Takeaways When Learning Songs

Theory
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I’m a handful of songs through the Song Pack and I’ve been thinking, “What theory should I ‘study’ from this and take into future songs I learn/make?” I want to avoid the feeling of being a memorised-bassline jukebox, so what sort of things do you encourage I make notes of in my practice journal/songbook as I learn new songs? Key signature? Nashville numbers? Corresponding scales? Something else?

I’m still doing interval training so I’m very far off being able to do this ‘by ear’, but given that the Song Pack has reliable sheet music and tab, it seems like a good resource for this type of thing.

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notice patterns, figure out what scales they are, triads, etc.

notice techniques in the note articulation and what it does for the song vs. a different way of articulating certain notes.

listen back to yourself, critically, and be picky on timing and groove and feel and anyting you can train your ear to hear better.

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3

Thanks John, I swear you’re always the first to come through with advice!

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Music theory is like baseball, you have to play it to understand it. Reading about it doesn’t work quite as well. Best thing to do when you are learning song packs is to absorb the music. You do this enough times and one or two things kept coming then it’s time to take a deep dive. Rinse and repeat every now and then, you’ll be well verse in no time.

Be prepared to be disappointed as there’s only a couple of handful of theories are being use most of the time.

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Another thing to do (which kind of piggy-backs off of John’s comment) is to not just notice patterns in a song, but notice when those patterns show up in another song - either in the same key or a different one.

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Thanks.

The other interesting thing to do is a deep dive into one player’s tunes. I did this with Macca covering a load of Beatles stuff and started to understand how he wrote baselines, what his style is, noticed keys they liked etc

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