Fingerstyle players - how do u remember…?

[lppier]

For those who play solo fingerstyle , how do u manage to remember say, a set list of 15 songs? Any tips ?

[Nymuso]

Like any other art - you practice. I often marvel at the ability of Shakespearean actors to remember all that they have to know and do.

[Llewlyn]

by knowing what i am doing, which chord i am playing, what is the key, is this a dominant etc. Then songs "make sense" and are easier to remember.

Ll.

[JayBee1404]

Originally Posted by Nymuso

Like any other art - you practice.

^^^
THIS!

Practice, practice, practice! It’s not just brain-memory you’re training, it’s also muscle-memory. And remember, you need to do more than practice until you get it right - you should practice until you can’t get it wrong.

[blews]

Playing them over and over again….and then over and over again…..and then over and over again…..muscle memory for sure….

Once in a while I forget a few words more than licks, but that is easier to go back and fill in the gaps than song patterns….

[RodB]

I only play instrumentals. Apart from playing the tunes over and over I have to remember which tuning I use and which key. The first few bars especially are critical then I am on auto.

It helps to remember the pattern of the noted and to be able to translate the tune into the required interval(s) on the fretboard.

I always look at my fretting hand not my picking hand.

[ismaelbelda]

You have to play and repeat, repeat, repeat. Playing the same song over and over should be fun and exciting. It is for me. Also, your musical memory and your muscular memory are endless. There is no bottom. You can accumulate infinite material and there will still be more space. Anyway, if you only play instrumental music, one thing that works for understanding what you're playing and for instant recall later on is to sing the different parts of the song in your head while you play. That goes for playing every instrument. You play the note with your fingers, but the note must come from inside, from your musical imagination. If not, it's easy to start wasting your time.

Peace and love, brother.

[Malcolm Kindnes]

Originally Posted by Nymuso

Like any other art - you practice. I often marvel at the ability of Shakespearean actors to remember all that they have to know and do.

This is correct, there is no easy answer, just keep practicing until you can't get it wrong.

[raysachs]

Practice, practice, practice is it. The bottom line is I don’t, which is probably why my fledgling start at being any sort of fingerstyle player is totally stalled in its tracks. I tried a bunch of stuff while I was learning it, but at a certain point I realized playing fingerstyle was pretty much a rote-memory exercise for me. It wasn’t anything that made me feel creative - it just made me feel semi-competent when I’d have a piece down. So I can confirm from the perspective of NOT doing it that it’s what you have to do.

When I was learning and playing a lot of fingerstyle, I think I might have had as many as 7-8 pieces in my fingers / brain at a time. Now I don’t do it much at all, just from time to time to see if I still can, and that 7-8 pieces is down to a core 4-5, only three of which I play reasonably well and a couple of which I’m in a perpetual state of “working on it”. But I’m not really working on it, which is why they’ve never emerged from that perpetual state. So I’d have to agree it’s “practice, practice, practice”, but I come at it from the perspective of “I don’t really practice and, hence, I’m not really any sort of fingerstyle player at all”. It’s just a parlor trick I do every once in a great while for myself and my daughters and sons in law, who seem to kind of like it. My wife was around for the learning and I think she’s heard the few pieces I play decently waaaaay too many times to enjoy them anymore. So I generally run through them just enough to maintain those few pieces when she’s not in earshot.

So practice a bunch if you love it enough. It really does stick. As little as I do it now - I’ll go weeks without putting down my plectrum and playing with my fingers - when I do, I always amazed I can still pull it off and it sounds pretty good. If it’s been long enough, I might have forgotten a little section or two, but it seems like if I run through each piece a couple times, it comes back and I’m mildly surprised that it does. I never look at the music anymore - I just play and, so far, it always seems to wake that muscle memory back up. And I enjoy that I can do that in a way, just not enough to do much MORE of it and learn and keep those 10-15 pieces.

-Ray

[brancher]

So, like everyone else has said, it is practice. I have about 200 songs (or more), impossible for me to just play all of 'em on auto-pilot, so it is rehearsing for my set(s), and practice, practice, practice, and understanding about scales, western music keys, chord patterns, scales, etc.

And scales.

No magic here! In fact, when I once asked my wife how a new piece sounded, she said "Really good. Just like the last 2,000 times." A joke of course, but it speaks to what is required.

ymmv

[lppier]

Originally Posted by Llewlyn

by knowing what i am doing, which chord i am playing, what is the key, is this a dominant etc. Then songs "make sense" and are easier to remember.



Ll.

I suffer from this , sometimes it just becomes muscle memory , and I forget what the chord is, really. Especially those fingerings that are not “standard” caged style chords.

[Jim Comeaux]

Wow! The short answer is that you don’t. You need to take the brain completely out of the equation. The Brain is your musical enemy and must be eliminated. You do this by playing the tune(s) over and over until you can do it without thinking. That is what “muscle memory” is. When that happens, you can relax, let the fingers do their thing and enjoy what’s going on around you.

[buddyhu]

Some of the secret is in how you learn a piece: tackle small chunks (say 3 bars) and learn one chunk at a time and learn it well. Then slowly link the chunks together. Some of it involves looking carefully at your music to identify where certain elements repeat, and where there are new elements.

Then, like everyone else has said: practice a lot, and also practice in different settings (this helps to make pieces resistant to loss and disruption when you try to play in a new physical environment; there is memory research that suggests that changing your physical environment can lead to some loss of memorized information).

And if doing a set, get oriented to each tune by identifying tuning and opening licks and related details to seed each piece before you begin.

But mostly, in is practice, and returning to pieces regularly to make sure there isn’t “drop out” because of disuse.

[TBman]

Having had a mild stroke and being older (66) my ability to memorize is basically gone (but I don't try very hard either). I remember how a song sounds so when I go back to a tune I haven't played in a while it comes back to me once I start playing it.

I rely on my playing skills to play something, not my memory, so that's why I don't bother to memorize much.

[Mr. Paul]

Spouses may be just as qualified as players to answer this one . Mine is very patient about hearing the same thing over and over and over and over...