How many tunes in your repetoire?
 

I once read somewhere that you needed to really develop a repetoire of songs you could start and completely finish so I have been working hard to put to memory as many as I can. I was wondering how many you can play through without looking at a written sheet. I just added mine up and here it is:

37 songs with lyrics..(of course to get to that number I had to pull in old standbys like "house of the rising sun").

7 instrumental only

I have a cousin who used to play for $$ for several years, he told me he used know over 300+ songs all the way thru...so I guess I got a ways to go.....

Bob

I am pretty proud of this and I have been working hard on it. i almost don't want to post though, just because i know how hard it is to learn new tunes and memorizing even ONE song is a GREAT thing. People who only know a song or two all the way through have still really accomplished something. I don't want to seem like I am boasting, because it probably seems like a high number to lots of folks...

Still, I can't help but respond. (Like I said, i am proud of my repertoire). When I started gigging, I had been playing for 12 years. For those first gigs, I really struggled to put together 40 tunes I could play all the way through. Thirteen years later, I can now play about 430 tunes from memory.

I still play Bobby Mcgee WAY TOO MUCH! (wish I could drop that one) ha ha ha

I am in awe!!

:D :D :D

Elizabeth, you're a human jukebox! Most impressive, indeed. I'll definitely have to check out your act next time I'm down in the Jax/St. Aug. area.

Bill

I am guessing 250+ on any given day. Most likely over 1000 if you count bass. I just seem to remember songs better when I am playing bass and singing rather than guitar....more of an extension of self for me.

Hundreds. Maybe close to a thousand.

I'm cursed with the inability to forget ANY song lyrics. I know 'em from the Civil War to the present day. Hell, I probably know 50 songs by the Beach Boys alone.

Oh, I can't remember my wife's birthday, or what she wanted me to pick up from the store. But I can sure as hell sing all twenty verses of Frankie and Johnnie without missing a lick.:D

I'm absolutely horrible at memorizing songs. There's probably only a few that I can truly play end to end without a cheat sheet. So I don't even try, frankly. (I don't gig, I play mostly at church, where it's just fine to have a music stand infront of me. I'm "serving", not "performing".)

I've got a great memory for other things, but not this. I think it's because so many are so similar: some permutation of I, ii, IV, and V7 chords, but which order, and where are the "other" chords thrown in? Just can't remember them all.

When I learn all the words and verses to "Alice's Restaurant" then I'll feel that I have "arrived"! :)

4

Does it count if you make up a few lines, words as you go ? Got the music down but horrible at remembering the verses. Must be due to killing too many brain cells in my foolish youth. Remember the 60s or was that the 70s. :D

Man, are any of you guys giving lessons? I can't hold anything in my head; it's like a sieve.

I've tried to learn some nice pieces over the years, like Fripp's guitar parts in "Book Of Saturday", or "Peace, A Theme", "Minuet In G", "Mood For A Day", Prelude no. 1 from "The Well Tempered Clavier", "Allemande", and bits and pieces from other things, but none of it really seems to stick. I've recorded most of it, somewhere, but it takes me so long to learn the stuff that I tend to forget what I had learned previously! I just tried playing Bach's "Bouree" and can't remember most of the second part of it. I really hate when that happens!

When someone throws a number out there like 500 songs, 1,000 songs...that's pretty astounding to me.


--Greg

Songs I can play and know the lyrics by heart: 10 on a good day
Songs I know the lyrics of, but can't play: more than 100, a lot of them in French ;)
Songs I know how to sing, but only know part of the lyrics: many thousands...

I don't know the number, and it probably varies somewhat depending on factors help or hurt memory from day to day. However, I've never carried written music with me and I've always been pretty proud of that. I get tripped up from time to time, but I usually get along okay. I once even knew "Alice's Restaurant" all the way through.

Now, how well I play any or all of these songs is another matter.... :)

I've actually found all that memory- and ear-playing useful, as it's given me the ability to jump into a lot of songs I've never played before.

I carry a book with me to the gigs now. I didnt used to. But a couple of years ago I thought, if I ever get some kind of serious illness or break a bone in my hand, man, i am going to lose all this I have worked to memorize! So from that point i started writing everything down that I newly learned. So now I bring a music stand and a big black book. I usually only look at it once or twice during a 3 or 4 hour gig. You know, for trickier ones or long ones i havent yet memorized. I am pretty good at just glancing at it, and not looking like my face is buried in a book. I never gave much thought as to whether or not i was "supposed" to have a music stand with me on stage. Nobody has ever said anything like that to me and besides, a local blues musician I respect a lot always has big books on stage with his band, because he insists his bands members learn this very huge repertoire. But even though I read some of them, I figure I still have 430 memorized. Because I do have a songlist with 430 tunes on it, and yes I have a big with maybe 100 songs in it in front of me, but I really only have to look at, say 10 of them at any given time... and then of course, there are more than ten songs I know by heart that I didn't put on the songlist (happy birthday to you, twinkle twinkle little star, jingle bells, the wheels on the bus, etc etc etc)

My problem is not remembering which songs I know. I'll be playing away, finish the song, and then can't think of something else to play. So now I have a typed-up playlist of a couple hundred songs that I can refer to and help remind myself of some of the songs that I DO know.:D