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How I Learned 40 Songs in 2 Days

A New Gig
One evening after working my day job, I made an off-handed comment to my guitar-playing buddy, Ross, that I was interested in playing the drums more than a couple times a month with the church band. It had been several months since I had played with a club band and I was ready to “kick it up a notch.”  Ross didn’t say much as we finished our conversation.

I didn’t think any more about it until Ross called the next day, offering me a gig with his current band.  He’s the musical director in a country rock band that plays shows in the greater Seattle area.  It was a great opportunity to work with some top-notch musicians so I didn’t have to think long before accepting the gig.  The first show was in two months so I thought there would be plenty of time to learn the tunes and rehearse with the band.

However, Ross wanted to start rehearsing soon to make sure we sounded good for our first gig.  So he called a rehearsal for “the day after tomorrow.”  I couldn’t say “no” so I asked for a song list and audio copies of the songs.

There were over 40 songs on the list: 14 original songs, 12 songs by the Eagles and 14 songs done by a variety of other artists.  Even though we weren’t going to go through all the songs at the first rehearsal, I couldn’t be sure which ones the band would want to practice.  That meant I had to learn all 40 songs in 2 days.

The Approach for Learning a Song
I’ve been in several situations where I had to learn a lot of songs in a short period of time.  One time I got called to fill in for a sick drummer friend of mine.  I had to learn 60 Elvis tunes during a car trip from Portland, Oregon to Kelowna, British Columbia (about 9 hours).  So I had an approach that had worked in the past.

The way I learn songs is by writing out a song sketch and reviewing the song sketch while listening to the song.  Then, if there’s enough time, I play along with a recording of the song as I read my song sketch.

When creating a song sketch, it’s important to focus on the following things:

  1. Write down the tempo, the song structure and the number of measures in each song part.
  2. Make note of any accents where the band plays together or any places in the song where the drums stop playing.
  3. If you think you’re going to have trouble remembering the basic drum beat for a song section, write it out.  The idea is to make enough notes so that you can remember what to play.

Song Sketches Save the Day
I call my notes a song sketch because I don’t write out every measure of music.  That would be too time consuming and more difficult to read.  I only write down the most important parts.

The sketches consist of one page for each song.  That way I can put the songs in the order that the band will play them.  Also, there’s plenty of space remaining on the paper to make additional notes.  In fact, I keep all my song sketches and refer back to them often, especially if I haven’t played a song for a long time.

Did I learn all 40 songs in 2 days?  I did!  I was ready to play all of the songs by the time I showed up for the first rehearsal.  Now I didn’t know every single beat to every song but the song sketches provided enough of a framework so that I could get through every song and sound pretty good!  As we went through each song, I made notes and wrote down parts that were important (like endings).

Next, I’ll go into more detail about how you can create your own song sketch.



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