Anyone find they have problems remembering basslines?

[Tait]

Im finding I do recently. I gotta learn a load of songs for a gig, and they're easy enough to play, but i find im just sight reading the music and not remembering it. Any advice?

[budget bassist]

practice your arse off mate Get to know the song properly too, i'll spend up to a couple of hours a day for a week just playing one song sometimes

[Jobiebass]

YUP, band practice today! knew exactly what I needed to play, soon as we played all together I kept doing stuff in the wrong order. really simple bassline and I got well stressed out. ended up calling it a day cause my head was fried.

[thepurpleblob]

I can't remember my bloody name sometimes !!

I work on the basis that if I can't remember it then I probably didn't know it in the first place. I find that writing the chord chart out helps me. The effort to do that is usually enough to make me remember at least the bare bones and I have the bonus of something to fall back on when it goes out of my head again.

I still write the key of each song on the set list though !!

[stewblack]

[quote name='thepurpleblob' post='299599' date='Oct 4 2008, 08:55 PM']I still write the key of each song on the set list though !![/quote]
Funnily enough I write the first note next to each song. It's titles that I forget so I live in dread of starting the wrong song. I figure that if I'm at least on the right note I'll recognise the song once it gets going!
As far as the first post goes - put the script down! The best way to find out what's gone in and what hasn't is to try it.

[Oscar South]

Listen through a few times and work out + write down the structure before you pick up your bass and start to figure it out.

[markytbass]

I can remember the songs in the set I have learnt (current set), but have forgotten alot of songs I've done in the past. Even easy 3 chord numbers. "Whats the problem with that" I hear you say, well when someone says "lets do this for the encore" I think sh*t!!. Also to make things worse the last band I was in played all the songs a whole tone or more lower cos the singer couldn't sing. After trying different tunings and a 5 string in the end I just adapted the songs and played them on a 4 string standard tuning. It f***ed up my playing somewhat, normaly I know the key and what scale is being used but this was like playing everything backwards.

[ianrunci]

Not a problem for me really. I have never learned from music or tab. I listen to the record a couple of times and I can usually play the bass line. Sometimes if there is a particularly difficult bit that is hard to hear properly I will download the tab just to check I have it right. Being originally a lead guitarist for 30 years I have always found learning complicated lines by ear easy

[Tait]

[quote name='ianrunci' post='299903' date='Oct 5 2008, 02:36 PM']Not a problem for me really. I have never learned from music or tab. I listen to the record a couple of times and I can usually play the bass line. Sometimes if there is a particularly difficult bit that is hard to hear properly I will download the tab just to check I have it right. Being originally a lead guitarist for 30 years I have always found learning complicated lines by ear easy[/quote]

its not the complicated ones i have a problem with! i have to learn those to play them right! its the easy ones that i can sight read first time i see them, you know, mostly roots and fifths and stuff like that.

i drilled them into my head last night... its only an AC/DC song (sin city) that im having a problem with remembering now, but its mostly open E... just remembering when to change to the open D. how fun!

[Count Bassy]

I am currently having a problem with several bluesy numbers. The problem is that the base lines are very similar, and in some cases pretty well interchangeable (but different), and I sometimes forget which pattern goes with which song.

You could argue that if they are that similar then it doesn't really matter as long as it sounds alright, but the guitard doesn't see it that way.

[phil_the_bassist]

I've just been munching thru an album I've gotta learn for this local singer, and the ones that I'm used to reading from a chord chart, I can't remember without reading it, and the ones I play by ear I can't tell you which key they're in without having my bass to play it on.

Really backwards, and highly frustrating!

[cytania]

Some ideas for the original poster;

1) Sing the words, even if you've not been given a mike (you can see Glenn Matlock doing this in Pistols vids). It's all too easy to zone out and lose the song, singing along helps anchor you to the structure.

2) Print out the song words on one sheet of A4 that can be dropped near front monitors etc. Box in the choruses with a big magic marker, indicate bridges and breaks with brackets, finally put in beer-proof plastic wallet. Now you have a visual representation of the song you can see from several feet away. Quick look down and you can see 'weve done the guitar break so it's two more choruses'.

3) Write out the song long-hand or print the words then add your parts, use colours, use symbols. The act of making a personal copy helps the remembering process. See it again and a whole load more comes back to you.

Clive, I've been practising blues lines and you can download several versions of the standards from iTunes and find a huge variety of keys, lines and feels used. In his blues book Ed Friedland talks about the lines the audience will expect and this is certainly worth being aware of.. but audiences may be alot more blues-savvy and demanding in Austin Texas. We may get an easier ride in blighty...

[Rich]

[quote name='stewblack' post='299604' date='Oct 4 2008, 09:01 PM']Funnily enough I write the first note next to each song.[/quote]
Exactly what I do! Had brainfade once too often for comfort

[stewblack]

[quote name='Rich' post='301362' date='Oct 7 2008, 02:17 PM']Exactly what I do! Had brainfade once too often for comfort [/quote]
It works - puts me in the right part of the fret board and within a beat or two I'm away. Tip: Capital letter = low note, lower case = higher - I don't play anything that starts in the third octave up so that sorts it!

[molan]

[quote name='stewblack' post='299604' date='Oct 4 2008, 09:01 PM']Funnily enough I write the first note next to each song. It's titles that I forget so I live in dread of starting the wrong song. I figure that if I'm at least on the right note I'll recognise the song once it gets going![/quote]

That's exactly what I do as well - my set list has a simple reminder of the first note in the exact position I play it.

It's a bit muppet-like but I literally have stuff like E5 to signify that the song starts on the 5th fret E string so I can use this as an 'anchor' from which to remember my patterns.

I play entirely by memory other than that, have never got on with chord charts etc. All I do is play them over & over, if I'm really struggling I try to play the bass part for the entire song without any backing whilst 'listening' to the song in my head.

Only problem with this tactic is that stuff gets so ingrained that i wake up in the middle of the night with whatever my latest song is stuck going round & round and can't get rid of it!

[stewblack]

[quote name='molan' post='301367' date='Oct 7 2008, 02:25 PM']Only problem with this tactic is that stuff gets so ingrained that i wake up in the middle of the night with whatever my latest song is stuck going round & round and can't get rid of it![/quote]
Me too! I've been walking around work with Jamerson's bassline to the Gladys Knight version of Grapevine going around and around (I did play it this morning and when I went home for lunch) but I actually think this is a vital part of the learning process as the melody of the bass part is getting imprinted withgout the need for hearing cues from the rest of the band.

[NancyJohnson]

My memory is pretty atrocious...I've been in gigs and I simply can't remember where the song goes. I've had backing vocals taped up on a sheet of A4 to help as well. I tend to find that if I play something wrong, I'll play the wrong part again later in the song so it doesn't seem overtly obvious I've cocked up.

One thing as well is I'd suggest you record stuff regularly, even if it's a microphone up in the middle of a rehearsal; it doesn't matter how crappy the recording is, hearing it in isolation away from the rehearsal helps tons.

P

[molan]

[quote name='NancyJohnson' post='301611' date='Oct 7 2008, 07:04 PM']I'll play the wrong part again later in the song so it doesn't seem overtly obvious I've cocked up.[/quote]

Ah, the old "jazz" trick - make sure you stare angrily at someone else in the band, ideally the guitarist or keys person & then shake your head in dismay as he's obviously played the 'wrong' note again. . .

[top jimmy]

keep doing over and over again
from top jimmy

[top jimmy]

[quote name='budget bassist' post='299591' date='Oct 5 2008, 04:16 AM']practice your arse off mate Get to know the song properly too, i'll spend up to a couple of hours a day for a week just playing one song sometimes[/quote]



how did you get a band together
from top jimmy

[KevB]

I sometimes do Sunday afternoon jam sessions and the guys in the house band there stagger me with an almost encyclopedic mental back catalog of songs. They may be far from note perfect but perfectly recognisable. I'd probably struggle to play half the songs I was doing regularly with my last band which only split up about a year ago. I'm OK with songs I'm performing or practicing regularly at the time but ask me to play something from a set a couple of years back and I'm hopeless, yet some people seem to have instant recall. Having said that I've read interviews with famous players who have hinted that if they introduce a song into the set they havent done in afew years they usually have to go back to the albums and learn it again!

[The Funk]

[quote name='lwtait' post='299547' date='Oct 4 2008, 07:11 PM']Im finding I do recently. I gotta learn a load of songs for a gig, and they're easy enough to play, but i find i[i][b]m just sight reading the music[/b][/i] and not remembering it. Any advice?[/quote]

Put away the sheet music - now!

[stewblack]

[quote name='KevB' post='302146' date='Oct 8 2008, 01:36 PM']I sometimes do Sunday afternoon jam sessions and the guys in the house band there stagger me with an almost encyclopedic mental back catalog of songs. They may be far from note perfect but perfectly recognisable. I'd probably struggle to play half the songs I was doing regularly with my last band which only split up about a year ago. I'm OK with songs I'm performing or practicing regularly at the time but ask me to play something from a set a couple of years back and I'm hopeless, yet some people seem to have instant recall. Having said that I've read interviews with famous players who have hinted that if they introduce a song into the set they havent done in afew years they usually have to go back to the albums and learn it again![/quote]
Kev - you are not alone. I played a wedding two weeks ago, learned a few songs for it, tried to play one yesterday and it had gone completely, not a note. Stuff I'm gigging regularly will stay right up until I stop gigging it, then it seems to slip quietly away.
I've met up with old friends who can, at the drop of a hat, play original songs we wrote together 15 years ago - it astonishes me too!

[alexclaber]

[quote name='The Funk' post='302185' date='Oct 8 2008, 02:16 PM']Put away the sheet music - now![/quote]

I was going to say 'has anyone said that?' As they have then I'll quote it so you can read it again. You have to trust in yourself to remember what comes next. Don't worry about being able to remember the chorus on its own but simply learn the route to it from the intro.

Think of it as like when you're driving a long journey that you know well (or walking/cycling for non-drivers). You'd struggle to remember all the junctions independently but when you come to each one in a fixed sequential order then you know what to do.

Thanks to Pino Palladino for first expressing this idea to me via BP mag - 'trust chops' he called them. Clever man!

Alex