Keeping up your rep.

[montana]

I've been playing a little over a year now and I've got down about 100 fiddle tunes and a nights worth of swing tunes. Too many to play every day so i do two things to keep them all under my fingers. I put the titles on index cards and play through the cards every day flipping the cards so I now where I left off. I also create back ups for each tune in 'Band in a Box' and combine the cardlist with the backups for practice.

How do you keep up your collection of tunes that you play. I was at a irish jam a while back and some of those people knew hunderds of tunes.

[catmandu2]

That's a great idea--I wish I had a system to keep organized and practiced. I've had existential crises over this back when I was collecting banjo tunes: I didn't know how to keep track of tunings, much less songs. I'm afraid I don't have a system, and am pulled in too many directions anyway: this weekend, I have to learn a dozen originals as I have a fiddle gig. I've never played with this group before, so it's pretty much on the fly. I play other instruments in other groups, so that's not so much of a problem. But I know a couple of hundred songs and maybe more...as you mentioned, the real challenge is remembering tunes. Unfortunately, I've forgotton so many. I don't play much classical guitar anymore, and I abhor the thought of forgetting all the Bach I used to have memorized. :(

[fishdawg40]

I've been playing a little over a year now and I've got down about 100 fiddle tunes

Wow! That's pretty impressive. Were you a raw beginner when you started a year ago? And if you weren't did you already play fiddle tunes?

[montana]

No I've been playing music all my life and I've been playing gigs steady for 42 years. I played fiddle 25 years ago but had trouble with my left hand when I tried to play again so I took up the mando instead.

[250sc]

I have to use a list too. It comes in handy with you're at a jam and trying to figure out what songs you have in common with the other pickers.

[acousticnotes]

I've been playing a little over a year now and I've got down about 100 fiddle tunes and a nights worth of swing tunes. Too many to play every day so i do two things to keep them all under my fingers. I put the titles on index cards and play through the cards every day flipping the cards so I now where I left off. I also create back ups for each tune in 'Band in a Box' and combine the cardlist with the backups for practice.

How do you keep up your collection of tunes that you play. I was at a irish jam a while back and some of those people knew hunderds of tunes.

Same here. I found index cards work best for me and use them as you do.

joe

[Matt DeBlass]

for me it's (vocal) songs. I've got the words and chords to well over 100 rattling around in my head, but I keep forgetting which ones I know.
Index cards sound like a good idea, I've got a list on a Word document.

[JeffD]

I seem to be able to remember tunes pretty well. I have yet to forget a tune. Well I should say, I have yet to fail to recall a tune that I once knew. Sometimes it takes a while, but I get the tune back.

I have been challenged in this, finding a pile of old set lists from a band I was in back in the Cretaceous Period. Some of the tunes I still play and some I haven't played since then, but it only took a bit of concentration, playing the tunes in order the way we played them in concert, and they all came back to me.

Sometimes I need to have someone start the tune, but I always seem to come up with it.

Now linking the names of the tunes with the tune itself, forget it. The cross reference between tune and tune name has been lost.

[Jackie Walters]

How do I remember tunes? Well, since I'm 50 now, I started to take Ginko Biloba, man o mister, that stuff really works for me!! LOL..Well, I do have a list. But I sure do like the index card idea..I'll have to pass that along to the band!

[Jill McAuley]

I play irish trad stuff and know about 200 tunes right now - On a daily basis I have a core of "favorites" that I have to play whenever I pick up the mandolin, plus whatever new tunes I'm working on. In addition, I try to cycle through my "B" list of tunes 1-2 times a week to keep them relatively fresh in my memory. I have a Word doc of all the tunes I know, mainly because I'm geeky and like lists. There's something very satisfying and reinforcing about adding the names of new tunes to it!

Cheers,
Jill

[JeffD]

I guess this counts.

Every now and again I get paranoid that I am forgetting tunes, so I sit down of an afternoon and play every tune I can think of. I play this game where I play each tune through three times, and I have to go to the next tune without a break. No reference materials or lists, just remember another tune. And no repeats.

Each tune reminds me of another tune and I can go a long time. Usually I do tunes in groups, Irish polkas, or waltzes, or sometimes I do set lists I recall, or all the tunes this person or that person taught me. Now and again I start to get nervous in the B part of the third time through, but another tune will pop into my head. But usually I keep two or three tunes in my "back pocket", ready in case a tune doesn't come to me. I really get nervous if I have used up my back pocket and get to the third time through without a new tune, but usually the pressure just causes a whole group of tunes to come to me, like waltzes with State names, or strathspeys or something.

I go as long as I can without significant hesitation, and without repeating a tune. These days its more often something physical that ends the train of tunes, perhaps a bathroom break, or a hand cramp. But if I take care of necessities just before I start, and take two extra strength tylenol, and relax - well it seems I can go on for ever. I have exceeded 4 hours more than a few times.

Thats not really a lot of tunes. Its a lot to think of without references but its a fraction of the tunes I know and could play if someone were to remind me of them.

[Martian]

I like you r rolidex card system,but I like matt have problems with lyrics. A member change took place in our band, and I inherited the lead vocal part. The real problem was I knew choruses (spelling?) of hundereds of songs as well as the first three words of tons of songs, and not the rest. When I was a teenager, I wanted to do standup,and I have come to the conclusion that a good comic is also someone with great recall insomuch as a given topic leads to something humerous that he remembered about that topic. If you think about it, at least for me, songs are like jokes. Musicians are subject to thousands of songs, or jokes, and can remember two at any given time