I'm curious as to how many of you have a collection of songs that you keep. Like in a binder or something. I'm currently tracking down tabs and chords of songs to print off and put in a binder to have on hand. I figure that since I'm starting to become more confident in my singing I should have something like that to keep my favourite songs in, to use at parties.
I basically just want acoustic songs, or stuff that sounds good acoustic. Usually at parties, with family or friends, someone leads the guitar playing/singing, and I follow what they're doing, but it'd be nice to have some of my own selection there too.
So I'm sure there are lots of people on here who do this, but I want to know how long you've had a collection, how big it is, and how often you use it.
Paul
Vacate is the word...Vengance has no place on me or her...Cannot find a comfort in this world.
Your post made me laugh when I thought how disorganized my songbooks are. I have several notebooks spread around, probably a couple hundred songs total. A few months ago I went through a box that I hadn't unpacked after 2 years of moving and found a couple dozen songs inside. :D
I keep songs like this mostly to reference. If I haven't played a song in a few years, sometimes I forget how it goes and will look at the music. I either write them out by hand or print them on computer. Most are just the lyrics with chord changes.
I think songbooks like this are great, but I try not to be too dependent on them. I dunno, I think it looks a little dorky to look at music if you are performing in a band in a live situation. Nothing really wrong with it and I have done it, but I still think you look more professional if you obviously know the music and lyrics without having to look.
That said, I remember seeing a live performance of Billy Joel on TV and he had a large monitor showing the music and lyrics in front of him. But you could only see this from behind and it was positioned so it would be difficult for the audience to know he was reading.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
I literally have about wenty pounds of music. some notation, some chord charts, some lead sheets, some lyric sheets.
I have tow fake books and a binder of my friends band's play list.
I have a separate zipper bag to haul it.
my light weight music stand colasped. now I need to get the heavy duty kind.
One folder for Sunday Songwriter's Group - each song I've written (close to a hundred!) has lyrics and chords written out, with other memory-joggers like "play this Am7 at 5th fret, then down to 3rd for G6 - play top E string open.
A notebook with other songs I've written - chords and lyrics. About 50 or so all told, one of these days I'll get round to writing each of them out on a piece of A4 (like the SSG songs) to make them easier to file.
And another folder with (mostly) classic rock songs like All Right Now, Substitute, Bad Moon Rising etc....chords, lyrics etc.
I find keeping each category of song separate helps find any particular one - on the inside of each folder is a list of songs. Obviously, I can't keep that list in alphabetical order - but I do keep the individual sheets that way.
And songs in progress? Kept in a bulldog clip, hanging on a shelf right next to the computer.
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
Like Wes, my (5) guitar notebooks are something else to try to find anything in! Each notebook represents a genre (classic rock, blues, jazz, country, gospel - I also have separate notebooks for dulcimer, bass and mandolin music). I tried to keep everything alphabetical in the beginning, but, if there's anything in alphabetical order now it's just by pure fluke! Although, having to go through them to find a particular song usually means that I'll run across something that I haven't played in a while, which sidetracks me from my original reason for getting into them to begin with (but I usually get back to it ... eventually!). When I was playing with a band I kept another separate notebook strictly for band songs (that didn't stay in alphabetical order, either!). Mostly I keep them all for reference and "memory checks".
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"Don't wanna ride no shootin' star. Just wanna play on the rhythm guitar." Emmylou Harris, "Rhythm Guitar" from "The Ballad of Sally Rose"
Just after the first few months of staring guitar, songs I downloaded and printed out started piling up.
Can't play them but I had dreams.
Bought a 3 ringer binder and a hole punch and alphabetized the songs.
My wife bought me a laptop/book holder that I use to hold the notebook open when I sit down at the table to play.
Not this one but something like this that she saw advertised on TV
It's the rock that gives the stream its music . . . and the stream that gives the rock its roll.
Just last week I pulled together a binder of songs. I've been playing for just over a year and have collected a hodge podge of books, tab, and sheet music and figured it was the time to start getting organized. I found it really helps me to focus on what to play and improving on the songs I need improvement on (basically all of them...). It's getting me to pay more attention to some songs I played for awhile then put aside and to dig deeper into the solos or challenge the chord fingering, strumming etc. I'd been using.
I use binders. Have several. All for the same reasons mentioned above. However, I ask my daughter to create a cover for each one! So each binder has custom artwork. Ususaly consists of stick figures with a guitar, some mention of SpoungeBob and flowers. :P
Teamwork- A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.
When I first started I would download tabs etc., off the internet, sometimes multiple versions of the same song to try and find one that was actually close to being correct. I ended up with boxes of these and eventually misplaced most of them but I think they are in boxes somewhere. I doubt if I will ever use these again.
The past 18 months I've been with a new teacher and we have worked out about 40 songs or so. those are now in binders alphabetized by song title.
Since I don't play all these songs all the time I need to keep these as a reference in case I need to play them with someone.
Almost all of the songs include both the rhtyhm and lead parts and I usually just play the rhythym to the songs when I play with our regular group and I work on the lead parts on my own so some day I might be Super Guitar Player!!!
I thought the book was lost last week and I almost died, luckily I was able to find it. Kinda like computer files though I need to make copies as a backup.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
when I first started guitar and had a band I would write chords on my hands. then on a little slip of paper that I pasted to my guitar back. a quick peek and I was set.
I gotta laugh now at that.
three ring binders are th best.
First time I learnt guitar I used a notebook where I wrote the chords and exercises that my teacher explained. Also I wrote the songs that we played with the other instruments (bandurrias and laudes) and also the forbidden songs that my friends shown me.
This second time I started with an Open Office file. I didn't like the result so I went to several open source (mostly LaTeX based) alternatives such as Chord, SongBook, etc. For solos and similar stuff I used LilyPond but now I use an open source GuitarPro compatible sotfware.
I thought it was hard to maintain so I changed to a wiki in a private web server in my lab so the songs could be available in several places and also I could include links to lessons websites with related info. Interesting and easier than the previous solutions but I had to do the index by hand. We had a system crash two months ago and I lost part of the work.
Currently I'm starting to create a similar system but this time is based on a weblog so I can generate easily indexes and also I have a search facility over the songs.
Probably I'll change again next month! :P
Wow, I think Nuno's system trumps all of our binder system. My buddy would be impressed with your LaTex one, hes a math major, as thinks its LaTex is the greatest system ever.
Vacate is the word...Vengance has no place on me or her...Cannot find a comfort in this world.
Just an afterthought - in my experience, there's no substitute for writing everything out by hand, or typing everything out yourself. For some reason, something YOU'VE written out will stay in the memory longer than, for example, something you've just cut-and-pasted in.....I guess there's no substitute for hard work!
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
When I've worked with cover bands I've always made up song books. I've got one page for each tune, and if it has a distinctive hook (i.e., the thirds at the beginning of "Brown Eyed Girl") I'll write the hook out in standard notation.
A typical cover band - at least one that's built to make money - is going to have a song list of 600-800 tunes, so that's about 3 3" binders. I put the tunes in alphabetical order, and in the front of the first book I make two indexes: one by song title, so I can see at a glance if we have a tune in our list... the other by artist name. Lots of times people will say "can you do tune x?" and if we don't have it, I'll look up the artist and say "how about we do y instead?"
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
I also have a couple of binders. One for the garage band I'm in, I play bass in that one. One for my bass stuff and one for my guitar stuff. Three ring binders plus those plastic sheet guards. I got that idea from the keyboard player in the band. It makes it easier and I have two sheets back to back in the sheet guard. It works very well. :)
