Musical memory

[Rick5]

Hey all,
I am curious - how good is your musical memory? There are certain tunes and licks that will be forever ingrained in my brain and fingers for the rest of my life. However, that's not the norm for me. For a lot of tunes, even some common standards, I find that I have to cycle back through them at least every couple of weeks. If I go a month or two without playing them, I will invariably screw up a few notes of the melody (it's usually the melody for me; rarely the harmony). I am talking about playing with no charts or ireal. What's your experience?

Best,
Rick

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[emanresu]

I remember hundreds of tunes and can play them back with very little trial-error.
But they are all useless mtv hit snippets and tv/movie themes

[emanresu]

Another thought. Some pieces for classical guitar I know never really die, can call them back in a few tries. But some won't stick and always need the sheet.

Btw. Musical memory thread - what a great can to open. Please chime in people!

[Jimmy blue note]

Memorizing tunes used to be one of the great mysteries to me. At some point I really got into training my ear, intervals, roman numeral harmony, triadic note recognition and extensive mapping of the fingerboard.
Once that became solid, I came to a point that I could see scales (and harmony) like a piano all over the guitar. I could take any tune that I could hear, assign a harmony and play a chord melody on the fly. If I could hear it, I could play it, about 90% of the time. David Binney tunes or non tonal tunes I'm not so good at but I'm always working on it.
But it's the result of constant tonal practice and creative awareness. I used to be awful at it. Now it's natural. That's what it was for me.