I don’t memorize things because I don’t play anywhere else except for my living room chair! I just play with music until I can just not focus on it as much. Kudos to anyone who can memorize where all the fills and variations are!
(Also, I have only been playing for a year, so take what I say with a grain of salt)
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I’ve noticed that issues with memory became less important when i started thinking of phrases of music? I’m just an armchair guy. I’m not good, i only been playing for 9 months. But recently started with the whole shapes and phrases thing as a primary focus? What a difference! Learned the first pre-verse of N.I.B. in About 90 minutes. That would have taken me 3 weeks a couple months ago.
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Since I had COVID last year, my focus and concentration suck. For most of my life I have had an eidetic memory. I could remember fine details of situations, lyrics, scenes from my childhood that blew my parents away etc… I could remember and recite the books of the Bible when I was 5 years old, recite verbatim the Declaration of Independence in 1976 when given it as a punishment for sleeping in history class, and even remember the smells, body language, exact wording from suspects from when I was a narcotics officer. Really, I could commit and remember anything I ever read. People called me the worlds largest storehouse of useless information. Now, since COVID, I can’t remember hour to hour. Long term memory is still good but short term is horrible. I cannot focus or concentrate and playing the bass is not as fun as it used to be. Before COVID, I nailed Billie Jean after the first or second attempt. Now, just playing roots and fifths makes me sweat. I really hope that over time my focus will come back to the levels I was at before. And I really need my memory to come back. It is frustrating ATM. This is why I have continued to buy equipment and bass guitars. I am hoping that the investment will make me able to work through this crap. As my late wife said, “You just spent xxxx dollars on that. You are going to play it, no excuses” (Paraphrased)
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Memory isn’t a fun issue. Nothing covid related for me. But i got a nice case of ppms (primary-progressive multiple sclerosis) meaning i got some neat little plaques in my brain ( (scleroses))
There is nothing in the world like knowing how much you’ve lost. So, i get this. I dont know how it is for you, but i know how it is for me.
I can remember my phone number that i learned when i was 4. I remember distinctly quite a great deal of my life, down to minute detail.
But i forget what i ate for lunch.
I remember electrical code, and can fully discuss.
Now, where was it that i put my wallet 5 minutes ago?
I dont have answers. But I’ve found that i learn and recall best early in the mornings. So i actually get up early to practice.
It’s made a real differences for me.
I hope it gets better for you, maybe someone here will have a trick for it, I’m sorry that i don’t.
Keep your head up, keep plucking. It’s there.
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Let me ask you, if 7 or 8 people on the forum lived within 1/2 hours drive of you and invited you to get together to jam, would you go?
Jamming with others, whether you know them or not, is just like when you first joined the forum. Scary, but, you managed to fit in and get involved 
You miss a lot of fun and can pick up a lot of good, and some not so good, information playing with others. Just saying 
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Haha yes, I probably would! Although I’m a very let’s read the music guy it would still be fun.
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Not sure if you are saying you prefer to play from sheet music.
If you are just be aware that players at most jam session typically read/play from lead sheets that show at least the words and chord progressions.
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Only in it for just about three months , I’m 56 and I’ll be honest I find I am amazed at how I do remember the the pieces I study and play . Very weird , it’s like lyrics to songs you kind of just know when your wrong .Maybe some subconscious phenomenon and won’t last … I do play through every lesson thoroughly but after awhile I just find I have it memorized wether I’m trying or not . On the flip side I’ll walk into the kitchen and can’t remember why I went in …
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Been there done that 
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{sigh} Yes, I do that all the time . . . and not only the kitchen . . . 
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Be thankful you remember where the kitchen is
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I can memorize fairly easily, I use tabs and pick songs to learn that aren’t that painfully difficult. However, if I don’t continue to practice a few of them and not play them for say, a month or two, I’ll have to just about start over when I revisit that particular song. Major repetition is the key for me.
I had a savage memory when I was a letter carrier at the post office, names, addresses on my routes were almost 100% memorized within a 4-5 day period, anywhere between 400 to 600 people depending on the routes…but leave those routes like I did for a 3 month surgery and come back, it was a few days of a break-in/refresh period when sorting mail again for those routes.
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I am fully afflicted with c.r.s. having a degenerative nerological issue Dont help. And maybe some of my activities in 20s and 30s weren’t conducive to retaining good memory function…
I can’t remember much. My short term is just Swiss cheesed. To play anything, i really need to have it up on a screen. If i dont have that prompt, I’ll just noodle about rather than try to play something, because its frustrating KNOWING that i know it and not being able to bring it out. And now where did i put my coffee? What was we taking about again?
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When practicing, or learning a new song a lot of musicians use a printed out Lead Sheet and a substantial Music Stand. I have seen some people that use a tablet on a stand, rather than a printed out sheet, but that brings up other issues such as how to move from page to page on a multi sheet score, or the battery running out of power.
By substantial I mean something along these lines:
Harder to tip over and the holes help the stand to not to act as a sail if/when you play outdoors with a breeze
If you go cheap like this stand
it will get knocked over sooner or later. Again, I say this from experience and remember an instance where I was outside with a group and the wind caught the stand and knocked it over and I lost one of my lead sheets. That was embarrassing, but a lesson learned.
Anyways, these are just my thoughts on using a stand.
The choice is still up to you
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Most songs would have similar components
Intro
Verse 1
Verse 2
Chorus
Verse 3
Bridge(option)
Chorus
Outtro.
Verses and chorus are the same. You just have to get the chords progression on the verse and chorus down. All you have to do is learning the fills and transitions then the hardest part of the songs is over. If you play anywhere outside your home it would be in front of other people and most time it’s not possible to sight read and plus probably the last thing you want to do playing live. You have to commit them to memory.
This is the goal of every songs I play. I treat every songs to gig ready. My cheat sheet would be the chords progression leads I’ll leave the rest to muscle memory. Once I got it down I’d add to my playlist. Every so often, I’d grab my book and go through my playlist with the cheat sheet sometimes I go at it for hours.
I was lucky to get invite to play some gig from time to time since bass player are harder to find than guitars, drums and keys. I just get the CD for the song’s rendition they are playing, I just break them down to root notes then fills. It’s easier to play it through with just roots so I’d finish the songs once it’s down the. I’d go through the fills and start the cycle again. This way I can memorize the chords progression I find that it’s much faster and easier to remember the entire song than learning section by section and it’s much harder to get lost in the middle.
I made enough mistakes playing live to automatically practice against stage traps and since it works well for me that’s my protocol. Not gonna lie, it takes a few hundreds repetition to get comfortable under your fingers but many fills and transitions would transfer from one song to another.
If you do play in a live gig remember this, may be one in a hundred in the audience would know what a bass is and what you are doing, (unless you are at the Wulpeck concert, lol) not even all of your band mate would know what you have coming and the mistakes you made. If you made mistakes just move on, dwelling on that would bound to mess up the rest of the songs.
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Doesn’t get any easier than that and is the main reason I feel Bass lines can be as easy or complicated to play as you want to make them
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Agreed, just don’t screw up the timing
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@John_E, I doubt you’re alone, and I know that many of us in here are in the same age group as you; I am exactly the same age. Yay 1967!!
It is a bit difficult trying to remember this stuff but I’m really enjoying it. I use almost all my spare time practicing. I have a regular job, a wife, and three adult “kids.” So I can’t spend the entire day and evening practicing but I do practice quite a bit. I do it as much as I can and obviously many people here may have different circumstances but I’m not expecting too much too quickly, I’m just hoping that in possibly a year or so I MIGHT be able to play with a small band in my area.
Oh, and Ari Cap’s book - Music Theory for the Bass Player is sooooo f’ing great!!! I ordered it after seeing another member mention it. It is an excellent book. 
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I’m actually in the 1966 camp, missed '67 by a few days, but close enough.
What I have found since my first post here 1 year ago is this…(spolier alert)…
The more you practice the easier it gets.
It gets easier much slower than I want it too.
But I thought about this recently.
Let’s say you nab a bass at say, 15.
If you were like me you had nothing but a lot of free time that was wasted, well, being wasted for many years to come after that, or sitting in my room listening to music and brooding about not having a girlfriend.
But if you nabbed a bass and sat in your room and played/practiced/learned bass in all those endless hours, say even 4-5 a day, you are damn good by say even 18, maybe later, maybe sooner.
So take 3 years, double or triple it cause it’s harder to learn when you are older, then divide by the 30-120 min maybe we can practice, then divide that by say 4 or 5/7ths cause we don’t have the time to practice every day, and you get a trajectory that starts making sense for our age group with family, work and other distractions.
I challanged myself to learn and record one of the 50 Song Challenge songs in one day, to see if I got any faster learning songs.
And I did it…
The next one took me two days…
It comes, just s lo w ly
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Just watched the videos you uploaded. Good stuff! 
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