Song in your memory banks

garyg

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I play mostly traditional American/English ballads and folk songs and the occasional rock song and original song on my ukes. I'm in my 50's and have played the uke (my first instrument) for 2 years. My question is how often do you have to play/practice a song and still be able to play it from memory. I find if I don't play a song for a week or 10 days I frequently mess it up. (I know about 30 songs from memory.) So how often does everyone have to play a song for it to stay in the old memory bank? Is this a function of the size of your repertoire, your age, etc.? TIA, g2
 
For me, they very rarely stick. I've been playing for about the same time as you and I can probably only do 3-4 from memory.
 
I play mostly traditional American/English ballads and folk songs and the occasional rock song and original song on my ukes. I'm in my 50's and have played the uke (my first instrument) for 2 years. My question is how often do you have to play/practice a song and still be able to play it from memory. I find if I don't play a song for a week or 10 days I frequently mess it up. (I know about 30 songs from memory.) So how often does everyone have to play a song for it to stay in the old memory bank? Is this a function of the size of your repertoire, your age, etc.? TIA, g2

If you can play 30 songs from memory after 2 years - that's excellent!...After one year of playing the uke(also my first instrument)I can stumble through about 5 songs from memory. I'm 59 and I practice about an hour everynight (spread out over thumb-picking & strumming many different songs). I don't think age or repertoire has much to do with it...I really don't try very hard to memorize songs I just really enjoy playing alot of different stuff. But if I can memorize the first chord progression that usually jogs my memory enough to bring the rest of the song along. I think you're doing great!

I just noticed you're down the road from me - hey neighbor!
 
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For me, rather than trying to memorize the songs, as I have no problem appearing 'un'professional with music stand and songbook in hand on stage, I simply enjoy myself and others as I/we play, and play, and play.

Every so often one of the group starts up a song that's NOT in front of us, and it's surprising how many of us are able to play through the song without having consciously memorized it.

I'm not against memorizing the songs I love, and in fact, I do make an effort to memorize the lyrics of a new song I'm learning. So perhaps I lied when I first said I do not make an effort to memorize the music I play :) sorry.

Anyway, spaced-repetition is one technique that aids in learning and probably memorizing also, so pay attention to what you're playing, play it every-so-often, and you may surprize yourself when someone asks you to play the song and voila - you can do it! :)

keep uke'in',
 
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To learn a song by heart and have it available to my memory, I've got to practice it about once a week, too.
 
I'm afraid that I feel this is a skill that is a young man's territory. I used to be able to learn a new song in a matter of hours and be able to play it a year later with virtually no practice in between. Now, that is a distant memory. I have stopped even trying. I just use a song book and a music stand when I am performing (after all our classical cousins have always done that, haven't they? (Though, before anyone says anything, I do know, personally, a phenomenal professional pianist who keeps hours of music in his head – he’s in his 30s).

As a young man, I kept several hours of repertory in my head - my own and songs I loved, but would never have learned to play in public. Many of these songs are still available to memory (though open to the occasional stutter or lapses) - these include whole albums by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell that I can still sing by heart. BUT - anything recent has little chance of making it into the permanent memory banks.

From 30 to 40 I learned to Speak Spanish, Catalan, French and Italian (I use the first two every day and I become quite efficient at speaking French whenever I am in France. Having only visited Italy on holiday a few times, my Italian is nothing like as fluent, but I can still get by. Then in my forties I did a Portuguese course and spent a week in Lisbon. Although, I can still read the language, I can no longer speak it, because by then the memory cells were not retaining things as they used to.

This year, to prepare myself for a visit to Germany over the summer, I spent six months with a German course and grammar books, watched German films with German subtitles, etc. In Germany, I was pleasantly surprised that I got by (we were largely in rural areas where very few people spoke English).

However, now, four months after returning, I seem to have forgotten even the little I learned. 

There is probably the contributing factor of just how much information passes across our visual cortex every day, nowadays. I read threads here, I have a Facebook account, I keep up with world events, I translate texts, prepare classes and mark student essays for a living, etc. All of this must take its toll on a 58 year old brain.

I read somewhere that in a single month Internet users are exposed to the amount of information our ancestors would have processed in a whole lifetime. Like Paul McCartney, I am certain my Memory is “Almost Full”.

So, in short, unless you cut out most other aspects of our Internet age and concentrate solely on learning songs – and your cerebral cortex is under 40 years old – I doubt there is too much to be gained by worrying about not being able to learn songs quickly by heart. Like poor eyesight and aches and pains, we must just have to get used to it and enjoy what we still can do... while we still can – as the old song goes “Don’t worry! Be happy! And play your Ukulele!” – Though part of that quote might be my memory playing tricks with me. ;)
 
Like the OP, I sing mostly folk songs with a few rock/pop songs. I find I have quite a fair repertoire of songs I can sing without words in front of me many of which I learnt before I started playing uke about two years ago.

The main problem I find is remembering the chord changes and I quite often have to have a crib sheet in front of me for the chords even though I know the words. There are a few songs I can sing entirely without words or chords in front of me, but it is only a few.

The folk scene in the UK has traditionally frowned on having words in front of you but as many are getting older I have noticed attitudes are relaxing. I've also noticed that even seasoned professionals often have a music stand on stage nowadays.

I also play in a Ceilidh band and in spite of earnest promises among ourselves to try not to have music in front of us when performing, we always do in the end (we play for listening as well as dancing). My attitude is to do what it takes to give a good performance and if that involves having a "prompt" on stage, then do it. I don't think audiences are particularly bothered as long as you entertain them and they go away happy. If fellow performers want to be sniffy about it, that's their problem.

I'm in my late 60's btw and the previous poster is right, my memory is so cluttered with "junk" from the past that there isn't as much room for new stuff. :eek:ld:
 
I have a old 1920s-30s vinstage suitcase that covered with replica travel stickers and I tote all my music, tuners, capos, music stand, spare strings, tambourine, whatever else fits in it. Heavy but handy.
 
Thanks for all the replies. Everyone's comments are very interesting. cheers, g2
 
I think it depends on how you play that song. I have songs I've memorised, because I learned them by ear. I have songs I've played literally dozens, if not hundreds of times over the past 3 years, but because I always play them with the music in front of me, I've never had to memorise them. It's like that part of my brain sees the chord chart and says "Oh, good. I can sit this one out."
 
I've been playing for 36 years, and I probably have 4 hours or more of music memorized. Almost half of that is stuff I wrote. But most of it is stuff that I'd be nervous about playing to an audience if I hadn't practiced it some time in the previous two weeks. Otherwise, I'm likely to blank on a chord change or a couple of lyrics somewhere during the song.
 
All of this is quite reassuring to me. Seriously. I figured it was just old age and the memory storage problem that everyone has spoken about. cheers, g2
 
I think it depends on how you play that song. I have songs I've memorised, because I learned them by ear. I have songs I've played literally dozens, if not hundreds of times over the past 3 years, but because I always play them with the music in front of me, I've never had to memorise them. It's like that part of my brain sees the chord chart and says "Oh, good. I can sit this one out."

This matches my experience. If I always practice it with the music in front of me, I will never learn it.
 
For me it depends how difficult a song is, like how "weird" the counting is, how strange the note intervals are. If it's a real toughie, it might take a fair few times. But I don't play those type of songs on a uke. My uke skills are at the level of, play it once and it's memorized. But I also don't try to memorize them. I'm just under 40, so maybe sheet music time is a comin'? :eek:ld:
 
Interesting topic! Very encouraged by Uncle Rod's remarks. After two years I have short term memory of perhaps three songs recently practiced. Just having the chord sheet in my line of sight gets me through the tricky or fuzzy parts
 
I can't remember what I had for lunch today ;)
 
A lot of interesting points of view here.
I feel that, as someone told before, if I always play the song with sheets in front of me I'm not going to memorize the song quickly, even if I'm not actually looking at the sheet for the most part of the song. That's because I'm not trying to make a concious struggle to memorize it. The same happens to me playing and singing songs while listening to the original recording, so when I try to play on my own after practicing with the track I find it almost impossible at first, even if I perfectly know how to play and sing the song. But maybe this is another story, because while listening the track you can "sit" on the timing of the song and let it do the hard job. When you play alone you don't have any reference so it becomes harder.
I'm also trying to build a whole repertoire of songs because I want to be able to bear an entire show session and then start playing in public, so I have a file on my laptop where I write titles of the songs I learned which I update every time. When I'm particularily inspired I just open the playlist and try to play the whole playlist without breaks.
 
One thing that helps me to memorize a song is once I've got the basic chords and words learned I practice it with my eyes shut. Like many folks, removing visual stimuli seems to increase my ability to focus on the music.
 
The music comes fairly quickly - it is the words that I have problems with.

I've noticed that I often can't remember the name for a given noun in everyday life, and the same goes for music. This has gone on for years - probably since I was in my 20s. When I was in my teens, I could remember anything I thought was important (that is, not math.) I was in choir, did acting, small musical groups... Got most of the songs on 2st or 2nd time through. Fast forward 40 years, and I can't even remember my own name, most of the time.

However, I remember songs that I learned as a kid, and sometimes when I haven't sung or played a song for years, just starting it is enough to bring it all back.

I think the first song I played solo at the local Uke night was "Eddie-kushie-kama-kama-tosa-neera-tosa-noma-sama-kama-wacky-brown", a Brothers Four song I'd learned as a kid.

It was also the first time I had ever played the song, but it sounded like I uke song in my head, and I could clearly hear the chord progression.

But don't ask me to learn a new song in less than 20-30 repetitions. It ain't a-gonna happen.


-Kurt​
 
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