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I just think that remembering music is a special talent. I wonder if there are very good violinists who don't attain fame because of limited ability to remember music as would be needed in most classical situations ?
That is an inrteresting question we have here. Today on my practice i was thinking about it and tried to play a piece that i've learned more than a year ago and never returned to it during the year... I couldn't play it through at the first time... But. Couple times to remnid + couple times to polish and i can play it through now without a problem.. But this one is a simple tune. If there were something more difficult i'm not sure that i could remember...
Oliver said
I just think that remembering music is a special talent. I wonder if there are very good violinists who don't attain fame because of limited ability to remember music as would be needed in most classical situations ?
Perhap's that's why big band's use sheet music in front of them, because they can't memory retain all the song's they know. I wonder if it's there just in case they need to look at it to refresh the memory.
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I don't know as it is a special talent so much as maybe more like a skill learned if the type of music you are attracted to is more usually played from memory. I have known a lot of musicians over the years who knew a pretty impressive amount of material. People in Rock "cover" bands, for example, often know so many songs that they pretty much can be called a "jukebox with legs". Some of them can play about any top ten or classic rock song that came out over a decade or more, because that is what they do. Some of those boys and girls are simply mind-boggling in that regard.
I am pretty sure it was something that I got better at as I went along, rather than being something I was born with. I remember it being hard at first, and feeling like I sucked at it. But especially in band/ensemble situations, you also learn to take cues from the other instruments and the song sort of reminds you of what to play as you go along. Even if you maybe wouldn't remember how it goes just offhand, somebody starts the intro or goes into a particular part and your hands just remember what to do. Well, after enough practice and rehearsal. LOL
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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Still slugging along on this project. Cards are filling up, slow but steady.
I'm thinking that about the end of the month, I'll finalize my decisions about intros and outros and maybe change the key on a few of the pieces one more time if it seems necessary. Don't have to play in every key in the book, but if too many songs are in the same keys it doesn't use the range of the instruments as well, and it can sound more tedious to a listener.
I haven't been counting plays on the acoustic so far. But I've gone to keeping the acoustic out in the hallway and playing while waiting for my son's bus in the afternoons. That's an extra 20-40 minutes of practice on the acoustic, so I've been getting my playing on it to sound at least a bit better. Nothing great, but enough to at least hear the potential for some songs to sound a bit better or "more fitting" with the tone/timbre of the acoustic instead of the electric. Since I am thinking of this project/goal as a sort of "set-list", changing between the electric and acoustic could be good "showmanship".
Fiddlestix said
How's about doing a vid ?
Of what in particular? I think of this as a kinda healthy length list of songs/pieces for 6 months. To get a vid with 17 songs on it to turn out as anything but a bad joke at this point doesn't sound likely to me.
I really don't like doing video. I won't even usually stand around for still shots. Not very photogenic, I'm afraid. I'll be doing good if I manage to get vid shot for Ghostbusters. Bile them Cabbages Down took 9 takes to get something I wasn't particularly happy with, but could at least bring myself to turn in, and it was pretty lame. Not real eager to jump back into the wild world of trying to shoot video. Of the things that I have done musically or studied, video has never been one of them. LOL
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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Ok, I have drawn this particular project to a close, and so I will report in.
While filling out check-marks on cards for an arbitrary number of repetitions may work for some folks, I don't feel it worked particularly well for me. I found I wasn't all that conscientious about noting how many plays, and that stopping between songs even just to scribble in the little X actually sort of breaks the "flow" when I'm playing. If one was doing it with maybe just a couple new songs to get them "played in" so one is fluent enough to start developing them further into a nice personal version, it might work. But for me, it ended up just being awkward and kind of a pain in the butt as a "teaching trick".
That doesn't make it necessarily a bad trick to try, but with a list this size, it just didn't work as well for me as I hoped.
Part of the problem, I think, is that one of the things I like best is to just pick up the instrument and play during the course of the day and this sort of a routine just felt a bit too regimented for me.
I do feel that cards with a few reminders as to things like key and tempo can be good though. Sometimes when I am playing, I just have a moment where I can't think of what to play next, and drawing a card out of the deck got me to play longer instead of just setting the instrument down and going to do something else. Sometimes a lot longer. LOL
Another problem I ran into was that sticking to a playlist and not working on any new material got to feeling too stagnant, and was just not natural to my way of learning things.
I did get in a fair bit of practice, and the songs on that playlist are coming along. But I don't feel I reached the somewhat hopeful goal of having a full hour of material practised enough that I would feel comfortable if I were to play it in public. I knew that goal was rather ambitious when I set it, and I will get to it eventually. But the "100 card" trick I was trying wasn't the "magic" I was hoping for, and that's fine too. Finding out what doesn't work for you is one of the steps in finding out the things that do work well for you.
I am making a new set of cards to use as a "random selector" sort of thing, since I feel I stumbled across something good there. For someone who is self-teaching, it is an easy way to get a more or less even amount of practice over a fair amount of material and one doesn't fall into a rut of always starting off with the same songs. Also one doesn't neglect "easy" pieces one learned earlier, since they come up in the rotation and get a bit of practice and development. A good teacher would probably do that, but a little trick or game like a deck of cards can help when trying to do it on one's own, I think.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
I still maintain writing the song's down on a sheet of paper will accomplish the same thing as the 3x5 cards. I didn't see any advantage's to the card's to begin with. You don't have to begin at the top of the list, you can start in the middle or the bottom of the list. Just pick a song at random and spend more than 2.5 minute's practicing it before moving to the next song.
But,,,, that's just me. 
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Cards fit in a shirt pocket and can be shuffled once in a while. But other than that, they don't have any real big functional advantage. I just use notecards or small memo pads more often than a whole sheet of paper for such things.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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your thing is your thing, I think its a cool idea. Thanks for sharing.
"Please play some wrong notes, so that we know that you are human" - said to Jascha Heifetz.
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