Hypothetical situation. Your band mates love song X and want you to learn to play it. Let's leave the timeline we have vague, but think days/weeks and not months/years. You have never heard the song before, but it's in your genre(s) and you managed to get your hands on perfect quality sheet music from good old Google. (This is just to keep the conversation away from transcription.) Your band mates expect you to play it as close to the original as possible, so we can't just completely improv our way through the intro/fills/solos/outro.

What is the professional musician's plan of attack to learn to play the song from memory? I'm looking for a methodical approach, similar to the rest of the lesson plan this forum follows, that is more detailed than "continually play it as many times as possible." Of course, repetition will be unavoidable, but there's got to be more to it than that. (I have SOME ideas, but I don't want to share them yet.)

I'm selfishly posing this to the group because I seem to be unable to memorize complete songs. I can do licks/riffs here and there, but complete songs (complicated things ... think instrumentals) are tough. I can only seem to play music well when I'm sight reading tab, playing exercises, or totally improvising. I'm assuming this is a common problem which has a solution. So who wants to share it with me?

Sorry i have nothing to add that you don't already know. Listen, song form, slow, repetition,

Also start with a few bars at a time and keep extending it. so learn two bars then the next two and so on right through the song. next time round learn four then the next four and so on, then 8 bars at a time then 16. Just an extra idea.
sorry couldn't add anything extra.

Hey dlraben,

Dude, I just went through the your hypothetical situation about a month ago. The group that I play with wanted to add "Better Days Ahead" to their set list and I only had about a week to get it down.

Thankfully, I had the PM fakebook so I had a good lead sheet (although there was a mistake in the melody in the first line). My approach, probably not the best, buts its the only thing I could do to bring it up to speed:

1. I practiced the head (melody) at a slow tempo and brought it up to speed. Altogether it took me about 3 nights after work just practicing the head. Once I had it up to speed I played it along with the recording over and over WITHOUT the lead sheet. I have a program called "Transcribe" that allows me to slow down the song without losing pitch and loop sections. This really helped me iron out some trouble spots.

2. The second part was the chords. It was a real bitch for me because of the rhythms and the tempo of the recording. I knew I could play the chords but not at the tempo required. But, I did the same thing as with the melody and used the Transcribe program to clean up some mistakes I was making. Again, when I was getting up to speed I used the lead sheet. Once I had it where I needed it I would practice without the lead sheet just the recording.

3. Finally, I would just play the song's chord progression without anything but just he metronome to keep time. I needed to remember the form without any cue's that you would get from the recording. This was hard for me. I really had to concentrate on the chord shapes on the neck and see them over and over again.

4. Once I did all that, I finally looped it with my looper and practiced the head, 2 solo passes, and finally head out. I figured that would cover as much as I needed before the next rehearsal.

I tried to post a video of my result. But the forum won't let me again. I don't know why. Sometimes I can post some times I can't. If you want to see it just email me via the forum. I'll send you the link.

One more try:

Nope.

I don't think its working.... oh well.

:0

Yeah, song structure, harmony, melody, repetition. Looking back at my post, I'm not sure what else I was expecting... I guess I haven't been working hard enough on memorization. I'll change that. Thanks guys.

John, yes, I'm very interested. E-mail coming forthwith.

My understanding, is that the very process of trying to become as good of a musician as is possible, is one that is charactarized by developing a way to function on ones instrument without being reliant on memorization.

I was smoking a cigarette outside thinking about the implications of this, and I realized that the process which many would call "bringing something up to speed" is a one that I intensely dislike; it is approaching the act of playing music in a way that feels dehumanizing and antithetical to music. And even after having gone through this process, there is no guarantee of pay-off, insofar as that being able to play something "up to speed" that you have spent the last few weeks focusing on, right here and right now, does NOT mean that it would be "up to speed" say six months down the line after half a year of focusing ones attention elsewhere. My whole point here being, that often it produces no residual benefits, and I guess thats probably why I dislike it so much.

Quote: NicholasJacquet wrote in post #5

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My understanding, is that the very process of trying to become as good of a musician as is possible, is one that is charactarized by developing a way to function on ones instrument without being reliant on memorization.

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Quote: NicholasJacquet wrote in post #6

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I was smoking a cigarette outside thinking about the implications of this, and I realized that the process which many would call "bringing something up to speed" is a one that I intensely dislike; it is approaching the act of playing music in a way that feels dehumanizing and antithetical to music. And even after having gone through this process, there is no guarantee of pay-off, insofar as that being able to play something "up to speed" that you have spent the last few weeks focusing on, right here and right now, does NOT mean that it would be "up to speed" say six months down the line after half a year of focusing ones attention elsewhere. My whole point here being, that often it produces no residual benefits, and I guess thats probably why I dislike it so much.

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My goal is to chip away at/ get to the point where I have removed any anatomical playing constraints so that it would appear as though I didnt have any

Quote: NicholasJacquet wrote in post #9

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My goal is to chip away at/ get to the point where I have removed any anatomical playing constraints so that it would appear as though I didnt have any

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Everytime I am physically able to play something that was not possible before now, a constraint has been eliminated.

Okay. So, what would you say those constraints are? Mental, physical, financial, time, etc... I'm guessing you mean physical. Am I right about that?

physical is porbabably the most obvious one to me, mental is probably the hardest one for me to work on...one example would be to see how small you can make a subdivision of time before you can no longer sense that it is there.

Quote: NicholasJacquet wrote in post #13

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physical is porbabably the most obvious one to me, mental is probably the hardest one for me to work on...one example would be to see how small you can make a subdivision of time before you can now longer sense that it is there.

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Damon, for me, it's always been simply extreme repetition. I don't know if that helps but that's what I've always done. I've gone to jam session gigs where I had the chart in front of me. But that's not memorization. I think to memorize it you just have to drill it everyday. That's what works for me. Steve Vai once said you play something like 500 times and then suddenly you forget how to play it. That's when you know you almost have it memorized.

I don't know if that's what you're talking about but, it works if you are trying to memorize songs.

Alright, sounds good. I do lots of this already, but I need to stay on one song much longer than I have done in the past. Doing that will probably get me past a lot of the areas I perceive to be lacking in my progress. Thanks guys!

Now learning flight of the bumblebee using the method i mentioned above
16 bars a night
1 bar at a time then 2, 4, 8,/ 16

memorizing whole songs is also something i need to work at.
so will let you know how it goes.

Should take about week.?

So flight now totally learned and memorized. since 10th of January.
so took about a week. I know its not the hardest song to memorize.
but think this is a great way to learm/memorize
Also think as with anything it becomes easier and quicker to do the more you do it.

will post a video when i've reached 160 bpm ( about another couple years then lol!)