Learning and remembering the words..

Subject: RE: Learning and remembering the words..
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 02:39 PM

Says it all!

Subject: RE: Learning and remembering the words..
From: JHW
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 04:58 PM

Don't cautiously scroll through the song in your head before its your go. You may stop dead and think you've forgotten it. Sing it for real and you'll probably sail through no problem.

Subject: RE: Learning and remembering the words..
From: GUEST,The man from UNCOOL
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 05:49 PM

  I learnt a Peggy Seeger lullaby which rhymed the last line of each verse with the first line of the next.  You *couldn't* get it out of order.  I say "couldn't" but, when I revisited the lyrics some time later, I found I’d cut’n’shut two verses and ‘lost’ the end and beginning of a sequential pair!
  Finding more songs like that would solve the problem!

Subject: RE: Learning and remembering the words..
From: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 05:55 PM

  I second John Routledge’s, Jeeneia’s, Nigel Parsons’, EKanne’s, Allen C’s & best bet’s idea(s)* about writing lyrics down / having a small cheat card, etc…  with some riders, or additions.  If you’re of the generation that learnt to write before you could type, WRITE the lyrics out (muscle memory, if nothing else).
* all way up, before Seaking replied to their posts.
  Artful Codger makes a useful additional point about repunctuating borrowed / transcribed lyrics (if you know enough grammar for the originals to be a problem.  Btw, AC, I didn't know it was an American practice to initial-cap. the first lines:  I’m sure it’s widely used in hymnals, [UK] Victorian song-sheets, etc.).
  If there’s enough room on the page, and the content suits it, you could even remove the breaks between lines, so sentences flow on [not to make prose, but to e.g. halve the number of printed / written lines].  Print off / Write your transcriptions with the paper in landscape format (= most desktop computer screens), if that helps fit one page.  As long as content suits, this may help the narrative element of story-songs.
  Clearly, the image-linking technique seems to work for you:  Abuwood, it may indeed be called mind-mapping;  it’s certainly like the methods advocated by Harry Lorayne (and ? others) in his Super-Power Memory books [my dad had some, published in the 50s], though not termed that, then.
  puck recommends learning from CDs / YouTube.  With respect, I think learning from another’s performance is not the most helpful:  you learn THEIR version, not yours (including, likely, their [regional] accent).  Go back to writing down the lyrics;  READ them back to yourself, over and over, ignoring the music, just using the rhythm of the speech.  This should better inform your musical rendering, when it comes.
  Further, record (or, get a friend to) the spoken version of it and play it through headphones, and / or on your personal stereo [out-of-date cultural reference, I know:  see why I m called The Man from UNCOOL!!!]  Listening back while you jog, or walk, or have sex, or anything you do rhythmically, is a great way to embed the rhythmic aspect of the words into your animal brain [I confess I haven’t myself road-tested the sex method:  she objects to my wearing earplugs… ]
  If you like their rendering, get a friend or loved one to record it spoken, and send yourself off to sleep to the sound of it.  I wouldn’t be surprised if you can get programmable headphones / bedside radios that fade out gently to silence;  you can definitely get radios that cut off after a pre-set time (which you set, ideally, to after you’ll have dropped off).  If used as a sleep-inducer, it won’t seem like “learning”.
  Having used that method to learn the words in order, record yourself humming a verse, and play THAT to yourself on loop (again, during a jog, walk, whatever:  set the rhythm to suit the song.  Finally, record yourself singing the song, from the cheat-sheet, and play THAT back over to yourself, similarly.  That way (rather longer-winded to describe than to fix), will ensure you learn it in your OWN voice / timbre / pacing, rather than that of someone else.
  Good luck

Subject: RE: Learning and remembering the words..
From: GUEST,Captainswing
Date: 05 Jan 19 - 06:44 PM

This is my method:
1. Use a paper copy(pc) - sing the song over and over and over and over and over again with the pc
2. Try singing the song without the pc - when you make a mistake refer to the pc then sing the over and over and over and over and over again without the pc but referring when you make a mistake
3. When doing something else e.g. driving, cooking, cleaning etc, try to sing the song (perhaps in your head). When you get to a part you can't remember try to drag it out of your memory, it will be there somewhere! This really is the most useful part.
4. Repeat 1, 2 and 3 until you are reasonably confident you know the song
5 Practise the song repeatedly without the pc - refer to memory when you make mistakes, refer to pc only as a very last resort
6 Continue to go over the song when you are doing something else - this really is the most useful part.
7 Destroy the pc - get rid of it - do not keep files - do not refer to it again - any changes to the song from now on will become your own interpretation
8 Continue to go over the song when you are doing something else - this really is the most useful part.

Subject: RE: Learning and remembering the words..
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 08 Jan 19 - 05:08 PM

Well, I do try, and I think I have about 50 songs I can do without words in front of me, confident in leading the song, but another 1000 or so where I really know all the words, but only if someone else is singing it!
I don't generally object to people having to use song sheets, whether in an informal session or even a professional performance (as suggested by Desi C above, so long as that use is the occasional glance down/unobtrusive.
I was however a bit gobsmacked to see on one of yesterday's Antique Roadshow TV programmes, somewhere in the SE of England, a wee diversion into shanty singing, getting the antiques dealers involved in it too, but singing with music stands and words in front of the whole group: first they sang "John Kanaka naka" then went on to "Drunken Sailor". Now, fair enough to let the antique dealers, possibly virgins at shanty singing, have a copy of the words, but the rest of them.....who professed to be regular shanty singers? The lead singer even had to glance down at his music stand for the first line of "What shall we do with the drunken sailor"! I mean, come on, lads.......!!