-
I have arranged about 100 songs for solo guitar. There's no way I can recall them all without rehearsal. I keep about 20 songs at the time fresh in memory.
I've written scores for the more advanced arrangements so that I can pick them up at any time. I read sheet music but don't play chord melody prima vista (I don't know anybody who does as there always are alternative finger settings).
All my arrangements are stored in muscle memory to some degree, which means I can usually remember a song (or at least get a starting point for practicing) if only I could remember the finger settings for the first few bars.
When picking songs for a set, I usually make a list with the song name followed by the first few chords. However, as my repertoire grows longer I find this system is not good enough. I need a better system to help me remember my arrangements. Ideally one A4 page should be enough to cover 20 songs, so formal notation or tabs is not what I'm looking for.
-Maybe I should work on memory techniques?
-How do you go about?
-
09-13-2018 05:01 AM
-
No idea really, my memory’s terrible! I have forgotten a lot of the solo things I have previously worked out. Some I have just written out the chord grids for, that’s enough for me to recall them, as I can usually remember the melodies quite well.
I guess the ideal is to create solo things more ‘on the fly’, i.e. if you know the melody and can sort of ‘hear’ the changes, it should be possible. But I’m not at that stage yet, it will need a lot more work to get it to that level.
-
Also if you can do a lot of improv. choruses, you can make one tune last for several minutes. So you can get by with fewer tunes.
I found some old threads on this site about this, there were some good suggestions for how to do this. Search on ‘solo guitar’ or something like that.
-
I’ve
Originally Posted by JCat
Make a quick video of each arrangement. I find it the quickest way to recall that type of stuff.
Hope that helps.
-
From the time I was 20 until I was around 35 years old I had a repertoire of about 100 solo guitar arrangements under my fingers. Half were pickstyle chord melody solos played on an archtop and the other half were fingerstyle arrangements played on a classical.
I kept a stack of index cards and each index card had the name of 1 solo on it. I would play about 2 hours a day and just keep going through the stack of index cards so I guess I ended up playing each arrangement about 2 or 3 times a week which was enough to keep them all memorized.
But I wasn't relying on rote repetition to memorize them. I used visualization / mental imagery - which was taught to me by Aaron Shearer when I was studying guitar with him at Peabody Conservatory Of Music - to memorize each solo and it is a far superior way to get pieces to stay accurately in your memory as compared to rote repetition.
I'll post the process in a separate thread here.
-
Originally Posted by grahambop
Tim Lerch talks about this. He said that if he just played a prefigured arrangement, which lasts about 90 seconds, he'd need to know a LOT more tunes than he actually does. ;o) Making one tune last 3-4 minutes (solo) really cuts down on what you need to memorize. Also, it gives your audience a chance to appreciate your inventiveness during the solo section and then smile when you re-play the head (in some fashion) at the end.
-
I find my memory works much better if I know the tune outside of just a solo "arrangement," to the point of which where I've stopped arranging songs at all, I just play them.
-
Yeah, I'm very much with Jeff on this one. There's definitely an art form to the creation of specific arrangements... and it can be an aesthetic preference that a musician may want. But I think it can also be a bit of a crutch at the same time. Especially if that's all we're capable of.
In terms of offering advice for memorizing more arrangements... I'm not sure that I'm of much help. Maybe something like just play 5-10 of your arrangements every day... and always change which ones you're playing. So over the course of a week you're forcing yourself to play 40-70 tunes. And just keep doing that week after week. Or spot the weaker arrangements and take the next week to tighten them up. And then the following week go back to just mass playing. Like imagine you're at a gig and just sit for 30-45 minutes and perform start to finish. No start-overs.
But more in alignment with how I prefer to do things, and I think what Jeff is saying, you may want to consider having SOME tunes that are arranged and SOME where you're just seeing what happens.
Ways to practice that might be to sit and play the melody over and over for 20 minutes. Try and play the melody in the lowest octave. Try in the middle register. Try it up high in our range. Play it in another key. Play it in a single scale position. Play it all on one or two strings. Play the melody while playing the root notes of the harmony underneath it simultaneously. Boil down the melody to the most important notes. What one or two notes define each phrase? Play some basic shell voicings with those one or two notes of the condensed melody sitting in the top voice. Comp the shell voicings and sing the melody. Comp the 3rds and 7ths and sing the melody.
If you can get the melody and the basic harmonic form and structure into you, then you don't need to memorize an arrangement. You can just be a little more playful with it. Still requires a lot of practice and "memorization"... but in a different form then it takes when creating arrangements.
And again... doesn't have to be all or nothing, one or the other. Have a few tunes that you let yourself be more improvisational about. Have a few tunes that are more orchestrated. Have a few tunes where the intro, the melody, or certain sections are arranged and the rest is more relaxed. It can be a nice way to mix up the vibe and the energy of a set of music.
-
what jordan and jeff are saying is exactly what i need to do as well. i arrange solo guitar with a lot of devices and things that are really pleasing to my ear, and i’m getting faster at it every time. however, as soon as i move on to my next one i literally dump the last one as soon as i record a rough video (for when i revisit it). don’t play gigs though. anyway how nice would it be to sit down and play and experiment in tempo without stopping and starting over and over during the arranging process? im starting to see going straight in for an arrangment as not quite a “crutch” as “instant gratification” maybe.
-
When in a band I "fake" most of the time and songs can go on forever, but playing solo plain naked requires another structure I think. Improvised chord melody is very cool. I do that often when just playing for fun, but I need to take it to another level to make it part of a solo arrangement. For most part my solo "improvisations" are just rehearsed variations. I work on this, but I still need a system to remember my arrangements, not to get too "sloppy". My approach is somewhat similar to classic nylon string guitar and it obviously have limitations when it comes to Jazz standards. Still I would refuse to play certain songs if I couldn't cover the essential chord voicings and phrases (often made up by more than one instrument on the original recordings). One has to cover a lot more ground playing solo, being a one man band, compared to playing fills, licks, rythm and single lead lines in a band. Originally Posted by grahambop
-
Thanks, I used to practice playing on a tennis racket, so I confirm the method. Maybe I should pick up the racket again... Originally Posted by Steven Herron
-
Thanks Jordan, lots of good advice and food for thought. I like the approach and I could use some variation in my practicing. Originally Posted by jordanklemons
-
I posted this in a separate thread but probably should have put it here in the first place!
What you are about to learn are the same secrets that Aaron Shearer revealed to me when I was one of his students at Peabody Conservatory of Music. They are the most powerful learning techniques that exist and if you use them consistently they will change your guitar playing forever! What you are going to learn, very simply stated is "How To Learn"!
Think about this, when someone gave you a piece of guitar music to learn, did they ever tell you "how" to learn it? Probably not. Most people learn by rote repetition which is repeating something over and over again until it finally gets beaten into their heads. This is very time consuming and usually falls apart when the performer is under pressure and gets nervous!
The "mental imagery / visualization" techniques you are about to learn are very time efficient because you will be using your brain to its' fullest extent. Remember, your fingers only do what your brain tells them to do. Clear things up in your head and you will stop making mistakes when you play guitar!
This "mental imagery / visualization" procedure you will use consists of 5 steps. All 5 steps must be completed for each measure of the piece of music before going on to the next measure. The first 4 steps must be done with your guitar in its' case. This is very important! Keep your guitar in its' case for the first 4 steps!!
Step #1 - Count and clap the rhythmic structure of the measure. For example in 4/4 time you would count quarter notes as 1-2-3-4. eighth notes as 1+2+3+4+, sixteenth notes as 1a+ah, 2a+ah, 3a+ah, 4a+ah. etc. You would clap the side of your leg with your right hand whenever you would strike a string or groups of strings. This will let you determine and hear the rhythmic structure of the measure - which is the most basic part of music.
Step #2 - Determine the left hand fingering for the measure. Using the palm of your left hand as the fretboard, actually press down the finger or fingers you will use to play the notes and chords in the measure while at the same time picturing or seeing the strings and the guitar neck in your mind's eye as if you were physically playing it.
Step #3 - Determine the right hand fingering for the measure. If playing with a pick, you would have to decide whether you are picking up or down for each note. If playing fingerstyle you would have to decide which fingering sequences you would use. At this point your right hand fingers or your pick would actually be picking the air while in your mind's eye you are picturing or seeing the string or strings that you are playing.
Step #4 - Do steps 2 and 3 at the same time, really striving to see the strings and frets in your mind's eye as you are playing them in the air, while at the same time counting out loud.
Step #5 - Take you guitar out of the case and actually play the measure you were working on. If you can play it 3 times in a row with no mistakes, then you understand and know that measure. Now you can proceed to the next measure and use the same 5-step process for it. After you have completed the new measure, be sure to actually perform the new measure with the old measure. This way you are building the piece of music by attaching each measure to the one before it - much like you would build a chain by attaching each new link to the one before it.
This "mental imagery / visualization" procedure woks so well because it allows you to focus clearly on each hand separately. If you understand the fingerings for each hand separately, combining them together isn't that difficult. The problem for us guitarists has always been trying to do too many things at the same time!
-
Thanks, Steven.
I've been having trouble with a measure on a piece Matt Munisteri teaches. I'll start using this method there.
-
I'll echo a few things said above that I agree strongly with. Knowing the tune deeply, not just an arrangement of it for solo guitar but really knowing it inside and out will help in a lot of ways. I play quite extemporaneously with the only "arrangements" being things/habits/preferences that have sunk into my playing after years of playing a song. I think of melodies as intervals related to the chord of the moment so that helps keep things flexible with regard to keys etc. The main reason i don't have fixed arrangements is that I want to be able to react to and influence the setting i'm in while performing. so i might want to play a tune a certain way one night and another way another night in terms of groove, tempo, key etc.
I do know from my experience that we don't memorize things while staring at the page, we need to cement things into our mind and our ear while looking away from the page or by learning a tune entirely by ear. I know a lot of tunes but I also can be forgetful so my solution is to play a lot and consult lists of tunes and make sure I can recall where the bridge goes etc. but there is no substitute for knowing/hearing a tune deeply. I also run tunes in my head away from the guitar quite a lot, there is so much more time to practice if we aren't burdened by the physical guitar, I do an awful lot of driving to and from gigs or into my studio on teaching days and its a great time to mentally run tunes. playing a tune in your mind can be very revealing. I will often be resting or watching golf or something, running a tune mentally when i get to a place where I don't know where it goes next, I'll run to the guitar and find what i didn't know, in doing this I believe it strengthens my recall later. Something about dragging something out of your mind rather than cramming something in seems to strengthen memory. BTW its great that you have 100 tunes arranged and if you can get a regular gig I bet they will all be right at your command in a very short time. nothing like playing to get things sorted out!
all the best
Tim
-
This whole thread reminds me of a great book I’ve been reading recently called the Primacy of the Ear. Much of it echos points made by Tim and Steven above. I highly recommend it as presenting a rigorous approach to practicing, learning, and internalizing music.
-
I see where this is going, so just a quick stop for a clarification,
For me this is not about the size of my ears, it's about the size of my memory.
Let me expand on that; I'm a guitarplayer and a jazz cat and like everybody else around here I play by ear. Guitarplayers, jazzers or not, always play by ear for good reasons you all are familiar with.
The tradition in Jazz is also to "trade" music by ear and like any form of folk music many musicians don't have formal music education. We get together and make music, we listen, learn from each other and express ourselves. That's great.
"Jazz" goes beyond bop and improvisation. The great song book covers more than 100 years. I never approach it via sheet music, but by listening to recordings. A great song becomes a "standard", this means it's been recorded by many great artists over a long period of time. The songs are constantly being developed and the latest version may be far from the original composition. Still, there is an original composition and fortunately it's been documented.
When I decide I want to do a standard, I listen to many different recordings, 10 maybe 20 and if I like it I steal it; the changes, the rythm, a riff or whatever. And I always know, who the composer is and when it was written. And I make my arrangement, or "transcription" of the song with the ambition to include the bits and pieces that make the song meaningful to me, and this is not just a guitar or a sax or vocals, this is the sum of the parts to the extent this can at all be covered by a single guitar. Sometimes I feel it's impossible, then I just drop it, but I've actually written solo guitar transcriptions for classic pieces usually performed by orchestras with 10 instruments. Yes, I listen to and play classical music as well. And I write and arrange for a band/orchestra or make transcriptions from band/orchestra to solo guitar.
Like everyone of you, I've pressed play - rewind - play - rewind on old tape recorders or moved that needle on a vinyl record. (These days I use a DAW, the process is the same, but so much more convenient.)
For example Hoagy Carmichael and George Gershwin were great composers, not just "song writers". I study them by listening to other peoples records, not by reading scores, but I document my own work by formal notation and/or tabs so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel when trying to recall it.
In a band we can play the "changes", but when playing solo we need to do melody, changes and rythm at the same time. For me this means I can't do every song in every key when playing solo and it doesn't matter when I'm playing solo, it only matters when I'm playing in a band and that's a different ballpark altogether.
I appreciate all input, also your views on what's important or not and what's worth documenting and store in memory. Those of you who've played classic guitar probably get it; if you don't play the piece on a much regular basis you'll forget it. Still some people seem to have more memory storage than others...
-
Guys, I was just reading about American Jazz pianist and composer Errol Garner; he was credited with superb "memory of music". "After attending a classical piano concert he was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall".
Even if I could remember every phrase, I wouldn't be able to translate my "music memory" to the fretboard. Single line melodies; yes, double stop; possibly, chords; somewhat... But no way I could do chords and melody simultaneously by recall. The major guitar playing problem is alternate finger settings (the same interval could be played in 5 different ways) that doesn't exist on the piano. Some things must be arranged and rehearsed, then I need to remember the arrangement (not just the music).
Guitar players sometimes solve the problem by first playing a chord, then a lead line phrase, then another chord and so on.
Your thoughts?
-
Personally, I prefer the less congested arrangements. Playing chord, then lead line is perfect, sometimes together, but not all the time! The guy who I really enjoy listening solo is Scofield, and he's not even known as a solo player! As alternative, our own Johnathan Stout makes great solo guitar pieces.
Never been a fan of Joe Pass and that school of playing. I get tired very quickly.
So if you set your goal to always play the melody and the chords together, it might be limiting and I can see why is that a problem to memorize many tunes. If you open your mind to less rigid approach, you might enjoy more of arranging on the go, what Jeff, TLerch and Jordan talking about here. The main thing, in my experience, is to keep the flow, the form, the rhythm strong, then it will come out good no matter the arrangement.
Reply With Quote
mclaughlin sound here
Today, 12:26 AM in The Players