how do you rehearse your songs before recordings or a live show?

[jugalo180]

i'm curious as to how other people go about learning the words to the songs that they have written so that they can prepare for a live show or just to record them in a studio without the need of paper? i usually prerecord the song at home on my humble set up, burn it to disc and then listen to the song over and over trying to sing along with it until i have it down. it usually takes me about 5 hours a day for a few days to get one song down really good. the first day is usually shaky but after i go to sleep and everything is stored in my short term to long term memory i wake up the second day knowing the tune pretty much from front to back and usually around the third day i have everything down pat. I know that there are people out there who could write a song in a couple of hours and then perform the entire song on the spot. Jay Z doesn't even write his songs, he just sits in the studio listening to the beat for a few hours then gets up to record the whole song that he just wrote in his head, Jesus Christ!

[VomitHatSteve]

I suppose it depends on how you write. If you write by running the song through your head until it's perfected, you probably don't have to work much on memorization. If you write stuff down as you come up with it, you'd have to study more.

[Dani Pace]

For one person to learn a song, thats easy, for a whole band to learn it is an entirely different thing. Play/sing it by yourself, play it with the whole band, work out the arraingement, work on changes (starts, stops, modulations whatever) play it over and over untill it sounds cloce, work on individual parts, keep playing it untill it sounds right. By the time you are getting tired of it, it will be starting to sound right. The more complex a song is, the longer it takes. Patience and practice is how to "get it right."