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Joined:
July 2005
Posts: 3411
Location: GA USA | Originally posted by Mark in Boise:
When you remember songs you learned 30 years ago and forget the ones you learned last week it means you're old. Exactly! So I'm old. |
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Joined:
August 2005
Posts: 3736
Location: Sunshine State, Australia | ProfBB, I remember in my first year of high school, one of my teachers asked the class if they listened to the music or the lyrics. I was the ONLY one in a class of 25 that said 'music'.
Mark, I used to play bass before acoustic, and I also find that finding the bass lines helps enormously in working out songs from scratch.
But... that was then, this is now, I'm currently struggling with remembering both chord progressions AND lyrics as I approach the big five oh. |
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Joined:
February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | Music. I have trouble remembering the words to songs I write... |
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Joined:
November 2005
Posts: 1126
Location: Omaha, NE | Originally posted by an4340:
I believe a performance helps memory. It's a little like in medievil days, before paper was common, when they would walk a small boy around the property and then punch him in the mouth. He would remember the boundary forever. Similarly, the anxiety of the performance charges the memory. Well that's my theory ... When audience members hit me in the head with beer bottles, I find my memory is very clear. |
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Joined:
April 2006
Posts: 1017
Location: Budd Lake, NJ | For me, the chord progressions themselves are the easiest; after that, getting the melody exactly, and lastly the lyrics. Once I've got all three, though, it's generally there for good.
When I took music theory in college, in music dictation class we figured out the melody first, the bass second, and then filled in everything else in; that has stood me in good stead over the years.
I wonder how much over-all learning style (visual, auditory or kinestetic) or dominant "handedness" affects the way we learn music; I'm an auditory learner--I can't sight read worth two cents, and tab gives me fits, but I can memorize fairly easily.
--Karen |
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Joined:
July 2005
Posts: 3411
Location: GA USA | Me too, John, and like a dummy I wrote 5 verses to "Beggin Jim" for the jam. |
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Joined:
March 2008
Posts: 2683
Location: Hot Springs, S.D. | When you think about it, there are only so many chords in one key. There are only so many notes in a scale. Compare that with how many words are in the dictionary. No wonder the lyrics are harder to remember. Combine that with the fact that after so many years of playing guitar, most of us are paying a lot more attention to the music than the words. There are songs from the 60's that I've been listening to or playing all my life, and some of them - I don't even know what the song is about! I've always had a singer to worry about that for me. |
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Joined:
September 2003
Posts: 9301
Location: south east Michigan | There are songs from the 60's that I've been listening to or playing all my life, and some of them - I don't even know what the song is about! Ain't that the truth!
Two examples just off top of my head...
White Room
Two of Us
And you've got to sing them like you know what the heck you're talking about. |
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Joined:
May 2005
Posts: 486
Location: North Carolina | Unless the meaning/message of the song is absolutely out front in plain view, I'm as dense as it gets in trying to understand these things. For the most part, I don't really care. For me it's about the music. |
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What's easier: music or lyrics?
