I have had a helluva time remembering lyrics of my own songs. Embarrassing. I attibuted this to two things. First, I don't have that gene that many performers have where they readily soak up lyrics. Like 90% of all women. I mean ALL women. Women remember lyrics.

Bob Dylan made everybody mad when he arrived on the scene in Greenwich Village in the early 60's. He'd hear a new song one time and play it back to them. WOW! Of course, that guy's out there on some other plane.

Second thing I attibuted my problem to was that I have written well over 300 songs in four years. That's constantly writing. Almost every day for several hours. For four years. Many hundreds more unfinished. Writing. Re-writing. Writing. Re-writing. Re-writing.

These last six months, I've (thank goodness) slowed down my writing. And I've started to work at remembering my songs. Good news is that I am much better now. I'm making progress. I think, yes, my brain was indeed cluttered with so much new stuff, it did overload my memory bank.

I think the three day phenomena is real. I back that up.

The other thing is a DEFINITE COMMITMENT to MEMORIZE THE LYRIC. For instance, I have sung some cover songs hundreds of times but I still have not locked it in. Because I never sat down with that song and owned it. Repetition of singing the song alone (for me) does not work. Repetion of working on memorizing it does.

I look forward to confidently having an entire night's worth of material fully memorized. I don't like lead sheets by I have had no choice. I can remember most of the song but the 10% you don't, that stinks. Blows the whole song. Maybe by 1/1/2006 I'll reach the goal of an entire night's worth of originals.

The first two words of the next line are the most important. I tried just writing down the first word of every line or every other line and remembering that. I thought that might work. So far, I'm not convinced there is merit in that.


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Bill
Yamaha PSR2000