Thread: Memorizing
View Single Post
  #6  
Old 01-02-2021, 04:19 PM
min7b5's Avatar
min7b5 min7b5 is offline
Eric Skye
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 7,668
Default

As far as concert-ready arrangements, I have to at least play through everything once a month for them not to start going away. And they do go away! I recently saw the list of tunes on my first album, almost twenty years ago, and more than half them are just completely gone from me. And maybe a quarter of them I didn't remember that I even recorded them at all!

When I am more active I play through them once or a twice a week to stay in shape. If I was maybe three weeks out from a series of sit-down shows I'd ramp up to playing the whole set twice a day. And recording some it on my phone to listen back to and decide what things I need to really zero in on..

As far as non-arrangementy tunes that I know, like the heads to jazz tunes and fiddle tunes, I don't need to play them as much. And when I do I try to sing them to file them away more as audio files in my brain. If anything, for those tunes, I'll make a bigger deal out remembering the chord changes, because if I had a jazz gig pop up tomorrow (pre-pandemic thinking of course) I know even if I didn't exactly remember the head to All Things You Are, it would fine -dare I say, possibly even better.. But if I don't have those changes down, it's gonna suck for real.
__________________
Instruction
Youtube
Instagram
Reply With Quote