me. I probably could repeat if for maybe two weeks after taking at least 3 intense weeks to try to learn it. It's just not my thing.

 

Oh, yeah, and, amazingly, I memorized "Stories of the Street," the Leonard Cohen song. It seemed to take forever. I just looked. There are only 6 4-line verses. (But they're long lines...) I got through but I was so desperate to remember the words, I barely remember playing. It was not my best performance.

 

I have an odd sort of 'affliction' -- the more I do something, the worse I get. This is in the short-term, mind you. But when learning something procedural, I typically start out strong and get bad quickly. Next time I come back, I pick up and things are pretty cool, but the more I work it, the worse it gets. I just have to keep going and have faith that it gets better. Also, I have to watch out for frustration -- that was one of the main things that kept me from learning to play music as a kid. As it was, it took me months just to learn to tune. I had great timbral discretion but utterly terrible pitch orientation. Closer than a fifth, I couldn't tell you which of two tones was the high and which was the low. Really. It was a tough slog.

[MikeRivers]

I have to make a trip to the Fountain of Youth, learn the song, and hurry back before I forget it. I used to know about 300 bluegrass songs, now I know half of the first verse of about 30. I find it extremely difficult to learn a new song now, so if I really want to sing it, I just read the words from a printed page (in 16 point type. Eyes failing as fast as memory)

[WRGKMC]

I have some songs that I was able to memorize and the words just come to me when I play them. Others I can see the written lyrics as a snapshot in my mind. I suppose you call it photographic memory. Other songs I can remember as a story line and when I remember the story I remember the lyrics. Yet others I cant remember but a few lines here and there.

 

Playing live I'd do OK so long as the lyrics weren't too complex, but I've never been too comfortable as a lead singer. I do it out of necessity and if its a lot of songs I use cheat sheets. Often tomes I condense it down to the first and last words of as sentence and I can fill in the rest of the words or fake it well enough.

 

I did get away from singing cover tunes about 20 years ago. I got into something quite different with my studio buddies. We started writing music on the spot and making up lyrics as we made up the music. We may have some idea of what we might throw in there, a chorus line or an opening theme but a goo 95% of it was written on the spot. Its something I did for decades writing music. My buddy got real good at doing it with lyrics. Of course he didn't remember what he sang until I played the finished recording back for him. Then when we redid the song he'd remember the yet phrases and added others that worked better because he had a new mental impression of the song. After several versions he remembered all the lyrics from beginning to end flawlessly, and would never forget them even if its had been a year or more since we played it.

 

I do something similar. I'll make up lyrics as I sing making sure the melody is there, then I'll take the recording and rewrite the lyrics so they make better sense. I'd get rid of the tongue twisters and really think it through to find the best substitute words that rhyme, often writing up several versions. Then when I redo it I'll stick with the script. After that I memorize nearly all of it when I can hear it played back. I can hear my own inner voice singing it before I get to the lyrics anticipating what I sing before I actually sing it.

 

This isn't hugely different then singing cover music but the difference is I'm hearing my own inner voice and matching it, not someone else's voice and trying to manipulate myself to sing like that other person. The melody and words are much stronger memories which helps tremendously and If I did forget a word or two substitution is usually natural. The coolest part is you can come up with some amazing things. We've played out together, played a nights worth of material that was never played before or since and had it come off as well as if we had spent a year practicing them.

 

It was not something easily learned however. Some people have the knack of creating new art on demand, and others don't. Still others have it and just don't know it because they have never had the opportunity to work that way. They are impatient and think memorizing every detail is the key to success. I can say this, I'll never work in a band that does the stop and go thing again. I've played in bands that will begin to play a piece the stop every time someone makes a mistake, reprimands the one who made that mistake then starts over, often times spending a whole session on a single song.

 

The way I do it is plow through the song, good or bad, then review it afterwards. This way the flow of music is first and foremost and there is less chance of individuals getting mental blocks at specific points in the music because they are worrying about screwing up that specific part. They do have to be responsible for making those corrections on the next go around, but there's a whole lot less burnout when you work music in its entirety and see it as a soundscape not individual notes or words you need to stumble over.

[Vito Corleone]

If you decide to use "cheat sheets", I'd suggest just writing down a couple of key words to each line or verse or whatever the bare minimum it is for you to be able to recall the lyrics. If you have the entire lyric sheet in front of you, you risk two bad things happening:

 

1) you'll never memorize the lyrics. If you can just read them every night, you'll have no reason to fully commit them to memory.

 

2) you may always look and sound like you're reading instead of singing. Some people can read off of a sheet and sing better than others. One guy I play with--I can always tell immediately if he's using a cheat sheet because he SOUNDS like he's reading it. It negatively affects his vocal performance.

 

In my view, the lyrics are usually the least important part of a vocal performance. Especially if you're singing rock music. Attitude, phrasing, pitch and melody are all much more important (and pretty much in that order.) Think of how many songs where you can't even really tell what the singer is singing. The actual words aren't all that important. Better to go out there and sell the vocal and mumble through or make up the lyrics as you go along than to lamely sing the tune because you're focusing so hard on getting the lyrics straight or reading from a sheet.

 

Get the rest of the vocal performance down first and the lyrics will more easily fall into place.

[Voltan]

i agree about the minimalist cheat sheet approach and the two more negative consequences possible but i feel the lyrics are as important (more or less so depending upon the tune, in my situation). i currently work mostly solo, and sometimes in a duo or trio. (acoustic) especially the solo gigs if you flub a line you could lose the whole enchilada... and lost enchiladas can get really sloppy... i tend to take artistic license with the melody, timing, and phrasing but i take much less liberty with the lyrics themselves... and please, this is expressed as an understandable difference in perspective from a different type of performance, not a "right or wrong" thing...

cheers,

V.

[ggm1960]

I seem to do really well at remembering lyrics after some practice time with a song, however having learned and performed 100's of different songs over the course of my performing career it can sometimes be difficult to remember lyrics to songs I haven't done for some time. Occasionally, if I'm going to do a song or songs that I haven't visited for a while, I find it helps immensely to just write down the first line of each verse in a song and either study it a little while or have it close by because if I can just get the first line out, the rest seems to come easy.

[Notes_Norton]

The funny thing with me is that I generally have a very difficult time memorizing anything. Music is an exception.

 

I've tried lots of ways to memorize other things, including poems, speeches, and so on, but it's useless. On the other hand, if there is music involved, for some reason it works.

 

Big exception to that is "laundry list" songs. But I don't feel bad about that. I saw the great Mark Murphy a few times when he was at his prime a few times, and he always got out a piece of paper to sing Jobim's "Waters Of March".

 

Notes

[rasputin1963]

I saw the great Mark Murphy a few times when he was at his prime a few times, and he always got out a piece of paper to sing Jobim's "Waters Of March".

 

Notes

 

Yep, "Aguas do Marco" is a booger. As is the full lyric to "The Windmills Of Your Mind".

 

 

"The Windmills Of Your Mind"

 

Round like a circle in a spiral

Like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning

On an ever-spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain

Or a carnival balloon

Like a carousel that's turning

Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping

Past the minutes on its face

And the world is like an apple

Whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind

 

Like a tunnel that you follow

To a tunnel of its own

Down a hollow to a cavern

Where the sun has never shone

Like a door that keeps revolving

In a half-forgotten dream

Or the ripples from a pebble

Someone tosses in a stream

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping

Past the minutes on its face

And the world is like an apple

Whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind

 

Keys that jingle in your pocket

Words that jangle in your head

Why did summer go so quickly?

Was it something that I said?

Lovers walk along a shore

And leave their footprints in the sand

Was the sound of distant drumming

Just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway

Or the fragment of a song

Half-remembered names and faces

But to whom do they belong?

When you knew that it was over

Were you suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning

To the color of her hair?

 

Like a circle in a spiral

Like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning

On an ever-spinning reel

As the images unwind

Like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind

[Anderton]

I write songs with simple words

[Notes_Norton]

How about:

 

||: Get up and boogie

Get up and boogie

Get up and boogie

That's right :||

[philboking]

The '60s were pretty good to me, so I have a lot of memory issues when they don't involve day-to-day activities (like work). I find that I need to play a song over and over to get the lyrics down. This can be physically playing it or by visualizing playing it. It works for me.

 

The weird thing is, when I'm performing and 'in the zone' I sing and play with almost no awareness of it (most of my attention goes into the instrument I'm playing). The only time it becomes concious to me is if I miss a lyric or hit a clam note. When things go perfectly, I don't remember doing it, though I know that I did.... I guess it's some kind of zen thing?

[nice keetee]

repetition like learning lines in a stage play.

repetition like learning lines in a stage play

repetition I lie down and read and sing the lyrics along with the song

some of us need more or less of this repetition...some song lyrics I've known for many years, always forget them lyrics

some recent never forget them lyrics..

 

Ask someone famous?

[nice keetee]

Always works better for me to read and/or listen to needed memory whilst lying in bed just before sleepy..

[elsongs]

I'm really bad at remembering lyrics, ESPECIALLY my own songs. I write a lot of verses in parallel, where the corresponding lines are similarly phrased or rhymed to that of the other verse(s). I suppose I just learn them by listening to and performing them repeatedly.

[deezle250]

i'd say repetition but i also use a tablet with the songbook app on it. build your setlist from whatever songs you load, attatch it to my mic stand and i'm good to go. also good for that oddball request. not really noticeable on the stand and it's there handy if i need it.

[blue2blue]

The '60s were pretty good to me, so I have a lot of memory issues when they don't involve day-to-day activities (like work). I find that I need to play a song over and over to get the lyrics down. This can be physically playing it or by visualizing playing it. It works for me.

 

The weird thing is, when I'm performing and 'in the zone' I sing and play with almost no awareness of it (most of my attention goes into the instrument I'm playing). The only time it becomes concious to me is if I miss a lyric or hit a clam note. When things go perfectly, I don't remember doing it, though I know that I did.... I guess it's some kind of zen thing?

When I was sitting in for a few months on bass with one band and having to learn a couple new songs every gig, but also balancing a super-full lifestyle I would practice 'in my head' on the way to gigs or on the freeway coming home from work.

[WRGKMC]

If its cover stuff I learn a good 90% just by listening to the original tune over and over. The rest is just writing out the lyrics and chords so I have it properly structured in blocks in my mind. Once I've written it out I'll usually have it memorized at least short term.

 

If its a complex song then there may be more breakdown, tabbing things out in blocks and actually playing it for awhile so I can capture the style, but on the simpler stuff, I usually have that all worked out before I even pick an instrument up. It wasn't always like that of course. I'd have to play a song a couple of hundred times to figure things out, but after playing for so many years, You "learn" how to "learn" and the actual physical playing isn't very heard when you can already visualize yourself playing the part, then just work out the few rough edges.

 

What can be harder is working your part with a new band, because you haven't learned to what I call, "Read their Minds" As you become more familiar with new players, you learn to read their body language, style, dynamics and timing nuances and learn to fit your part in with theirs. If you have one guy who pushes the timing and another who drags it, getting your part centered between theirs can take some time.

 

Once you're worked with those players a good 6~9 months then you should have a good enough feel where there aren't any huge surprises and even if the song is new you should all be pulling in the same direction.

[Phil O'Keefe]

For me, repetition is the key. If I hear a song I like, or if there's a song I need to learn, I sing along with it - a lot. If it's a cover, I may look up the lyrics online (be careful though - I've run into more than a few mistakes) and follow along as I'm listening / singing along with the track. I find that the combination of audible and visual input tends to help reinforce things and makes it easier for me to remember them, but of the two, I'm far more auditory-oriented, so even without the lyrics, the listening and singing along with the original reinforces things and helps me remember.

 

Honestly, I've never really had to work very hard to memorize lyrics, and I remember them long-term fairly easily too. But repetition is, IMHO, the key. As the old saying / joke goes - how do you get to Madison Square Garden? Practice! Just as it takes repeated practice to get a song down on your instrument to where you can remember it and "play it in your sleep" (do it without thinking, as philboking was talking about), and then occasional refresher practice to retain it long-term, it takes similar effort to remember and retain lyrics.

[Phil O'Keefe]

What I really could use help with is remembering the chord for Helen Wheels...

[WRGKMC]

What I really could use help with is remembering the chord for Helen Wheels...

 

That's funny cause I played that one in a band about a year ago. Took about two rehearsals for everyone to get the breaks down. Played it at a few gigs fine then chose to forget it. The singer was good though and you could clue in on where things were going to go. That's a big part of it. If you can read peoples body language and they know the songs there's usually clues there that confirm what's coming up.

 

You pretty much know when someone's cheating on the homework though. I don't even have to be looking at them and know they are trying to follow my chords because they didn't learn the friggin song before they came to rehearsal. Even if they get it right it feels like you have an elephant on your back because they are unsure and hesitate a bit on everything instead of taking command of their own parts.

 

When everyone knows the song you all carry your own weight and if you're singing it has to be that tight. Its bad enough when you play and sing at the same time. Add in the distraction of hoping others will play their parts right can make anyone forget the lyrics and be forced to adlib.

[techristian]

I remember learning "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, many years ago. I find that it is easier to learn lyrics if the song MEANS something to you. I can also SEE images in such a graphic tale.....and it was a longgggg song to memorize.

 

I start at the top and work my way down, one line at a time.

 

Dan