Fingerstyle players - how do u remember…?

[Benjo]

Originally Posted by 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.

Imo this is bad advice and an inefficient use of practice time. It really helps to use your brain to understand what it is you're playing. Rote memorizing and muscle memory has its place, along with using your intellect to do things like analyze the structure of the piece (repeating sections, variations, etc) mark fingerings, solfege if you know how to do that.

Basically, do not expect to excel if your plan is to go on muscle memory autopilot.

[Skip Ellis]

I never, ever, ever, learn anything by rote. If you do that and have a 'senior moment' in the middle, you're stumped unless you're really experienced and can cover your screw-up. I've always learned the song, inside and out - melody AND harmony, then make it mine from there. Rote learning is you just learning someone else's version note for note which, to me, defeats the purpose of being creative. I play a bunch of Chet Atkins tunes but don't play them exactly like Chet - I learn the tune, then play it in that style the way I want it played. I think you'll find that Chet never played a tune the same way twice and I'm sure that's true of TE, Jerry Reed, Merle Travis, or anyone else playing at a high level. Don't waste your time trying to play like someone else - you'll never be as good as the original and if people wanted to hear the original, they'd buy the record, not listen to you. Besides, 99.9% of the people in the audience have no idea that you're playing someone else's tune note for note unless you're playing to a bunch of guitar nerds. I'd much rather play for folks who just enjoy my music than those who are going to analyze, compare, and make sure it's 'right'.
As an example, I've been listening to a bunch of versions of 'Skyrim, Dragonborn Comes', lately with the intent of working up an arrangement of it. There are lots of different version on YT and, to me, the simpler ones are much more enjoyable. I'll work out the melody first, then the chords, then put the whole thing together to arrive at my own take on it.

[Robin, Wales]

Originally Posted by Benjo

Imo this is bad advice and an inefficient use of practice time. It really helps to use your brain to understand what it is you're playing. Rote memorizing and muscle memory has its place, along with using your intellect to do things like analyze the structure of the piece (repeating sections, variations, etc) mark fingerings, solfege if you know how to do that.

Basically, do not expect to excel if your plan is to go on muscle memory autopilot.

Benjo - I think that you may have taken Jim's comments too literary. Playing music is, by its nature, too fast and complex to be cognitive. I believe Jim was referring to being "in the flow" with your playing, not espousing rote learning. How you get to that point, or at least where that journey starts, will vary from individual to individual. Folks have different learning preferences, but they can all lead to the same high quality outcome. You seem from your comments to have a preference for theory as your starting point? Some will be more activist in their approach and some pragmatic and some reflective. This is not a problem, until it comes to teaching as we all like to teach folks in the way WE like to learn. Appreciating that there is more than one way to skin a cat is useful.

Some folks will need to build a theory upon which to construct their experience. They will intricately understand the construction of their music. Others however will simply have the experience. There are a number of exceptional musicians who would struggle to tell you the intricacies of what and how they play. They will only know what they need to know to produce their music, nothing more is of interest or necessary for them.

Each is blind to the world of the other and cannot see how another way is possible. Yet both are essentially talking the same musical language.

I remember talking to two very experienced fighter jet pilots one evening at dinner, the wing commander and his Ex O from an operational fighter squadron. They had invited me to talk over a training programme. I asked both if they could remember learning to fly the Bulldog trainer aircraft many years before. And I asked them how did they know if the aircraft was going to stall. One said something along the lines of "the aircraft would stall if I was below 70 knots and had more than 45 deg of nose lift". The other said, "I could feel a small vibration in the stick". Both were exceptional pilots. But think about how each was teaching their students?

[Jeff Scott]

Originally Posted by lppier

Fingerstyle players - how do u remember…?

What was the question?

Oh yeah. Practice, practice...ya know. And, don't pay no mind to those women in the audience.

[truckgoodbar]

When I sit down to learn a tune, I listen to the whole piece till I get it in my head. Then I watch the video and tab to learn it piece by piece. First I try to memorize by wrote because I think there are valuable lessons to be learned from great players that I dig. When I finally get it down in my subconscious, then I can begin to add nuance and attack. Sometimes a song can come out six months later while practicing other material. Funny how that works. It's all a journey. I have to keep a list these days to remember what I already know.

[ssynhorst]

Music has come hard for me, on several instruments. That is one of the reasons I do it, for the challenge. That and my love of fine music. I imagine the sound of the music and encourage my subconscious to produce what I hear in my mind.

I think mere repetition is of some value but that fully alert and focused practice is more so. Practice hard and deeply, using all of your attention. Less can be more. - Stevo

[Llewlyn]

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

This concept is quite alien to me. The last thing I want to do is to linguistically “think” about what I’m playing. I’m no great player, but I can play the tunes I know from the non-conscious and then use my conscious capacity for “musicality” such as shaping my singing phrasing or developing my guitar tone in the moment. I have no idea in the moment what chord or note I am playing.

Well, I would strongly advise the OP against that :P

Ll.

[Llewlyn]

Originally Posted by lppier

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.

Yeah, those are the bits I never remember when I play the song 6 mo after.

Ll.

[j3ffr0]

Knowing the theory and understanding the patterns in music helps me with memorization a lot. I've got a spreadsheet in google sheets with about 110 songs on it. About 60 of those could be whipped into performance shape relatively easily. But I'm not currently about performing... I'm in recording and writing mode, and I'm much happier doing that for the near term at least.

[LuckyDan]

Originally Posted by lppier

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

I thought at first you meant remembering the order of the songs but thought "by writing out a setlist" would be an insulting answer. You mean remembering how to play the pieces themselves?

Sheet music on a stand is helpful but if that's not an option, either for appearance's sake or lack of written music, isn't most fingerstyle playing just a matter of remembering patterns? Then knowing the songs by ear?

I can't memorize crap anymore so I usually have written music as a prompt, but then I never leave my living room. Don't know why that wouldn't be an option playing out.

[birkenweg42]

For me, it is easier to retain pieces in standard, open d, and open g tunings. I am familiar with most chords in these tunings and I understand chord structure and the melody. If I get one of those senior moments it is easier to improvise my way out.

If I am in an unfamiliar tuning like CGDGAD I only rely on muscle memory. Once I get lost there is no way for me to cover it up.

[mawmow]

Interesting thread and plenty of good opinions and living experience.
Thanks guys !

I am not succesful at leraning pieces and remained dependent on my tabs...

I play only at home for my own leisure times pleasure. I discovered the joy
of fingerstyle melodic music by age fifty and took private lessons by age sixty
to enhance my technical abilities. My coach urged me to learn a piece : it took
me almost three months to be able to play a two pages celtic ballad without
my music sheet. My coach told me he witnessed the ability to learn new stuff
to begin to decline by age forty.

I am not sure age is the only reason why I am almost totally dependent on
tablatures and sight reading : I can repeat a whole conversation or a news
heard on TV with the exact wording, but when I read a news, I would talk
about it in my own understanding and words. Silly, ain't it.

I did put much time learning scales and their relations to chords so I could
find melodies from chords, but it is not actually working in my mind.

When I try to work a new piece, I look at the structure and give a first try to
sense the rythm of the melody : I find it helps me quite much. Then, I try to
play the whole piece on and on to get better rythm and speed. Then, I work
the odd parts, those that go out of the main stream and break the whole thing.
As I play only for my pleasure, this way became quite an everlasting process
but it does make more sense and fun to me.

[redir]

Originally Posted by bmw2002

I attend as many concerts of The Classical Guitar Society here in Philadelphia as I can (Ana Vidovic being the next one), and am consistently amazed at how anyone can memorize ninety minutes worth of complex music and perform it flawlessly without any aid. I’m totally dependent on sheet music most of the time.

For classical guitar I always have a set that I can play through but if I don't play something for a while it's nice to have the sheet music there. I bet that is the way it works for most performers too, they practice up for a concert and can pull it off but they would probably not want to play a tune they used to know by heart but have not played in like a year or something, without the sheets.

[815C]

I have found that knowing theory and knowing how that theory lays out on the fretboard make memorization much easier/efficient.

[RLetson]

I don't play a lot of solo instrumental tunes, though I've been working them up since the 1960s. As far as I can tell (I'm not a very systematic musician), it's just a matter of repetition--I've played my arrangements often enough that they come when called.

I did notice, though, when the pandemic stopped playing-out cold for a year and even had me neglecting sofa-playing time, that when I returned to a jam session, some tunes were *not* coming immediately when called. So periodic refreshing would seem to be part of the retention process--use it or lose it. Fortunately those tunes can be coaxed out of storage, but it tells me that it wouldn't hurt to run through my repertory from time to time, just to stay in shape.