Learning a lot of songs

[joeystrange]

I'm joining a new originals band (beginning next year) and I have a lot of songs to learn.
hey're about to release their third album and also have a couple of EPs so I need to learn those plus around 25 new songs. I'd guess around 60-70 songs in total.

I know there's plenty of time to learn everything but I have no idea where to start or how to retain that much information.

I'm after some advice from anyone who's been in this position before and can tell me how they've tackled learning this many songs.

Thanks.

[BrunoBass]

When I joined my current band I had to learn 32 songs in a month. As it is a covers band I was familiar with many of the songs and their arrangements but similarly quite a few of the songs were completely new to me.

It was just a question of putting the hours in; many nights of headphones on, listening and playing along. With the songs that were new to me I found it easy to break the basslines down into sections and once I'd nailed each part I could chain them together. As your band is an originals band they should be able to give you each song's chord sequence, which will be a good starting point.

Good luck, it's a nice challenge to get your teeth into.

[chris_b]

[quote name='joeystrange' timestamp='1497423422' post='3317935']
I'm after some advice from anyone who's been in this position before and can tell me how they've tackled learning this many songs.
[/quote]

They won't be playing 70 songs every gig and some songs on the records won't have been played since, so get a set list off them, or at least a list of songs they play regularly. Start with those and work around to the rest later.

Have any of the songs changed since they were recorded?

Work the songs out and write chord charts. Then play them until you don't need the charts any more.

If you play along to the songs on the CD's put them on shuffle so you don't get used to playing them in the same order.

[Woodinblack]

I would spend a bit of time just listening to the songs without trying to play them. It is much easier to learn a song that you already know, than to start learning a song you don't.

[Yank]

Yes, I did this with a band I joined. Songs I had never heard before. I went through them all, making an outline of the parts. A part, B part, sometimes C part. Make a CD to listen to while you drive. Play along using your notes, then play to your notes playing the music in your head. Final step, play the music in your head while playing your parts without notes. Also, keep a songlist on you and try to recall each song during the day. Could take a month, depending on how much time you put in. Seems like a lot taken as a whole, but broken down like this makes it manageable.

[NJE]

Basically the same as the other comments from me, listen to the songs on repeat in the car and at home first, it will be a lot easier learning songs that you can recognise the structure to and know when the changes are coming etc. Nothing worse than trying to play bass along to songs you have never heard before.

Even if your band does a lot of headline slots and play for 2 hours, you are only ever going to be playing 25 ish songs a night. If your doing 45 minute slots at festivals etc, you will probably be lucky to get through 10. Get the band to give you the last 5 set lists from gigs and then learn those to start with. As has already been said, they will probably only play the 'better' songs from those albums and EP's, even big acts don't play a lot of the dross on their albums, some songs never see the light of day live.

Write chord changes out, but don't get too used to looking at them, try and learn them through memory and I would say only try and do a couple of songs a day/night unless you find a couple are just 3 chord wonders.

I learnt 32 songs in 10 days for a gig the other week, most were simple chord structures and very familiar so I could learn 6-7 a day.

Good luck.....

[BassTractor]

AFAIK there's only one effective routine.
Possible important caveats below.


- Take one song at a time, and do NOT play all through it as a practice routine. Initially rather spend time on repeated listening - first to the song as a whole, and then intentively to the bass line and its intricacies.

- Learn every section thoroughly before connecting the sections.

- Do not practise for speed. Rather the opposite! Practise for precision and for effectiveness in your movements. Speed is the freebie. In this, practise by repeating correct notes with correct fingering. This is how one programs the brain. Repeating errors is training the brain for errors, and this is part of the practising slowly bit.

- Do not learn a few songs and repeatedly play them whilst learning the next one. You'll use a lot of time this way, and in the end you'll have a set of songs you know by heart and a set of songs you never learned well. Rather program your brain for one song at a time, and when all songs are done that way, revisit every song and augment its quality.



Caveats:
- IME the practice routine depends a lot also on how demanding the stuff is. If the band has relatively easy material, I'd start with the song that seems the most difficult. Things learned learning that song make the time spent on consecutive songs shorter. Conversely, if the stuff is demanding, then start with the least demanding ones so as to build up a certain acquaintance with the typical intricacies you're going to meet.

- I'm writing as a classical musician who's done some jazz and a little rock. This background may be a bit wrong for the music you're learning, but me adopting above practice routine has made I can still play through some relatively demanding pieces well over 30 years after I last touched them - partly by heart.

Edited June 14, 2017 by BassTractor

[mikel]

If the songs are all recorded it helps me if I play an album over and over before I even start to work out the parts. I like to get the music ingrained in my head by listening at every opportunity. In the car, on headphones etc. That way I am only starting from scratch with the bass parts, not the song structure or arrangement.

[Hazy Bass]

All the above .... plus:

Talk to the band. What do they expect from you? Do they want you to replicate all the existing bass lines, or do you have some creative flexibiltiy?
Talk to the bass player ... does he/she have any parts written down? Can you get together with him/her while you're learning?
Are the band rehearsing/recording/gigging currently - can you go along to listen/watch/make notes (video?)?

[Ghost_Bass]

As stated before, ask the band for a set list of the songs you'll be requested to play live in the near future and start with them. Leave the rest for later. Have the CD's on your car/phone/ipod/walkman and listen to them until you puke. You'le get to recognise changes, structures, drum breaks, lyrics, etc. and will make you rjob a lot easier.

You really don't think that Trujillo learned all the Metallica songs before playing live with them the first time, do you?

[Nicko]

Maybe its different for originals where you have scope to do your thing as long as you get the changes in te right place, but for me learning covers, its all about internalising the song. The songs I have most trouble with are the ones I can't play in my head.

Its exactly the same learning songs as learning anything else. If you studied anything at college/uni and had a revision technique, use it.

We all think differently, and writing out the structure of the song helps me immensely. Often I dont need to look at the sheets once I've written them out a couple of times. I'm a visual person, so I write the songs out in chart form. If you are a verbal person write them out in words.

[Lozz196]

Prioritise them in 30min set, 40min set, 1hr set etc, and ask which length set is the most regular making that the one to master first. We`re now on our 3rd album with some 45- 50 songs, but our longest set, an hour is 18 songs, with the shorter being a selection of those. You`ll might even find that many of the songs on their albums have never even been played live.

[joeystrange]

Thanks for all the tips.
Asking for a set list and breaking it down from there definitely sounds like the best plan.

[blue]

Why is there so much time before you join the band?

Blue

[joeystrange]

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1497460073' post='3318383']
Why is there so much time before you join the band?

Blue
[/quote]

Their bass player has decided to leave at the end of the year.

[Monkey Steve]

currently in this position myself, learning songs behind the scenes when I'm not yet able to actually rehearse with the band. Mine's a bit more cloak and dagger, with one band member asking me to be ready if they suddenly find themselves short of a bass player...which means i don't have access to all of the band as yet.

I can only say what I'm doing, not whether it works for anybody else, but a lot mirrors what everybody else has said:[list]
[*]Get the band to tell you which songs they are going to be playing live.
[*]Start with a small, manageable list (say, six or eight songs) and once you've learned a few add some more to the list - that way it doesn't get too daunting (possibly that's just me - thirty songs on a list looks very off putting, six looks achievable and quickly adds up to ten/twenty/thirty when you've ticked them off)
[*]Create a playlist of those songs and listen to them to get the structure into your head
[*]See if you can find any tabs on line - if not for bass then for guitar (to at least give you the chord structure)
[*]I disagree with Bass Tractor - I can see his point but I'm OK with doing more than one song at a time, and on continuing to practice the ones i know while I'm learning a new one. Personally what works for me is to have two or three songs on the go at the same time - some may get paused because I need to work on some specific techniques, some I can't get the structure worked out, and some I just keep coming back to and tweaking (it's perhaps relevant to say at this point that I'm trying to work out bass lines from what are largely badly mixed and poorly separated recordings so there's a lot of guess work involved)
[*]Ask the band about any tricky bits you can't work out for yourself.
[*]Discuss what they are after (took me a while to realise that this is probably where i should have started) - do they want you to replicate exactly what the original recorded bass lines are, do they have any different live arrangements, or do they just want you to play whatever you want and see if you can come up with anything better/different than your predecessor? In my case they told me that they had no idea what the original bass player had done, that they'd let the current bass player make up his own versions (which, admittedly they are not happy with) so as long as it works they're happy for me to do my own thing, albeit that they'll let me know if they don't like it. They are specifically looking for a bass player who can contribute better ideas than they have about bass lines going forward so their approach is tied up in that. Your lot may not be so accommodating...
[/list]

[BassTractor]

[quote name='Monkey Steve' timestamp='1497533849' post='3318933'][list]
[*]I disagree with Bass Tractor - I can see his point but I'm OK with doing more than one song at a time, and on continuing to practice the ones i know while I'm learning a new one. Personally what works for me is to have two or three songs on the go at the same time - some may get paused because I need to work on some specific techniques, some I can't get the structure worked out, and some I just keep coming back to and tweaking
[/list]
[/quote]

Aye. I too disagree with BassTractor.
Reading through what I wrote, I see that in part I was wrong and in part didn't manage to express what I meant.
I don't do it like that myself.

Myself, I'd work on three or six pieces or songs at a time, but I would never ever repeatedly play 69 known songs whilst trying to learn the 70th and whilst time is at a premium.
This is exactly wat I've seen dozens if not hundreds of peers and pupils do: five minutes for every known song and five minutes on the new one. I think you get the gist.
They'd often express that practising is boring and that they need to have some fun.
Fun is OK of course, but not in a 69 to 1 ratio. Their results were most often as described above: some songs they knew well, some average ones, and some they could hardly play.

In my own case, I could for example set aside five hours for five pieces or songs, and the sixth hour then was my fun hour - most oftenly filled with improvisation and playing known stuff.
Additionally, I'd normally insert some minutes of fun in every hour.

[Elfrasho]

[quote name='chris_b' timestamp='1497428620' post='3317981']


They won't be playing 70 songs every gig and some songs on the records won't have been played since, so get a set list off them, or at least a list of songs they play regularly. Start with those and work around to the rest later.

[/quote]

This.

An originals band with that many releases will have a 30 strong set. A lot often recorded tunes will never or almost never be played live. So try get their last set and learn that.

If you've joined the band then surely you already know this?

Edited June 15, 2017 by Elfrasho

[Elfrasho]

If you want to learn all the songs though... personally speaking, you should listen to them whilst commuting etc especially if there is odd bits. But honestly I'd be surprised if aerosmiths or bonjovis gigging set list is as big as that. Most originals gigs are between 6 and 15 tunes. Your bands fans (If they have any) will likely want to hear 3 or 4 of the same songs every gig. Once you realistically look at it, theres not a lot to learn.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Elfrasho

[JapanAxe]

[url="http://trello.com"]Trello[/url] is your friend - and I got that off Basschat.

I work from lists, typically:

New material
Familiar
Nearly There
Nailed

Work your way through the New Material list, promoting songs to the Familiar list as appropriate. Then go through the Familiar list, promoting songs to the Nearly There list when you can. And so on, but spending more time on the 'lower' lists.

[blue]

[quote name='joeystrange' timestamp='1497460372' post='3318387']


Their bass player has decided to leave at the end of the year.
[/quote]

Does that work for you too, you don't want to join this band until 2018?

Are you playing with other bands now.

Unless the band was famous and there's an opportunity to earn above average pay, I'd never committ when there's a 6 month time frame open.

Anything can happen in 6 months.

Blue

[bazzbass]

make good charts first.

follow them for a while, but try playing without them as soon as you feel comfortable.

But don't wait too long.

The two guitarists in my originals band had the songs written and rehearsed before I joined. Took two years until we got a drummer for me to stop using charts. I'm 55 and a heavy pot user so my memory ain't what it used to be. But we had a gig so needed to teach the drummer 7 songs ,and that was the trigger. I practiced to the rehearsal recording on my own so my mistakes fell on deaf ears (literally). Now they are ingrained in my head.

The one song I never ever have to look at notes was one where the writer showed me a specific difficult bassline he wanted. Got it right from the first play through. go figure.


One reason I used charts for so long was a deliberate ploy so I would try different lines each time rather than learn a bassline and repeat it. I needed to know what type of chord I was playing to, minor diminished etc.

[mcnach]

[quote name='joeystrange' timestamp='1497423422' post='3317935']
I'm joining a new originals band (beginning next year) and I have a lot of songs to learn.
hey're about to release their third album and also have a couple of EPs so I need to learn those plus around 25 new songs. I'd guess around 60-70 songs in total.

I know there's plenty of time to learn everything but I have no idea where to start or how to retain that much information.

I'm after some advice from anyone who's been in this position before and can tell me how they've tackled learning this many songs.

Thanks.
[/quote]


The good news is... you've got lots of time!

I would probably ask for the setlist of a couple of recent shows, and I'd probably start with those. They may have 70 songs, but I doubt they play them all live. My originals band we have a couple of CDs and probably another 15-20 songs on top. Some of the older stuff just never gets played anymore. It's good for a new player to learn them all, but chances are you will never play many of those songs, so I'd start with a current set of songs that actually get played live.

Apart from that band, I've got a relatively busy originals/covers (50/50) ska reggae band, and I joined first as a dep with 10 days notice and a list of 30 songs. The good thing is some of the covers I was already at least familiar with, a couple of the originals I was also familiar with (I was the original bass player when the band was starting, for about a month)... and in general they were pretty easy technically and in terms of structure. But the process for me is the same when I've got other stuff to learn:

First, I take an A4 sheet per song, and make my little basic chord chart. I annotate the various parts (intro, verse, chorus, bridge 1, stop, etc)... I use different colours to add various bits of information (maybe bits of lyrics as cues, which allow me to know where I am in the song, places where a specific riff or maybe a bass variation should be, etc...). Any tricky bits I mark clearly.

I do that for every song... and identify the easy ones and the hard ones etc. I would get the easy ones first, to simply ensure I have a good number of songs I can play quickly: if I'm wobbly in a given song, I can always ask on the day "let's not play this one today, but we can play A, B and C...". And then I move onto the hard ones. The harder they are, for whatever reason, the more I practice them.

I also listen to them a lot. It can get a bit... boring... but it's a simple way to brainwash myself. I make a little playlist and play it in the car, at work, etc... Maybe not all the time but very very very often. It's an easy way to get those songs in your brain without actually 'working' at it.

Finally, my "set list" contains the song titles in thick black marker, and next to it the first chord. I use a different colour for each chord, so that I can easily identify them on the floor at a distance... although stage lights sometimes turn certain chords invisible! ). Sometimes the song is about to start and I just can't remember the rhythm or anything... but if I get the first three notes the rest follow ok, so that first chord reminder has come handy many times. I may add "watch for the stops!" if needed

And then use that to practice until you no longer need the 'cheat sheet'.

If I'm really in a hurry, I focus on getting the song right first. Making sure I get the structure and chord changes, and don't worry about specific basslines or riffs unless they are the signature of the song. My goal is to be able to play that song ok. Then, I work on getting the extra bits.

[StringNavigator]

On ‎14‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 02:57, joeystrange said:

I'm joining a new originals band (beginning next year) and I have a lot of songs to learn... I'd guess around 60-70 songs in total... I'm after some advice from anyone who's been in this position before and can tell me how they've tackled learning this many songs.
 

I'm also learning a new band set-list of 31 songs. I have my own process and follow a checklist, but I'm finding the advice here to be useful/interesting. So... OP, how did it work out?  

[uk_lefty]

It would be unreasonable to ask a new member to learn an entire catalogue in a short space of time. I'd ask them what are the ten most important, start there and nail them. Then when you're all happy go for the next ten. In our covers band we have built up a bank of 50+ songs, we try to add two a month and we bin off some that haven't worked so well. It's a lot to remember, even as covers - I'd say it's harder cos you can't bluff your way through if there's a distinctive part! 

I put cheat notes on my set list, so for example the bridge to Huey Lewis's power of love has no logical pattern to me, so I need to write out Eb-C... Etc. To glance at as a prompt.