How To Memorize Many Songs And Never Forget How To Play Them?

[Jimmy25]

Hey guys, I'm an intermediate player, and I was just wondering, do you guys also have the trouble of trying really hard to learn a new song today, and you finally can play it smoothly from beginning till end of the song. But then after you put the guitar down and come back the next day, you realize you can't play through the whole song smoothly like yesterday, or you already forgot some parts. And you have to rewind and go back to watch the video lesson again. Moreover, if you put a song you can play very well aside and don't play the song for a long time. Would you forget parts of the chords / solos?

 

I mean, people go to some famous guitarists concert to watch them play the original version of a song. The guitarist can't just improvise right? People will know. So how can they manage to memorize so many songs to play in one concert? And still be able to play the exact same things on the next concert even if it's after a long time or after they were writing other new songs? I know sometimes they have screens on stage showing the lyrics to sing, but I'm sure it won't show guitar notes right? So is there a trick or something that allows the chord/solo of the songs to be in your memory forever or at least for a long time after you have learned it? Or it's just the matter of how smart you are and how good you are at memorizing stuffs... If that's the case, maybe I'm kind of dumb... b/c I practice a list of songs to play on a school concert, then after the performance I put the songs aside and start to prepare new songs for the next concert. Then I forget the old ones.... I can't always remember them... some might say play by feelings, but you still have to memorize the basic construction / melody of each song to make it sound like the song right...

[Grant Harding]

I learn the guitar parts by listening to the song and playing along, then I write the lyrics out by hand and practice a few times. Every song I've learned this way had stayed with me. Any songs I've played from tab or notation I can't play without.

[nicholai]

Odd.I can play jams from when i was thireteen twenty plus years ago. I have no clue how to answer you. Don't feel bad, you are probably still a better player than me.

[onelife]

You have to practice remembering the song. I know it sounds strange but when you learn a song and play it through five times its easy to play it the sixth time right afterwards.

 

When you come back to it the next day then you learn how to remember it. What I usually do is write down something that will remind me of the song like maybe the chord changes. In order to remember the groove, I may make a comparison to a song that I do remember. It could be something like "Sounds like Honky Tonk Woman".

 

If there is a weird part I may note the "Bridge has an extra two bars second time".

 

Just the act of writing it down in whatever format works for you helps reinforce the ability to remember.

 

I still prefer to write out the words to a song as I listen to it rather than downloading the lyrics.

[Wayne2]

I hear you. My memory is awful. I like the suggestion to write it down. I'm one of those learners who does much better writing things as I learn them, then rereading them in my own handwriting. This is one of the reasons I've gotten back into guitar. I'm sick of the auditory part of my brain being so frail.

[thecornman]

The process I use to learn a song is sitting down with it and my guitar and using my ear to figure it out part by part! Once I have all the part figured out I play though the whole thing from beginning to end as many times as I feel I need to to get the changes down. Once I have done that it stuck in my head and I can hear the changes before they come. I have not used tab or any other form of reading music for years. Your ears don't lie and won't let you down if you spend the time to use them. It is always a good thing to also have a strong knowledge of chords and scales and how they work together to help you to figure out what might be coming next, but nothing is more importent then training your ears and using them when it comes to learning new songs IMO.

[genesis3]

 

My memory is awful.

 

 

 

Same!

[=JL=]

 

...video lesson...

 

 

There ya go, there's your problem. The process of working things out yourself will help you to memorize them, but if someone else is telling you how to play something then it has to be drilled in there over and over again, army-style, or you'll never remember it.

[WRGKMC]

 

I mean, people go to some famous guitarists concert to watch them play the original version of a song. The guitarist can't just improvise right?

 

 

To tell you the truth, I dont think I've gone to many concerts and seen bands that didnt re-improvise their parts.

Sure the chords are usually the same, most key riffs are the same, but leads are often very different.

 

There are some bands that do play note for note. I usually catagorize them as educated musicians who can read

musical notes well or at least have that kind of a structured mind. Classical musicians who read id an example.

They may change breaks endings etc to give music a better live show.

 

For other musicians they develop aural memory. As an example, this entire week I've had the same tune playing in my

head like a clear voice where i not only hear every note in detail, I can selectively focus on say just the guitar player playing every

note as though its a video playing back in real time. Its a photographic memory you develop except you may have never seen that

person live or on video before. You can view them from any angle. Eventually you can view that person as yourself playing the part

either from a distance as a third person. Then you turn it around as if you're in the drivers seat actually playing the guitar.

 

Musicianship is just as much about controlled thought as it is about mastery and control over the instrument. Once you gain experience at it,

you can learn the entire song just by listening and playing the music is simply reenacting what you already know.

Its just like an actor who memorizes his script and visualizes himself playing that part.

He already knows what he needs to say before he steps in front of the camera and simply acts out the role.

 

You do have to keep in mind music "lives" when its being played and over time musicians improve their abilities and add those

things they learn into the older songs they're written. You may also have newer musicians in an established band that can just play

better than the original musician who recorded a song. If you can play circles around the original player weather that player was you

or someone else, why wouldnt you play the part better with youir own interpetation added.

 

I realize as a young musician you may think the whole goal in music is to "Ape" others parts as good as the other guy did.

When you do excel at playing, you should be able to out do that player or at least have some very cool things you can add

to impart your own style. Thats something nearly every good bands does when thay play others songs. The Beatles for example

did their own version or Long Tall Sally. It kept the sould of the original done by Robert blackwell / Little Richards yet was completely

new sounding with the collective talent of the band.

 

As far as memorizing every note, You only need to memorize your part, not every part in the song.

Its rare where you would solo all through a song unless you're playing jazz or something, and in those cases

most of it is improv. If its pop stuff, theres always repeats of simpler blocks of music. Verses, choruses, bridges etc

often get recycled with some added variations to spruce it up.

 

Main thing is you can organize a song into blocks and tab out allot of the rest.

If you dont know how to tab things out, its something you should learn to do.

Its termendously helpful memorizing longer lead parts if you have a visual image and an aural image to follow.

 

The aural image lets you add the feeling, tone and emotion to the music. The visual blocks of notes helps guide you

to the various sections that are chained together. Then once its memorized, you just forget about all that stuff and

just play it like you're riding a Bicycle. you dont have to stop and think about it, the bicle is an extension of your body just

like the guitar becomes.

 

If you stray off the path for a little while, who cares. So long as its just as good or better, I find

that to be less boaring than the original solo. If I want to hear the original, I can turn on the radio, pop in a CD, or go see the original

band live or find a video of them. When I do go to see a band, I want to see something I cant hear on the radio.

I want to hear that persons interpetation of the music and if its done well, I'll clap when he's done.

If its someone playing note for note, Its like woop do do, the guy knows how to wear a gorilla costume.

 

The reinterpetation does have to be as good or better though. There have been many bands like Boston who pulled all

kinds of tricks recording that made it humanly impossible for them to play the same music live.

[photon9]

It all comes down to practicing the {censored} out of it. Everyone has a different learning style, so the suggestions may or may not be helpful to you. Certainly try them though and see if they work. If you play a song enough times you'll be able to do it without really thinking. It will be ingrained into your muscle memory. After that playing it will feel totally natural. That's what you want. For me that's somewhere around 2 or 3 dozen times (at least), after having spent the time to learn the song in the first place.

 

So really just practice, practice, practice.

[photon9]

 

There ya go, there's your problem. The process of working things out yourself will help you to memorize them, but if someone else is telling you how to play something then it has to be drilled in there over and over again, army-style, or you'll never remember it.

 

 

I tend to combine a lot of things learning. Video lessons have turned out to be a pretty useful part of the process. The way I learn is something like this, but it varies depending on how happy I am with it at certain stages.

 

1. Listen to the song a half dozen or more times. If I like the song I do this anyway.

2. Learn what I can by ear, sometimes all of it.

3. Pull some tabs / chord for parts I'm having trouble figuring out on my own. I usually try out several since there's a lot of variation and pick out what works best for me.

4. If I'm still having trouble I look at youtube lessons for them.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice. With the song playing, without the song playing, with the band, etc.

6. Repeat steps 1 - 4 in any particular order as necessary, or desired.

7. Repeat step 5.

8. Practice some more.

[Glenn F]

I practice it until I can play it and sing it correctly all the way through. Rinse and repeat as needed.

 

When I busked my way through college, I had a list of over 500 songs for people to choose from. I doubt, 30 years later, I could do more than 1/3 of them.

[nuke_diver]

Thoughtful post WRGKMC

[BydoEmpire]

It takes a lot more than a day for me to really memorize a song, even after I know how to play it all the way through. Lyrics typically take me a lot of singing through before I can commit them to memory and not hesitate on the first line of the third verse or whatever. Same for an instrumental. Pretty much just keep playing it until you don't have to think about it anymore. And for me, this means playing it frequently over a period of time.

 

Even so, if I haven't played a song in five years it's unlikely I'll be able to play it through perfectly first time. I can probably remember it (or relearn it) pretty quick, but i

[lz4005]

There's a difference between memorizing something and "knowing" or "understanding" it.

[SlipKid]

When I need to learn a song, I do the following:

 

1) Listen to the song in its entirety on loop for many repetitions so that I know how it's supposed to sound.

 

2) Sit down with an instrument and try to figure out the basic structure. Sometimes I also download tabs at this stage (I actually can read sheet music, but not for guitar).

 

3) Go through it slowly a few times, using the tabs as a guide to the sound of the song in my head (from listening to it many times).

 

4) Play along with the original recording.

 

5) Look at http://www.guitarbackingtrack.com for the song without guitar (and download it if its available) so that I can play along and see how I sound on it.

 

6) Once I've figured it out, play it many times by myself and with my band to get it figured out and committed to memory, and then keep playing it regularly.

 

Everyone forgets how to play a song if they haven't played it in a while, but the more you practice it regularly, the less that will happen. The more I play a song, the more I can see in my head the places where my fingers are supposed to go without really *thinking* about it.

 

EDIT: I see photon up above has a similar strategy to me. I suspect lots of guitarists do, ultimately. Nice to see someone else doing it the same way, though.

[DaleH]

Make a set list and practise it befor the show.

 

Anyhow many bands don't play the same thing every time they do a song. Most have live and studio versions of songs. Have seen many that know the main parts nd improves inbetween.

 

Watch SRV he never played a song the same. Any of the big rock or blues acts for that matter are pretty much like that.

[billybilly]

When I was playing publicly, I used to write down all the songs I played and when I practiced, would run through as many as I could over and above the new things I was learning. I was more of a singer so lyrics were more of a priority. But, that was 15 years ago and today, if I could somehow find that list, there would not be many I could remember in their entirety. However, at the time, I could due to the playing of these songs I incorporated with my practice.

[honeyiscool]

Don't memorize the song by just playing it a lot. Memorize it in your head. What I'm saying is, as the song's happening, you should be able to recite the chord changes and visualize the fretboard, with or without the guitar in front of you. Once you get used to memorizing songs this way, you can refresh your memory easily just by running through the song in your head throughout the day, it can be when you're driving somewhere, waiting for the coffee maker to start making coffee, whatever.

[onelife]

It is also important to be able to play the song by yourself - without playing along with a recording. When you first try do do this you will fall down but it will bring your attention to the areas you need to work on.

 

Again, you need to practice remembering the songs.

[skibob]

Like others have said, the important thing is to be able to hear the song in your head. Know where the changes are and what they are and maybe even know the lyrics. If you can hear it in your head without listening to it, then it's just a matter of learning the parts and putting them in the right places.

 

I can usually stumble through something I learned years ago and haven't played. Sometimes it surprises me how much I can still remember. Kinda like hearing a song on the radio that you haven't heard in years and still being able to sing along and know every word.

 

I've been noticing when my band is working on a cover, whenever we practice they are always saying how they are waiting for someone else to do something so they know where a change is or something. I always find that odd because when I learn the song I try to learn it so I can play it without waiting for queues from anyone.

[chuck1016]

I recommend two things to increase your memory:

 

1. Reduce the amount of THC in your system

 

2. More practice!

 

I remember the quote, but not who said it:

"The difference between an amateur and a pro is that the amateur will practice till he gets it right, the pro will practice till he can't get it wrong."

[BydoEmpire]

 

I remember the quote, but not who said it: "The difference between an amateur and a pro is that the amateur will practice till he gets it right, the pro will practice till he can't get it wrong."

I heard it as '...the difference between someone good and a master...' but yeah, definitely true. I don't even know where I got that, probably from someone else's sig.

 

 

they are waiting for someone else to do something so they know where a change is or something.

If you don't really know the song, you can often rely on the drummer or bassist to cue changes. If I'm dropped in a situation where I don't know the tune and haven't had a chance to practice, I'll do that and make it through. However, ideally you'd actually practice first so you know the changes! Sounds like your bandmates need to practice on their own, ahead of band rehearsal.

[Alan Roberts]

 

You have to practice remembering the song. I know it sounds strange but when you learn a song and play it through five times its easy to play it the sixth time right afterwards. When you come back to it the next day then you learn how to remember it. What I usually do is write down something that will remind me of the song like maybe the chord changes. In order to remember the groove, I may make a comparison to a song that I do remember. It could be something like "Sounds like Honky Tonk Woman". If there is a weird part I may note the "Bridge has an extra two bars second time". Just the act of writing it down in whatever format works for you helps reinforce the ability to remember. I still prefer to write out the words to a song as I listen to it rather than downloading the lyrics.

 

 

I find that writing out the lyrics and making some kind of notes on the song structure heps me to memorize songs, too. I also find that if I put away my notes after a few days and force myself to try and play the song without them that I remember more than I think I will. And, like most things, the more you do it, the better you get at it and the easier it becomes.