If you play music, you must know some songs. How did you learn them? Is the way you learn songs now different than the way you used to learn them?
As a beginner, you’re hungry to learn any song that will give a practical reason for the strange things you’re learning to do with your hands and fingers. If you know how the song should sound, you can tell how you’re coming along. When I was learning music, it was sight reading musical notation, and I had never heard of the songs, so my real job was to follow the instructions – hit the right notes in the order and duration according to the notes on the staff. It was weird.
One the quickest and easiest way to learn a song is for someone to simply show you how it goes. You could learn the chords for a simple song in just one or two run throughs. Melody’s a little tougher (for most folks) and I have learned a few songs from someone patient enough to show me the melody notes, one by one. Once you have it committed to memory, you devote a few days’ practice, and you have a new song in your arsenal.
Yet another way is charts – very common for pickup work and fake books. The downside of this method, I find, is once you start staring at charts, you stop trying to memorize the song. For me, at least, charts can really prevent you from really learning a song unless you commit to leaving the chart behind as soon as possible. This can apply to tablature as well. It’s great way to learn the notes to a song, but the temptation is to rely on the tab forever more.
Memorizing lyrics can be difficult sometimes too. At jam sessions, there’s no shame in having a fakebook handy, but it’s not too cool to use one at a gig, so with a working band, every new song requires more memorization. It can be a challenge! For some reason, I am pathologically unable to memorize only about half the verses to “Man of Constant Sorrow”. Which half I remember changes from gig to gig, but I can never remember all of them. Never have.
It’s helpful if a song has a linear story – then remembering the story helps in remembering the lyrics and the order they go in. Human brains being what they are, every now and then the brain refuses to give up the information stored within. What can you do?
Oddly enough, sometimes it seems that my hands “remember” what my brain won’t.
It is, in the end, a miraculous thing to be able to learn dozens of songs (hundreds for some folks!), and once you realize the learning methods that work for you – really get that information to stick – you can just keep adding. I don’t think there’s a hard limit to what your head and hands (and ears) can remember!
