Remembering what you played...

[comfortstarr]

What do people do to remember what they played? I've got snippets of music recorded all over the dern place. When I listen back to them, some are hard to re-create.

I've decided to make tabs for guitar and bass parts. It's a little manually intensive, but I hope it will work. I thought about taking a quicktime clip through a digital camera of playing the principal parts.

Anyone else have any methods?

[Devlars]

Yeah...it's called practice. Rather than the once-it's-done-you-never-play-it-again method, practice works wonders for remembering parts that you've written and recorded.

[Amute]

yes the remembering thing! Try to set a pace for what you're working on with that inst. Maybe triplet slap teq.'s on the bass or sweeps on the guitar. Whatever it is stay with it until you make it apart of you over all sound and it's no longer a matter of working on it, it's just part of you playing. Like the feeling of ripping through a song you know by heart and backwards.

Just play the part till you can't forget it....Goodluck!

[Keegan]

What I've done in the past is do a quick recording on my porta02, but before I make the recording I play it over and over, not nessecarily so I don't mess it up in the recording, but to train my fingers. The combination of the recording and the muscle memory helps me.

I've picked up tapes that I've recorded over months ago, and still been able to replay songs after two or three listens and trying to play along. I guess that is sort of a take on the practice a lot way of doing it.

Tabs will prove invaluable if you take the time to write them. If you combine writing tabs, even scibbles in a note book which is what most of my tabs amount to, practice and listen to a sloppy tape as a reminder, you'll probably be able to recreate anyhing you've played in the past.

[johnny7]

It is funny when you have to learn your own stuff. I recently played a show with my old band and found myself in the humorous position of listening to our CDs to learn my own guitar parts! Coping my own licks...

[ubertar]

Man, this is so frustrating. Really early yesterday morning, I woke up when my girlfriend got up for a job interview, and still half-asleep, I had a melody in my head. I figured out in my head how to play it, repeating it over and over until she left, then I recorded it into my digitech bnx3 (a multieffects pedal with built-in recording/looping functions). I didn't turn on the amp because I didn't want to wake up the neighbors (it wasn't even 7 yet) but that shouldn't affect anything. I went back to sleep. When I went to listen to it later, there was nothing there. The track was recorded on, but just with silence. I've completely forgotten the melody. Damn.

[heylow]

Yeah...it's called practice. Rather than the once-it's-done-you-never-play-it-again method, practice works wonders for remembering parts that you've written and recorded.

Yeah, right. That can be a bit difficult depending on your situation. In my situation, I play everything but drums on record. When demoing, everything's quick and one-off. It's called getting ideas down....or....demoing. There just wouldn't be enough time in the world to practice every little thing I plan to record properly at a future date over 15 or 30 songs. Bass, guitars, percussion parts, keys, funky shit being tossed around the house....and that's not even counting the SOUND...gear settings, pedal settings, alcohol levels (!) errr...

My method is just to track demos with seperate tracks and take notes on stuff I know I'll forget. Luckily, I have a pretty good ear so picking out notes is not too difficult with something soloed but SOUNDS that meant nothing then but are cool to me now are either noted or lost

I don't know that there CAN be some difinitive way that wouldn't require extensive time and some sort of media (ie the camera idea).

I guess at the end of the day....nothing is precious....it's all just moments in time captured that may never be fully recreated. Fuck 'em....make more!


heylow

[bobbydj]

Don't you just love digital shit??

[bad_dude_69]

i have this problem too as i play with a couple different tunings and do a lot of fingerpicking, arpeggios combined with hammerons & pulloffs etc, not easy to tab out in a jiffy. for the most part, i play it until it sticks and then play it again whenever i get the chance, like the next morning & etc. i know i've lost some cool things over the years and i still have a lot of loose parts all over the place. videotaping isn't a bad idea, though i've never really had the commitment to do that. to be kind of darwinian about it, i usually just have faith that if it's super good, it will stick.

[xonlocust]

to be kind of darwinian about it, i usually just have faith that if it's super good, it will stick.

yep. i was just gonna say that. if it didn't stick in your head from one setting to the next, it probably wasn't that good of an idea. that said, shitty hand held recorders are cool too for jogging the memory.

[comfortstarr]

to be kind of darwinian about it, i usually just have faith that if it's super good, it will stick.

I've found this to be partially true as well. I do remember the "better" ideas. But still...

Sure practice is great. But as someone else said... it's about getting the idea down. I think I'll do the tab thing for a while and see how it works.

The other thing I've done, especially when just sitting on my couch with my MD is to play the chords/notes of each part very slowly after going through it. This makes it easier when you come back later.

I guess this is more about just doing whatever it is that works, everytime, not getting lazy about it.

[rob@SigmaDelta]

Uh. what ever happened to practice? If you play a riff you like, play it again, and again and again and again till you hear it in your dreams.

People complain about using equipment as a crutch for bad music, wouldnt this be one of the biggest instances?

[bad_dude_69]

People complain about using equipment as a crutch for bad music, wouldnt this be one of the biggest instances?

i can see where you're coming from here because i've been there. i own a looper and for years that was practacally the basis for my writing practice. i would loop something and keep putting parts over it 'til it sounded good. i realized after too long that:

a.) i was beginning to forget all the parts/layers by the time i'd constructed a kick-ass loop
b.) i'd lost the ability to just fuckin' jam out, fuckin' rock out and have a fuckin' good time.
c.) i'd become complacent and wouldn't venture to "new" areas of the fretboard
d.) my noodling became uninspiring, i would get bored easily and stop.

e.) i'd lost the ability to come up with good stand-alone riffs.

while the tool itself was instrumental in allowing me to view the guitar from a new perspective, the way i was using it over time caused me to regress in other respects. boy did i have to ween myself. having been serious about guitar for about ten years, i'd have to say that the truest, most undeniable way to move forward is to try everything all the time and mix it up. by this i mean not just the practices that're best for you, explore the ones that may at first seem counterintuitive -- fill in the gaps. there's a lot to be said for flexibility and adaptability. i'll be the last one to fault someone for looking for a shortcut, but i think it's true that sometimes we spend more energy looking for those "easy outs" than we would by just hitting the trail and hitting it hard.

[Meriphew]

I'm always recording my ideas. While doing so, I talk out my settings (guitar/keyboards/presets/etc) while the tape is rolling so that when I go back and listen to the ideas, the settings are there as well. I also jot down notes on a pad of paper. If my pedal board settings are too crazy, I'll snap a digi pic.

[sonikbliss]

When i was recording to my cassette 4 track i used to do a very basic tab drawn out in my notebook. Usually just the chords and the neck position and i could figure the rest out from there. (you could just fill a binder with sheets that already have the bars printed out, or get one of those stamps for a chord chart) Now that i do everything in ProTools I just note basically the same stuff in the comments part of the tracks plus the tuning that the guitar was in. I will document the amp settings also usually. You have to make a little bit of an effort but it's very much worth it when you find a badass riff from 10 years ago and can play it again in 10 minutes.