What makes a song hard or easier to learn?

[Phil Starr]

I guess it's personal to an extent but playing with three covers bands I learn a lot of songs, mostly at fairly short notice. With Christmas coming up I'm getting suggestions for songs we'll only play a couple of times a year and a lot of them are written by 'proper' musicians and have a lot of arrangement going on where they look superficially simple but have a lot going on musically. We've also had a run of illness and had to use a lot of deps so they prefer to do simpler songs for what are one off gigs for them. It's a given for me that I don't have notes in front of me when I play.

 

More or less in order I find these make things more difficult

 

Songs I've never heard, it's so much easier if it's a song you can hum along to.

Complex arrangements.

Rhythmic complexity (took ages to get the Steve Harris thing)

Chord changes part way through a bar.

Every verse is different

Stops 

 

So what makes your heart sink when the singer says 'Let's learn three new songs for a one off gig'

[Lozz196]

For me it’s timing changes, if it’s a straight ahead song at the same pace then that makes it so much easier for me. Wayward Son by Kansas took a while to get to say the least.

[uk_lefty]

Not coming back in on the one after a stop... Really throws me! 

Really fast chord changes that make little sense to me

That thing the Killers do where they do half or three quarters of what you think is the verse, skip the pre chorus, throw in a bridge, go back to the second part of the chorus, hold onto a chord where you'd usually change.... When you're learning this stuff on the fly it's so hard to keep up, then commit it to memory out of a set of 100 songs. 

 

Those things can often beat me. Sometimes I'm up for the challenge (Killers songs being worth the effort to get right) other times it's just not worth the effort.

[Franticsmurf]

Patterns certainly make things easier for me - so in answer to your question it would be songs that don't have an obvious pattern or, more sneaky, where the pattern changes. Ironically some of my favourite tunes buck the pattern trend and I like that in a song. 

 

I play in a band that has 'Help Me Rhonda' in the list and for no apparent reason I have a mental block on the chorus of that song. Yes, I know its simple but I always have to check my crib notes for that one. I guess it's become a habit now and were I to not check the notes, I'd do ok.

[tauzero]

I remember Jonathan King once saying that the average song structure is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, clever bit, verse, chorus. I find it starts becoming difficult when it steps outside that general rule of thumb - for example "Place your hands" which is all over the place and which you have to remember bit by bit. I also found some Green Day songs tricky to remember as the chord sequences were somewhat weird and then got followed by outros with completely unrelated chords.

[chris_b]

7 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

What makes a song hard or easy to learn. . . .

 

Experience and practice makes everything easier. 

 

All songs follow patterns of chords. Know your patterns.

[Phil Starr]

6 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

That thing the Killers do where they do half or three quarters of what you think is the verse, skip the pre chorus, throw in a bridge, go back to the second part of the chorus, hold onto a chord where you'd usually change.... When you're learning this stuff on the fly it's so hard to keep up, then commit it to memory out of a set of 100 songs.

 

11 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I remember Jonathan King once saying that the average song structure is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, clever bit, verse, chorus. I find it starts becoming difficult when it steps outside that general rule of thumb - for example "Place your hands" which is all over the place and which you have to remember bit by bit.

I feel the pain, though as you both say it makes for a more interesting song but I curse when someone wants you to play one of these with a couple of days notice. One thing that always trips me is where there are maybe only two or three chords and in just one or two parts of the song where the chord sequence changes but the rhythm doesn't.

[Phil Starr]

Genre often makes things more difficult too, I briefly played in a country band and thought foolishly 'all root-fifth and on the beat' Completely missed that this leaves nowhere to hide and the bass is prominent so you can't afford to be sloppy. Every genre has it's meme's and looks easy when someone else is playing. 

[T-Bay]

Weirdly I find it’s often just a different bass line writer (if that’s the correct term). I can happily play complex stuff from one band but struggle with seemingly simpler stuff from another. Some bass lines/ sequences just seem to fit my way of playing better than others.

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, Phil Starr said:

Genre often makes things more difficult too, I briefly played in a country band and thought foolishly 'all root-fifth and on the beat' Completely missed that this leaves nowhere to hide and the bass is prominent so you can't afford to be sloppy. Every genre has it's meme's and looks easy when someone else is playing. 

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Dad3353

[Little Dragon]

The ones that seem simple and aren't. Call Me by Blondie on tonight's setlist, got to be so careful in the break.

[TimR]

11 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

So what makes your heart sink when the singer says 'Let's learn three new songs for a one off gig'

 

Nothing. That's my kind of gig. 

[TimR]

Random 2 or 3 beat bars at the end of verses so the singer can make each verse slightly different. 

 

Doesn't throw me, but you can tell which members of the band have just learned the first verse and chorus, as they're the ones looking confused when the singer doesn't stop singing when they're expecting them to. 😆

Edited November 18, 2023 by TimR

[martin8708]

Some bass lines just seem to make sense , even if they are complex or busy .

Some three chord songs can really mess with your playing if they don’t follow a natural progression .

Knowing the song in your head helps massively .

[msb]

I listen to the material several times before I pick up the bass. And then chart it out , and then write out specific parts , and finally the form. At first I’ll play along to what I’ve written , but try to become familiar enough not to rely on paper prompts.
 

If I find a part that’s difficult , then I go to work on it. I have a considerable amount of material to memorize for three projects. I’m quite comfortable learning new things. Much of that time is spent with headphones. 

[Delberthot]

for me a song is always going to be easier to learn if I actually like it and harder if I don't

[tauzero]

4 minutes ago, Delberthot said:

for me a song is always going to be easier to learn if I actually like it and harder if I don't

 

"Dance the night away" is probably the easiest song I've ever learnt (two chords all the way through) and it's one of the ones I loathe the most. Not sure if I ever played it on a five string, but on a four string with 26 frets I just kept going up the neck until I got to the end, then came back down again, rinse and repeat. Otherwise I'd probably have died of boredom.

[Downunderwonder]

Bassy guitars.

[Japhet]

I find learning the structure of some songs a proper ball ache. They're often simple to play but easy to forget what goes where.

[msb]

Musicians develop quite an odd memory. I’ll lose someone’s name while I’m still shaking hands but I can file away changes and form , even when playing something off the cuff that I do not know.

[Phil Starr]

22 hours ago, TimR said:

you can tell which members of the band have just learned the first verse and chorus,

That's almost a thread de-rail

 

One of my pet hates. They are always the ones that suggest the songs with all the clever arrangements, never get on top of the tricky bits and then tell us it is more 'creative' to do our own version with just verse/chorus and an extended guitar solo over 32 bars of  E7.

[Lfalex v1.1]

A mix in which the bass is clear/at least audible to work from. If it's buried or murkily mixed it makes it a whole lot harder. 

Tab or notation or lack thereof. 

A genre or style with which you might not be very familiar or proficient. 

A song which leans heavily on an unusual technique. 

 

 

 

[msb]

On 19/11/2023 at 09:40, Japhet said:

I find learning the structure of some songs a proper ball ache. They're often simple to play but easy to forget what goes where.

Chart ‘em so you can see the structure. It makes the form much easier to memorize.

[BillyBass]

I like learning new songs and the more I do it, the better I get at it.  If a song is complex, with several slight changes, I might have to write it all down but by playing it over and over again I'll get there.

 

The one song I have tried that I can't do is 'Hit me with your rhythm stick'.  I don't have the chops.  I can't play fast enough fingerstyle.  I'll keep working at it though.

[Newfoundfreedom]

In my case it's my own ineptitude.