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  #31  
Old 07-20-2018, 08:50 AM
Laughingboy68 Laughingboy68 is offline
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I keep my repertoire on an iPad. My list has 470 tunes on it. This allows me to play anything on that list if it’s requested. Some songs might need to wait until the next set, to do a 30 second review. I probably could play 200+, at the drop of a hat, without using anything as a reference. However my memory capacity reaches a limit at some point. I never read lyrics or chord charts, but having a brief chart placed unobtrusively, low on a mic stand is a nice safety net for me. Just a quick glance for the first chord of the bridge, for example.

Through the years I’d say I’ve played 1000+ songs in front of an audience - some of them I can’t remember at all. There’s also a fairly short list of tunes that I’ve tried very hard to forget (some more successfully than others).

I’m always amused when I see a YouTube clip of an artist from long ago, playing one of their biggest tunes and flubbing the lyrics. In almost all cases, no one notices - most of the performers just keep chugging along and the audience is none the wiser. The truly inspired (take Ella Fitzgerald’s famous live take of Mack the Knife), make something magical happen. It is a part of the process of live performance to be able to roll with the punches (broken strings, technical problems, memory lapses, interruptions, etc.). The lovely thing about a guitar is that often one can cover up a few mistakes by keeping the rhythm flowing. You can always circle back and play the flubbed part twice like you meant to do it.
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  #32  
Old 07-20-2018, 09:05 AM
pf400 pf400 is offline
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I play 50 songs with my student, going through 7 per lesson. Plus I have a list of 128 fingerstyle pieces (about 20 of my own creations) , many using a looper. I can get through about 50 rock/blues songs I've learned over the years, and I always have a list of 8 pieces I'm currently learning. Average 1.5 hours per day. Did an open mic a couple of months ago and had to learn 14 songs in two weeks,which was very hard and we made lots of mistakes in half of them. I'm 64 and I go by the belief that the brain is unlimited when it comes to memorizing music. It does not matter how many songs you can play. What matters is that you love what you do and share. Must admit that I've learned some jazz, classical and flamenco just for the sake of being diverse. Almost invariably, I grow to love a song even if I learned it to please someone or do diversify.
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  #33  
Old 07-20-2018, 11:59 AM
DukeX DukeX is offline
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I only play my own stuff--probably around two dozen, but I can only keep a few sharp at a time.
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  #34  
Old 07-20-2018, 03:00 PM
Gtrfinger Gtrfinger is offline
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I just play Fingerstyle and given the complexity of some, and certainly not for others, the ease of remembering each all the way through can vary considerably, but I reckon there's about 60 all told. I'm beginning to realise the encumbrance however of hanging onto repertoire at the expense of learning new material.
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  #35  
Old 07-21-2018, 01:26 AM
Mandobart Mandobart is offline
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About 5 years back I started an Excel spreadsheet with all the songs I know, with key, tempo, genre, instrument of choice to play on, etc. The list is up over 300 now, and most are songs I am ready to perform with no lyric or chord sheet. I keep track of what I play at gigs to prevent getting in a rut. I try to learn a couple new tunes every month to keep things fresh. I don't want to be a performer who keeps playing the same 40 songs a night for years. I specialize in obscurity - artists like Joe Pug, Jeffrey Martin, Slaid Cleaves, Kurt Fortmeyer, etc.
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  #36  
Old 07-21-2018, 06:29 AM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is offline
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That's pretty hard to categorize.

For a while I played with a cover band that was request-only.

Around the same time I was in another band that added ten new songs a month in the first week of each month. Guess who had all the intros? I got to hate the first week of the month. I remember once when we were playing onstage with lyric sheets, I remember turning the page to the next song and staring out at the audience knowing I couldn't recall the song that I was supposed to intro. Fun!

These days I do studio work and think in terms of throughput. I'll be presented a song, arrange it, and write and play the parts. I've had times when I played the song back the next day to a friend and had to relearn my own parts when he asked me to show them to him. Two months later the song pops up in my mind during a practice session. Memory is a funny thing. At the same time I can recall guitar solos I wrote for songs forty years ago. I did that last night.

There's a lot of stuff, forty-eight years worth, floating around up there. Somewhere.

Bob
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  #37  
Old 07-21-2018, 06:46 AM
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KevWind KevWind is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Womack View Post
That's pretty hard to categorize.

For a while I played with a cover band that was request-only.

Around the same time I was in another band that added ten new songs a month in the first week of each month. Guess who had all the intros? I got to hate the first week of the month. I remember once when we were playing onstage with lyric sheets, I remember turning the page to the next song and staring out at the audience knowing I couldn't recall the song that I was supposed to intro. Fun!

These days I do studio work and think in terms of throughput. I'll be presented a song, arrange it, and write and play the parts. I've had times when I played the song back the next day to a friend and had to relearn my own parts when he asked me to show them to him. Two months later the song pops up in my mind during a practice session. Memory is a funny thing. At the same time I can recall guitar solos I wrote for songs forty years ago. I did that last night.

There's a lot of stuff, forty-eight years worth, floating around up there. Somewhere.

Bob
Interesting, in 54 years, I am guessing the number of songs I have forgotten ( before I started to write out chord and lyric sheets) is considerable.. Currently I have maybe 250 -300..in my master set book.
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  #38  
Old 07-21-2018, 07:57 AM
PetesaHut PetesaHut is offline
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Reading some of the replies from, shall I say, the more mature people I’m glad I’m not the only one that struggles with memory retention
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  #39  
Old 07-21-2018, 03:21 PM
tonyo tonyo is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brooklyn Bob View Post
I got into the habit of reading lyrics on stage. I'm trying to break away from that now. I probably have about 12-15 that I can play thru without forgetting the words.
I'm an amateur, been playing for just over six years now. When I started I was glued to my song sheets. Thankfully another musician encouraged me to learn just the few songs I played at jams from memory after seeing my sheets blow away in the wind and helping me chase and collect them.

That bit of advice really changed things for me. Once I memorized one song, I realized memorizing wasn't anywhere near as hard as I thought it was. Now I've got about 50 songs in my repertoire, 30 of which I can play completely from memory, the other 20 I could easily play from memory if only I played them a bit more often.

Playing from memory helps the songs flow a lot better.
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