Originally posted by Scottyee:
I first memorize the chord progression, either by ear or with the help of a lead sheet. As 'the Pro' pointed out so well earlier, lead sheets (and sheet music) don't necessarily reflect all the correct notes/chords actually played on the hit recording, so I may need to figure out some of the chords by ear, by listening to the original CD recording. The first thing I do when memorizing a song’s chord progression is to look for commonly occurring chord patterns and cadences (II-V-I; IV-V-I; blues progressions, etc) used on many songs.
Once I’ve memorized the chord changes, I'm then able to fairly easily pick out the melody (by ear) with my right hand, as the melody notes typically include the chord tones and/or its passing tones (chord scale). Probably the most difficult thing (for me) is retaining in memory, all the many different chord changes to the hundreds of songs in my repertoire, making it often difficult for me to feel confident playing without a lead sheet , chord chart , or lyric sheet available to jog my memory if needed.
While I rely on leadsheets for new songs and playing songs accurately that I haven't played in a long time, I believe that I also may use something I call "phonographic memory". It's like photographic memory but in an aural sense: I can replay in my mind what I have heard fairly precisely, probably from years of memorizing music. That's how I know when sheet music is wrong or incomplete: it doesn't match what I've heard.
I pretty much learn songs in the same manner as you do, but there's more to it that your next question hits on...
Some musicians are able to play any song ‘on the fly’ that they can hear off the top of their head, and be able to flesh out the chord changes ‘in real time’ as well. Who among us can do this?
In addition to finding out how others of you go about memorizing songs, I’m also interested in finding out how to master the technique of performing songs completely by ear ‘on the fly’.
Scott
I can play songs "on the fly" pretty much, though if I'm playing solo I have to have heard the song in it's entirety at least once (and people coming up and humming it won't work even though they think it will). If jamming with a band, as long as I know what key we're in I can pretty much delay my notes/chords ever so slightly to allow me to get the song idea and then I can play it.
Ear training usually comes down to chord and interval recognition. You have to be able to recognize note intervals and chord progressions to be able to relate them to the keyboard or whatever you play. Some do it by nature and I think I do it as a matter of experience. Then it comes down to logic - what fits within the key and progression you are in and what doesn't. Eliminate all that doesn't and half the battle is over. The rest is intuition.
Then there is "the zone". That's what my wife calls it - she can tell when I'm in it. It's a zen-like state where you relax to the point of being on auto-pilot. Everything analytical that we learn and know can get in the way of pure music. One side of the brain hears the music while the other side is busy turning that into numbers/scales/logic and we kick the music back and forth between hemispheres, slowing us down and causing us to doubt ourselves. But if you can relax enough, you can play without all the number-crunching. I look away from the keyboard and try to relax completely. One trick is to try some simple math like adding up the coins that are in your pocket while playing to tie up your analytical hemisphere. Or I could be full of crap but somehow I think this is part of the key.
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