The Steel Guitar Forum

All jokes about getting older aside, what works for you when you're learning a new instrumental or a tricky passage? A lot of players subscribe to the "play it a thousand times" approach. That works. I even had a classical organist tell me that he learns and memorizes new pieces by starting from the end of the composition and working toward the beginning.

What's your way of learning and memorizing new music or licks? Thanks.

Repetition...daily.

If your creating a instrumental of an existing song.
I have found it best to get the feel of the song. 12/8 , 4/4 etc.. Then the chords. Then the dynamics of the song (pauses, runs, fills, builds etc.). Then the melody , which now is much easier to hear and understand.
Then of course do your own thing with it.

If you are learning Steel parts in an existing song.
Do the same as above. Then listen to all the steel parts all the way thru the song (the intro, fills , harmony runs, solos and outro) till you have that mapped in your mind. Then play along with those parts. Then isolate the parts that you need to work on.

I have found if I get pretty close the first couple of times through I call it good because I know where the parts go and I know the song and I'm going to forget about half the licks the first time I play it anyway and I'm going to have to adlib. Then if I use the song a lot on the bandstand then I've notice that my steel parts get closer and closer to the original. I have too many songs I need to learn to waste days on a couple of licks.

I have found that slowing the parts down does not help much because it loses a lot of tone and character and makes it hard to recognize where on the neck and what strings and what pedals were used.

If learning something off a record I'd say listen to it a thousand times. I usually do that in my car on the way to and from a job. I'll listen to a tune at least 10 times back-to-back in one sitting. I'll do that for weeks until I can play the song back in my memory in the right key and I start to have dreams about the song. If it's a standard I'll do that with every version I can find. It has to exist in your mind first. Then I'll sit down to my instrument already knowing the song inside out. All that remains is to explore where it sits on the fretboard. If learning it off paper,I just learn it in sections - again - very repetitively and then sew it all together paying attention to details like choosing the most ergonomic crossover fingering,position shifting and things like that which I'd prefer to only have to work out once. Then of course to maintain what you worked so hard to learn,you have to play the tune at least once a day for the rest of your life. But just in case you don't - make a recording of yourself playing the tune so if you do forget something about the way you learned it,you can refer to that.

I go along with Bo on this one!

Terry

I try to visually capture the chord progression of the song. Once I find out how the verse and chorus lay and/or repeat themselves, then I add to that tho't process, the basic melody line.

After you've played many, many years and a decade or two besides.....you get to where memorization is of lesser importance. If you know the fret board like you SHOULD, and the tuning you're playing, as you SHOULD, the melody simply has to fall in place as you progress thro' the song during the first or second trial.

Lacking that kind of foundation in musical skills, you might find yourself in a hopeless sea of vast dimensions with no sense of direction or ability to chart a given course.

Just keep at it. I more or less gave up on memorization when I successfully memorized Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.......in about the 5th grade.

When I started out, there was no such thing as TAB.
You HAD TO HEAR IT to learn it in order to be able to play it. But first, you had to figure out what tuning was being used. The really big problems like, oh, cabinet drop, had not yet been invented.

Chord progressions by interval (not by name) is the most important thing for me.

cabinet drop, had not yet been invented.

Neither had the all-pull pedal steel guitar. Coincidence?

-John

If I have a recording of a song I'm learning, I listen to it over and over again way past the point that everybody around me is screaming in pain and telling me to shut the %@&^%# thing off. In the car, while I'm working on other stuff, or while I'm working out, eating, or sometimes even sleeping. I learn math and technical stuff the same way - total immersion.

At a certain point in that process, I automatically start to think about its structure, and melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic ideas that might work with it.

In most cases, I prefer to have a recording - the written note is a good skeleton, but there are a lot of subtle cues in a performance. But if I have only a chord progression and notated melody written down, I will just sit down and play it on guitar till I have it.

The first thing I usually do is write the framework of the song, number of bars to the intro, verses choruses, variations on verse or chorus, outro, and the chord progression. I determine where on the neck I want to play the chord progression. Then I work on the melody, fills, solos, and any signature licks or riffs that define the song. All of this helps me solidify in my mind how I will play the song. Then I both listen and practice until I am satisfied that I can play it. IF there is a particular phrase or riff that I have trouble with I will seek out a tab, or get the sheet music. But that is after all of the above. For me, this process really cements the song in my mind. If I forget, all I have to do is pull up my notes and listen to the song and it comes back pretty quickly. I also use a program to slow the music down. It helps to get the timing and phrasing right, and to hear notes that are sometimes hard to distinguish.

Most instrumentals are songs so I start by learning the lyrics. Then I find the key that the average person would sing it in and work it out from there..whilst trying to stay close to the composer's intent with the melody AND chord structure. The psychology of subliminal audience participation is also NOT lost on me, and is much preferred to the option of finding the easiest key and chord changes.

If I try to cop the whole thing at one sitting, I find I overlook some nuances. I first find the positions on the neck, then get away from it. Go
back and listen, listen, listen and I begin to see the part in my mind. Even after I think I've nailed down a part, I can hear it months later and there's a subtle move here and there that escaped me.

All this, of course depends on how much time you have before you have to deliver the part. in some cases you just hit the high spots. Some players are easier to follow than others. The more amateurish
the part is, the harder to get inside the player's head.

I even had a classical organist tell me that he learns and memorizes new pieces by starting from the end of the composition and working toward the beginning

I don't think learning the song starting by the end is logical.

What i found that works the best is to learn bit by bit...learn the first pattern until you know it by heart then learn the second pattern by heart and put the two together and practice those two together until you know it by heart ten practice the third and add it to the chain pattern...and so on just like a puzzle, all songs are build with patterns...there's only so many patterns in a chorus and in a verse, you only have to learn one chorus and one verse cause they all repeat themself, so after you've learned that you can learn the intro and solo and fills...those also you can learn bit by bit, the brain seems to memorize better by learning piece by piece than trying to learn the hole thing at once.

A few years ago I bought a Panasonic VSC (Varialbe Speech Control) tape recorder to transcribe historical interviews. It has, along with volume and tone controls, a back space control, tape speed, VCS level and a foot switch to start and rewind the tape. I found that it works quite well to learn songs on the steel. I make a copy of the song I wish to learn on an audio tape, and then with the Panasonic reocrder I am able to find a 'key to match the steel. the foot switch allows one to start the tape, let off on the foot switch and the machine will rewind to a preset distance back, so you can play the same note, or notes, or riff over and over.
This is how I learned to play Sleep Walk, note for note, exactly the way it was on the original recording.

basilh wrote:Most instrumentals are songs so I start by learning the lyrics. Then I find the key that the average person would sing it in and work it out from there..whilst trying to stay close to the composer's intent with the melody AND chord structure. The psychology of subliminal audience participation is also NOT lost on me, and is much preferred to the option of finding the easiest key and chord changes.

Basil's right. Like it or not we sing along with the tune in our heads, and we prefer not to go out of our range even though we're not actually singing. Also, we sing the song to ourselves, so the lyrics and the timing of the lyrics are important even in an instrumental. We should play the instrumental as though we were singing the lyrics, because that's what is going on subliminaly in the listener's head.

I don't think learning the song starting by the end is logical.

There are two parts to "logic" - premises and reasoning that connect those premises to a conclusion. Each of us starts with a brain and various experiences and training that shape how we use that brain. We also have different goals in learning a song - some want to do a note-for-note memorization, others want to grok the idea and do something different with it. If you want to talk about the logic of this, those are the premises. So it shouldn't be too surprising that different people may very reasonably come to very different conclusions about what works for them.

The more amateurish the part is, the harder to get inside the player's head.

I agree in the sense that very quirky parts - often done by amateurish players - are more difficult to grok for me also. But, to me, not all extreme quirkiness is amateurism - it is sometimes the mark of brilliance in forging a different sound. So many times, I listen to something that strikes me as very quirky but simple - but when I try to play it, I find that I have to unlearn heavily locked-in and supposedly "proper" technique from a different context. There are so many examples, but the first big realization of this came with listening to Monk. As someone who grew up studying classical piano, my head went "that's just so wrong", but gradually I realized that I had completely missed the point. Some of the great funk guitar players also elicit this same response from me - not many notes, not technically complex, but understanding and playing what they're doing requires an entire rethink of the way I play guitar.

If a person doesn't hear the song in his/her head, (regardless of what song it is) first and foremost, it would be quite impossible to ever do a great job on whatever song it happens to be.

From there, you need nothing more. The mind can take you to any part or portion of the song, time and time again, for as long as needed. As well as, (if you know your instrument) you can also play it day in and day out in your head (if needed) without ever sitting down to your Pedal Steel.

Once you hear a song, (in your head) whether or not it's instrumental, you should be able to play it, as well as play it the way "YOU" want it to sound.

That's what separates great players from the not so greats. There are literally dozens and dozens of ways to go over things in your mind, changing this phrase and that phrase to sound again, how "YOU" want to play it.

Which should lead to the question of: Exactly how many of you already, before you fall asleep start playing (and/or) hear songs, and find yourselves visualizing sitting behind your steel and actually playing whatever tune it happens to be?

Stretching from the subject a bit here but it's also important:

There's no need in trying to play like anyone else, because that simply can't be done (to any great extent). As an example, you can listen to John H. play and you can now since, hear others who try to play the songs like he played them, but regardless of how well done they are played, they don't even closely resemble the way that John played them. And that's not saying they aren't done with excellence, but each person is quite different, and, so is the way that each of us express ourselves in our playing as well.

The most important thing of all, is Knowing where the sounds you're hearing are located on your steel. Theory, (I'm finding out is really interesting now) but not nearly as important to your actual playing ability, as is, knowing your instrument inside and out, as to where those sounds you're needing are located.

I copy the chord progression and the essential lead lines that need to be there. Then I improvise the rest.
But then again I am not big on copying.
I can usually memorize a tune in two to four runs through doing this.

Attempts at extensive memorization is a blueprint for failure, and organization is the key to success IMHO.

What kind of "organization", Reece?

Reece Anderson wrote:Attempts at extensive memorization is a blueprint for failure, and organization is the key to success IMHO.

On the other hand, I think that memorization is a form of learning, and can't hurt your musicianship any more than learning to read can hurt more musicianship.

And as a side benefit, some experiments suggest that exercising your memorization "muscles" can help to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

M Johnstones method is where I'm at. It is also very organized as per M. Anderson's post. Don D.

Reece Anderson wrote:Attempts at extensive memorization is a blueprint for failure, and organization is the key to success IMHO.

Hear, hear! I value your opinions Reece.
But are you not a tad drastic when you say that memorization is a blueprint for failure?
It all starts with memorization does it not?
I was very happy when I had memorized the neck of my steel (chords at respective frets). Jeff always said there were some things you just had to learn and commit to memory.
I also have memorized what pedals/levers pull what strings. That was another thing that Jeff Newman to memory. Of course down the road it becomes automatic. Now, in the twilight of my life, it looks like I must commit most of it to memory. The auto pilot skills are just not there any more.

I am very interested in your second opinion, the one about organization. Would you elaborate (alot) on that one please?
Thanks Reece,
Bent

I think what Reece is saying about organization is the same thing i said in my previous post.

Learning bit by bit...one pattern at a time and putting them together as you go is the best way to memorize a song, cause songs are build with patterns so once you've learned the patterns it's just a matter of putting them together in the chain, and it's much faster and you memorize it faster also.

Once you start learning that way you'll never go back at your old method of trying to learn the hole thing at once.

Sometimes it helps me remember tunes if I think of the chord progression in numbers. I also will sometimes think of signature licks or melodies in numbers also. Like 3 blind mice: 3 2 1, 3 2 1, 5 4 4 3, 5 4 4 3.....

By ear.
(I did it in year 1 piano and could reproduce it by ear faster than by the sheet music. Now I can't read. Reality is a double-edged sword.)
Memorizing is not hard.
Getting your fingers to do the information retrieval is the hard part.
I guess that's why practice is recommended.