This topic has come up so emotionally in the Folk Singers wise up thread that I thought it was worth its own thread. Not to get emotional, or nothing... For those who have trouble learning lyrics, I thought it would be helpful for us to give some little tricks that we use, in hopes that they would be of help. I dealt with this issue the last couple of days, and I thought it might be worthwhile to say how I approached the task.
A couple of days ago, I received a call from the Pastor of a church where my gospel quartet was scheduled to sing. The Pastor requested that we do What A Friend We Have In Jesus. That's a song I've known most of for most of my life. On ocassion, I've taken the time to learn all the words, but because I don't sing the song often, the words slip away. Because I only had a couple of days to commit the song back to memory, and I didn't want to use a lyric sheet (which would have been fine, as the congregation was singing from a hymnal) I approached the process in much the way that I do when I learn a new song.
Some things that work for me:
Type out the words: because I am a visual person, the process of typing out the words is a helpful first step in learning them. Seeing the words on paper somehow burns them into my brain. Once I've typed them out, I attack the song a verse at a time. I try singing as much of it as I can remember without looking at the words, and then I go back and see where I messed up. I spend more time looking at (and reading out loud) the lines of the verse and then go back to try it again. Reading the lines out loud helps me to get a feel for the rhythm of the words. Many lines in songs become permanently burned into my head, just because of the rhythm and interplay of the words. How could anyone ever forget "Old Mother Flipper-Flopper jumped out of bed?" Reading the lines out loud also helps me to not only hear the words, but hear what they're saying. As an example, take the line "Trouble in my way, I have to cry some time, (repeat) I lie awake at night, but that's all right." I can identify strongly with those lines. They speak to me because they are true, and something I've experienced. Singing is far more than remembering words. Remembering the words is very important, but if they don't have any meaning to you, you might as well sing the phone book.
As I was working on What A Friend We Have In Jesus, I kept messing up in two or three places. I kept singing "We should never get discouraged," when the line is "We should never be discouraged." I resolved that problem by visualizing a big capital B in bold type face and underlined. I was also singing "Who will all our burdens share" when the line is "All our sorrows share." That was easy to correct because I exagerated the "s" sound of "sorrows" and "share" several times, and I wore a new little groove in the corner of my brain.
Today, I sang the song without a lyric sheet. And I sang "we should never B discouraged" without a hitch, and "Who will all our Sorrows Share" without the need to exagerate the "s"s ridiculously.
So c'mon, Catters... lend a hand to the learning impaired. They are us.