Sorry if this has been posted loads of times was not sure how to search for it.
Ok so what I struggle with is.
I learn a couple songs over a period of time like project song and have a few easer songs that I learn to jam with a friend, we add and drop off songs on this list as time goes by.
My problem is that I drop a song or finish a project song and start anther then within a few weeks I don’t remember how to play them?
So how often should I replay them to keep them in the long-term memory or what advice do people have to remember so I have a repertoire and don’t feel like a rabbit in the headlights when asked to play something that I could play but now just do not remember?
Thanks
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I guess it varies from person to person. Also, it depends on who asks you to play certain songs. Maybe you could deny knowing them
On a more serious note, you should run through those songs however often it’s necessary. I doubt that you completely forget how the songs go once you learn them. It might be enough just to refresh them from time to time.
See if that works for you. Takes some time to find out, but it does work for me after the initial struggle to get the song into memory.
For the initial learning, I need to exercise pulling what I saw a few minutes prior out of memory and not being lazy and just hitting the back button on the video.
I seem to only be able to hold a couple songs at a time into memory with quick enough recall to be able to just play them. and those tend to be the ones I have been spending the most time with recently.
but songs I’ve learned that well in the past do come back pretty quickly if I pull up the music for them. work through a few bars while looking at the music and then it all starts to come back. recovering the muscle memory to play them well takes a few more playthroughs.
my wife seems to be able to hold more songs in her working memory than I do, but the songs she’s playing mostly don’t seem as complex as the ones I’m playing.
I play a song from my repertoire as a warm-up for every daily practice session I do. This allows me to re-visit the songs I know every 2 weeks or so.
I do find myself forgetting parts of some of them sometimes, so cycling through my repertoire every 2 weeks keeps things fresh. If I really screw one up, I play it again the next day as well.
Justin’s Spacing Effect lesson is a more complex, and probably more effective way to do it, but I don’t want to put in that much work on determining the timing of re-visiting songs like he describes in the lesson.
I’d say my approach is much the same as what @Fast-Eddie has said. I’ll practice whatever my new thing is and finish off with a play through of a song or 2 or 3 that I’ve already learnt to try to keep them in my memory. At this stage for me I know a limited number of songs so they all get played frequently enough. In some cases I don’t even need to play the whole song… I know with The Joker, for example, there’s a repeating riff and that’s the only bit that I need to practice because the rest (how I play it at least) is simple strumming of standard chords.
I guess over time some sort of hierarchy will form around which songs actually need the most upkeep and there’ll be other songs that only need a very occasional run through.
As I progressed though Grade 2 I was struggling a bit with this, lots of nice songs and/or riffs from the past that I haven’t exercised in a while and ended-up forgetting.
At the practice step of every module Justin always emphasize to leave some time (10min or more) for “song review”, and while I’ve been doing that, I always ended-up playing the things that were freshest in my memory, or ready as a backing track in my phone.
Recently I came up with an idea that has been working for me: I’ve built a numbered list of all the “things” I’ve learn so far, be it entire songs or just simple riffs and lines. At this stage it is not a super long list . Next I’ve printed a “bingo-style” random list of numbers and now every time I get to the “repertoire review” part of the practice, I pick whatever is the next number on the list, practice it for a while, then cross it out and move on, until the time is up. Things which are fresh in my memory I may be able to move quickly, but if it is something I have forgotten I may need to review the corresponding lesson or notes again, and struggle for a while, and it may be an entire practice session dedicated to just one list item. But this way I get to all of them every now and then.
Note: on the first version I made I did not leave the empty lines for adding new stuff, but then I’d have to reprint often as I learned new songs; leaving some blank space to be filled-in made sense in that regard.
Great question. I’ve memorized many songs and when I come back to play them, just can’t quite remember how. For most of them, particularly the easier ones, I just play them a handful of times and it’s back to good playing. For the more complicated ones, there have been times where I’ve had to learn them almost from scratch again. Thankfully it goes quicker the second time around.
I play the regular songs in my repertoire a LOT. And as I play them I try to make them cleaner and tidier. Sometimes I introduce a slight improvement, like a bass run where there wasn’t one before.
It’s a fair bit of effort but for me very worth it.
I’m bad.
I also have no motivation to need to remember how to play a song.
So.
I just keep the music available. Some of it is real music with notes and all (a music book), others are just the words along with said chords for said song.
While I’m bad about not remembering how to play any particular song, I for sure never remember the words to any song, unless they are written down in ft of me. Even when they words are right under my nose I find I can’t read them.
Yes, I do have some songs to memory, but since I’m not playing out and only do music for my own enjoyment, for me, I see no need to memorize. If I remember how to play a song, cool, if I don’t I can read them on a piece of paper.
Thank you all for your recommendations and the link to Justin’s lesson I will give that a look.
Also the consensus seems to be that I need to play through them at least once a week to keep them in memory and the more complicated maybe as a warm up.
Wow heckler that’s an interesting approach and should certainly keep it random.
I hope to try and improve my ability to remember the stranger chords to make it easer to play new pieces along with the ones I should know that also means I should be able to play the arpeggio.
Well thats the plan.
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. Next I’ve printed a “bingo-style” random list of numbers and now every time I get to the “repertoire review” part of the practice, I pick whatever is the next number on the list, practice it for a while, then cross it out and move on, until the time is up. Things which are fresh in my memory I may be able to move quickly, but if it is something I have forgotten I may need to review the corresponding lesson or notes again, and struggle for a while, and it may be an entire practice session dedicated to just one list item. But this way I get to all of them every now and then.
