Topic: Maintaining a growing repetoire

[Cartouche]

Hi gang-

I've been playing country blues for about 2 years now, working through various instructional dvds that pique my interest. I've reached the point where I can play about 50 tunes reasonably well by memory. As I look at other dvds that I'd like to study, I wonder how difficult it will be to maintain a repetoire of so many tunes?

As I window-shop dvds, and anticipate forthcoming lessons, the number of potential tunes grows to nearly 200 songs! How does one manage? I try to remember and maintain every song that I've learned, but maybe this is unrealistic. It's almost a type of hoarding, you know, "I worked so hard on this tune, it'd be a shame to forget it."

I typically organize my daily practice time to address three levels of learning:
1. working on a new song or technique (currently bottleneck)
2. reviewing existing repetoire (usually I play 5-10 songs once through to keep them "remembered")
3. bringing certain tunes to what I would call performance level - working on vocals, unique signature licks/variations, bringing up to proper tempo

So, the questions...

How do you maintain and time-manage a growing repetoire?

Do you learn and memorize each song on every dvd you study, or just the tunes you like? Or do you learn them, not memorize, for the technique building, then drop the ones that don't resonate with you personally?

Thanks,
Marc

[banjochris]

Sounds like what you're doing as far as practice is just fine. From my own experience, as you play more and learn more tunes it's easier to remember more. What happens with me is that certain songs will bubble up to the top of the brain for a while and get a certain amount of play, and then I'll be reminded of something else and it will pop up. The more difficult part for me is remembering all the words if it's something I haven't played in a long time. I find it easier to remember lyrics with a "story" than just marginally connected blues verses.

But basically the more you put in the brain the more it will hold. It's a good idea to keep a list of your repertoire (something I wish I had done) -- that will help you remember.

And as far as learning from DVDs or whatever, I would only learn tunes I like, unless there's a little lick or something I did like from a tune I wasn't crazy about. But learning the tune and memorizing the tune, if they're not the same now, will become the same thing soon. Try learning some tunes by ear, that will help. And of course listen as much as you can. Get a song inside your head and you may have it memorized before you even try to learn it!
Chris

[Mr.OMuck]

My advice is to forget everything.

[Cartouche]

Great tips, thanks, Chris.

My advice is to forget everything.

Forget what?

[blueshome]

Everything.

Then every time you play a song it's new!

[banjochris]

My advice is to forget everything.

Gets easier every day!

[Mr.OMuck]

I was actually thinking about the difference between a kind of repertory display of set pieces vs. what I suspect people like Big Joe Williams and Robert Pete Williams did which was to use an overarching song language to essentialy create new songs at the spur of the moment dictated by mood, audience etc. every time they played. What if you didn't know what you were going to play and just started grabbing bits and pieces of what you know from here and there? You'd be creating a new thing! I've done this many times and although its scary as hell its also thrilling, challenging and takes one into another place.

[frailer24]

Myself, I keep a list of what I do, and, like Chris, things just sorta burst up to the surface. Hard to explain, but, a list does help (250 and growing). Learn what you can, because as you age, the brain pushes out old to make room for new. Larry

[Christopher Davis-Shannon]

I use Evernote to organize everything, all my lyrics, position its played out of and the actual key with Capo.  I usually don't need it, but its a nice way to jog the memory for some of those tunes you haven't played in a while