Grade 1 songs degrade if learning Grade 2 songs?

I finished all of Grade 1 at the end of January except memorizing 5 songs. Took me 2 months (I have 2 years experience but was all over the map in what I was learning, so not really a 2 year guy). I’ve memorized only 1 song so far. I can play them all fine, but keep referring the lead sheets. I am close to memorizing 2 more.

I spend almost all of my practices playing these 5 songs. Sometimes I’ll do chord changes, strumming, etc. but not much since they’re decent.

I want to start grade 2 but I’ll have to practice songs that have new chords. I feel like I will never memorize my grade 1 songs if I do this.

If I practice only 1-2 songs progress goes fast, but I won’t practice all my songs. If I practice all of them in one day it will take too long. If I practice all of them on different days, progress will be slow.

I have other songs too, like Come As You Are and Paranoid, but I haven’t been practicing those much. So, these are falling by the wayside too.

What is the solution? Every way to do this has its downsides.

Any advice appreciated.

Motivation Club #31 | Memorizing Songs - JustinGuitar Clubs / Motivation Club - JustinGuitar Community
As luck would have it Lieven is doing an upcoming webinar on this topic

Ooo, goody, goody! Thanks!

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Hi Frank

How long do you have each day to practice?

One approach would be to take your 5 songs and just play through the chord sequence for the verse and chorus of each once a day, that will help embed the chord sequence and strumming for each, try and do it from memory and only refer to music sheet as last resort.

You could also play one through each day and rotate the song.