So I picked Don’t Stop Believing for the first song to learn. I’ve been working at it for a good month and practice until my mind goes fuzzy, which doesn’t take long anymore.
What’s the trick to memorizing the cords when you’re a senior citizen? LOL
1 Like
Your ears
1 Like
The ears suggestion is always a decent answer but some context would help clarify what it means.
I don’t know how you’re working through the tune. Tab? If so, it might do you some good to search online for the chords above the lyrics of the tune so you have a definite point of reference (assuming that the chords and your tab are in the same key signature).
If/when they are, try spending some dedicated time listening to the tune, or even just a piece of it, and follow along with seeing how the chords change from one passage to another. This could be over one or more bars of the song. After a time or few, you will be able to connect what you’re hearing to the progression from one chord to the next. Listening should always come before playing so you are familiar with how the song is structured.
Bottom line: once the song is in your ears, you’ll be much more likely to be able to get it to come out through your fingers. Good luck.
5 Likes
I’m going to answer the question with a question … are you wanting to recite the chord sequence, independently of playing it? If so, then I can’t really help as I don’t really do that.
If the question is more of ‘how do I remember the chord sequence to play it?’, then my approach to more complicated songs is to break it down. What I mean by this is that I will work out, then write down, the song structure. I am working on a song at the moment that has quite similar sounding sections, where the chords are the same, but are swapped around between a pre-verse and the verse, plus there is a very long guitar solo that plays over a repeating two bar, two chord section. I know how many bars of each I need to play - 8 bars of this, then 16 bars of that, then the chorus … the guitar solo is 20’bars long then drop into 4 bars of…
I can then remember the specific sections and the number of bars. As I get more familiar with a song, I can then start running on ‘feel’, as in I know how 8 bars feels. That said, a 20 bar section in the middle with a guitar solo over the top, I will always end up having to count that!
3 Likes
I recently thought it would be nice to play David Bowie’ China Girl. I saw the tabs and thought there is too much variation and I wouldn’t be able to remember it all. But, I decided to give it a try.
I watched cover videos with tabs, looking and listening. Then I played only a few bars, over and over again. Then I looked at the different sections, and tried those, over and over again.
It will take me a lot of time to be able to play it at the right tempo. At the moment I’m going very slow.
But: learning a few bars at the time, seeing how they are connected together, it is probably the key to later be able to put it all together. It really works.
The less hurry you have, the better (at least for me).
I would advise against that. It is generally better to practice for a while, and rest. The rest (and the sleep) in between practices will help improve learning and memorization much better than practising until the mind goes fuzzy.
And if possible, it is good to end the practice with a small win. Like, you learned a bar today. It’s better than ending with exhaustion and frustration.
But don’t give up, you can do it!
7 Likes
@MindlessTherapy - and if you can’t: no worries!
I only play with tabs. There are many songs now, where I just need a quick glance at the tabs now and then to know what to play, but that’s ok.
I’m not planning to play in a band anytime soon (= EVER!), and that makes things easier.
What did help me to find my way around the fretboard and play what I want to play is: creating my own bass lines for my own songs.
When composing songs, you are forced to play melodies that you have in your mind. And looking up the right strings and frets is very frustrating!!!
I have the feeling that this helped me playing covers too, also in terms of intonation of tones.
Try it!
3 Likes
I find that memorizing songs is a skill like any other, and you’ll get better the more you practice. So, try learning more songs.
You can sort of see my progress with this in my cover videos. I look spaced out in the first few because I have the tab on a TV behind the camera and I’m pretty clearly following it. I get better in later videos as I’m looking at the tabs less, usually just quick glances to remember when the changes are coming. The last few videos I didn’t even need the tab, I had the songs memorized by the time I was ready to record it. (I still have terrible camera presence because I don’t know where to look most of the time, but that’s a different problem for me to work on! 
)
Agreed. I find when I start to get brain fog, or my fingers stop working, or I suddenly struggle with a part I was nailing before, then it’s time for a break. I find I won’t make any progress if I try to push through. Better to come back in a few hours, or maybe even the next day.
3 Likes
Great advice and thank you. I will keep plugging along and pray to the Bass Gods.
2 Likes
memory is working different ways for anyone, May I just talk about me.
bass is part of band, your lines also link between drums/keyboard/guitar, imagine play with team will much easier.
can’t remember whole song? do it with part addon,
in songsterr, “don’t stop believing” has intro, verse 1, guitar fill, verse 2, pre-chorus, verse 3, verse 4, pre-chorus, guitar solo.
some parts is completely same or slightly different, and we just do the rotation.
3 Likes
^^^ 
If you are still learning you are not familiar enough to the song. You need to know the song like you wrote it. For most people a few dozen times is not going to do it no matter what age. I just posted on another thread about this topic. I listen to the song I’m working on including playing a few hundreds time to start. For my “Gig-Ready” songs I’d play them about a thousand time before I announce gig ready,
That’s why whatever happen at a gig, the music still going, same way that the Quartet on the Titanic kept playing in the middle of a disaster, it’s on AutoPilot.
3 Likes
Rob Halford also relies on tabs during a performance, songs he’s been performing for 40 years. it’s okay
2 Likes
why are you trying to memorize chords?
or do you mean memorizing the song?
The answer, which no one wants to hear, is, as always… practice.
And lots of it. No shortcuts, don’t work.
1 Like
Well, being in my mid 70’s, I just had to reply to this one… When your memory (AND EARS) go bad, trust me, it SUCKS! Lost my hearing back in the early 70’s when I ran diesels on submarines back in the days of wooden ships and iron men… At least the VA supplies me with some pretty decent hearing aids that my wife swears don’t work, but what she don’t realize is that I use them mostly to stream music from my phone so I don’t have to listen to her ask me to do anything around here that I don’t wanna do…
Anyway, yes, your ears are key, but early on, the use of sheet music with the chords (AND YOUR EARS) will help you to start listening for the changes that take place in a song. A really good helpful tool that works well for me is the app “MOISES”.. You load any song and it generates the stems and also shows every chord change as the song plays… Over time your ears will start relating certain tones and frequencies to specific chords (root notes), and eventually as you keep playing the song, you’ll start to see a pattern (like a road map) in how that song is built and after awhile it will just come naturally.
As for the old age part, “Senior Moments” are a real thing that do happen, but hell man, we all go through it so might as well just accept it, embrace it, and use it to your advantage…
Wife: “Didn’t I tell you to take out the trash!”
Me: I dunno, did ya?"… My wife of 50 years and I are the same age. - Notice how I turned it all around to make it sound like maybe “she” was the one who forgot…
Trick is to not let it get too far outta hand, still gotta do a couple things so she don’t catch on and start leaving them damn “sticky notes” all over the house to read… My memory might be fading, and my hearing is kinda shot… BUT… .. She knows I’m not blind… yet… Good Luck Army… Navy Sends
4 Likes
Like true superheroes do… 
1 Like
This is all one area where music theory helps a ton. Specifically in this case, song structure.
Nearly all songs in western music are made up of relatively short, repeating patterns. For example, pop and rock songs are usually in Verse-Chorus form and there’s usually maybe five short parts to learn to learn the entire song. Traditional songs are often in AABA form and have exactly two different things to memorize. 12-bar blues is a repeating pattern of 12 bars, etc etc.
It’s a lot easier to learn five short pieces and how they repeat/fit together than it is to memorize a few hundred notes in a row. No one does that at scale.
So, the first step in learning any song is to break it down in to these pieces.
Wikipedia has a great article here:
3 Likes
Music theory is indeed the key that unlocks a tune. But earning that key takes time and effort.
I think the OP was asking how to learn (memorize) a tune’s chord progression so he could play the whole thing through.
Essentially, it’s the same learning process that those of us who taught ourselves to play guitar as kids had to do: listen to a song ad nauseum until we knew it inside and out. Then the chords above the song’s lyrics could start to make sense as we’d sing the lyrics.
Time-consuming? You’re damn skippy. But it worked.
You gotta have some kind of toehold on a tune in order to know how it goes. Knowing music theory helps the most, by far, but plain old brute listening repetition is time-honored and it can get the job done. Regardless, the final step is always practice, practice and more practice.
3 Likes
Persistence and practice, LOL. I’m 65 and have the same issue.