I’ve been playing guitar for over 30 years. I would say I’m an intermediate guitarist, mostly in that I can play a lot of songs, I can sight read a tab and pick it up quick. I know my scales and chords, circle of fifths and all that jazz but I never really took that leap as time to play was almost always limited.
It wasn’t so in the beginning. I bought a guitar when I first moved out into the wide world and was living on my own (for the young folks who might be reading this: There was a time you could have an entire apartment to yourself and still have money left over for stuff like buying a guitar). It was a green Yamaha acoustic that was on clearance at Sam Ash and since the price was right I walked out the store took it home and to quote Bryan Adams ‘played it until my fingers bled’
Since I had moved to a new area and didn’t have may friends yet I would come home from work, put on the Yankee game and just practice. That amounted to 2-3 hours a day for almost six months. I took a few weeks of lessons but eventually stopped going as the teacher and I didn’t really vibe and there wasn’t anyone else in the area giving lessons. I turned to the internet and guitar books (this was before YouTube) and got pretty good at playing and even started coming up with my own tunes.
The only thing I couldn’t do for some reason was sing while I played. It just seemed terribly difficult because if I focused on my singing my guitar playing would suffer and vice versa. It wasn’t until maybe 10 years in that I understood I needed to KNOW the guitar parts, anticipate the chord changes and riffs. Practice so much that it was completely automatic. Once I did that I found I could focus on singing the song and the my hands would handle the guitar part on their own.
Around this time I got together with some friends for an impromptu jam band where we’d get together and play songs and that really taught me more about music and timing that almost all the time I spent practicing alone. It really drove home the fundamentals of music. I think mostly it was the singer yelling at me that I’m in the wrong key or tempo.
The issue I wanted to solve is that I would sing from the tabs or lyric sheets since it was easier. I mean, I was at home practicing and I’d just print out music and words and use them. I’d bring printouts of tabs to the jam sessions (in almost all the videos everyone else is jamming out and I’m staring at my music stand). Whenever I was out or someone asked me to play something, I couldn’t. I could play them the music but I couldn’t dredge up the words without bringing them up on my phone. I also notice that without memorizing the songs you miss some of the distinctive vocal parts that make the song unique and it wasn’t as dynamic as it should be.
I determined that I was going to change that – and this year I was going to memorize at least 10 songs so I could play them all from memory. I know I put it as 10 new songs but there were a few songs I already knew that I really wanted to master. It’s a bit of an eclectic list but here’s the songs I masted this year and a little bit on why I chose them.
Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison: The ultimate campfire song. The opening riff is iconic and the chord progression is really simple. The vocal parts weren’t demanding and everyone loves belting out the ‘sha-la-la’ parts. The lyrics weren’t overly complex and there weren’t any technical parts to bog down the learning process so this one was a good one to start with.
Stick Season – Noah Kahan: I was perusing some guitar website looking for tabs for other songs when I noticed this song was suddenly in the top 10 most visited tabs on the whole site. I popped over to YouTube to see what the fuss was and I absolutely loved it. It was a complicated song to pick up as it starts with an annoyingly complicated finger picking part, has some frustrating barre chords and the vocals had a syncopated rhythm to them that was very difficult to pickup. I ended up just listening to it over and over during my commute to work until I nailed down the timing. Once that all came together it’s now one of my favorite songs to play and sing
A Bar Song (Tipsy) – Shaboozy: This was the song of the summer for 2024. It was all over the radio and for some reason my kids absolutely love this song (my son crushed it during a Karaoke party). It was super catchy and only had 4 chords so I decided to entertain my son I’d learn the song so he could sing along with me. I picked up the song in a couple of days. It was probably the quickest I learned a song this year but I just clicked with it and it stuck in my memory better than any of the other songs. It’s super fun to play and a really good singalong song (also a Karaoke staple for me now)
Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town – Pearl Jam: I’m of an age where grunge was the formative music of my generation and Pearl Jam was one of my favorite bands. This song off their second album quickly became one of my favorite songs so I wanted to add it to my repertoire. The chords were pretty basic and it was a fun challenge trying to replicate Eddie Vedder’s complex voice.
Wild World – Cat Stevens: Ok Ok, I’m a junkie for 1970’s singer songwriters. Cat Stevens, Carole King, Harry Chapin, James Taylor and their contemporaries. I just always loved Cat’s voice and this song always resonated with me for some reason. This one was a bit more complicated as there were a lot of chord changes and the riff during the chorus gave me fits. I had learned it in the past as part of the jam band but never tried to sing and play at the same time and it was a real challenge. It took me a long time to figure out how the vocals laid over the chords but it was a really great feeling the first time I nailed it start to finish.
Merry Christmas – Ed Sheeran / Elton John: I needed a holiday song in my catalog and this one is such a great tune and the lyrics are full of hope and love. It’s my wife’s favorite Christmas song so I wanted to learn it for her. It was a challenge transposing the piano chords into guitar chords but I dug up a few vides on YouTube that explained it and after a little trial and error I was able to work it out. I found that as I was singing I would modulate my voice to better match Ed Sheeran then drop it a bit to be closer to Elton John during his parts. It was subconscious but I decided I really liked that contrast and kept singing it that way. The intro and outro were a bit different but the rest of the song used the same chords so it was pretty easy to learn.
Norwegian Wood – The Beatles:Â I mean, I have to have a Beatles song, right? I was in the mood for some music from the fab four and was streaming their songs when Norwegian wood started playing and I remember 30+ years ago that it was one of the very first songs I tried teaching myself how to play. I wondered how much of it I remembered so I grabbed my guitar and I was shocked that I could play that little melodic riff on the first try. I guess that lived in my brain somewhere permanent! I spent a week or so memorizing the words and learning how to sing over the melody and chords.
Black – Pearl Jam: My absolutely favorite song of all time. Such a powerful performance and the lyrics are so stark and painful. This one is a bit of a more vocal challenge as Vedder really pushes his voice on the bridge and completely commits to the random noises. The chords were super easy to learn but the vocal timing was a big pain as he draws out certain words over two bars instead of one and I needed to figure out how he worked that into the overall song. It took some time but I figured it out. It’s still a challenge to belt out “You’ll be the star in someone else’s sky but whyyyy whyyyyyy can’t it be miiiiIIIiiine” I find I can’t start with this song. I need to be warmed up and maybe have one or two teas with honey before I can commit to that level of anguished yelling.
The Book of Love: The Magnetic Fields / Peter Gabriel: Steven Merrit of Magnetic Fields adds a gravitas to this song that I found poignant but man did Peter Gabriel crush this song when he covered it (Check out the final episode of Scrubs where the song is featured). It’s such a simple song but the lyrics are beautiful. My favorite part is “the book of love is filled with music, in fact that’s where music comes from, some of it’s transcendental some of it’s just really dumb.. I love it when you sing to me” the song has only 4 chords that repeat but are played in a pretty complicated way. Once I figured out how to replicate that (with a mix of plucking and strumming) it all came together.
Perfect – Ed Sheeran: One of my wife’s favorite songs. I really wanted to learn this one to play for her. It helps that Sheeran’s voice is well within my vocal range and he tends to keep the guitar parts pretty straightforward. It was actually really difficult to memorize the vocals as in each section they are similar but he changes the wording a bit and I keep messing up and repeating the first verse instead of the correct words. It took a really long time before I was able to get it right and I was annoyed that he shoehorned in a few extra syllables in the second chorus “Darling, just hold my hand, be my girl, I’ll be your man” I mean it took a long time for me to try to replicate the timing of that (I had to just keep doing that part over and over until I worked it out). It seems small but it upsets my timing and rhythm a bit so I wanted to ensure I transitioned into the next line with the right timing.
Overall I’m excited at the progress I made. I make sure at least a couple times a week I practice the entire set and if I make an error I stop and practice the part I made the mistake at over and over until I’m sure it’s resolved. I also made a playlist and a few times a week I’ll just listen to it on my commute and sing along to try to keep my memory sharp.
Oh, and I also bought a metronome – you’d be surprised at how effective it can be in keeping you in time.
[I have a few more I’m working on but haven’t completed yet and I’ll update this list as appropriate. ]
