How do you guys remember all your stuff when playing live?

[Toker41]

It also helps if you're actually saying something with the words. If it's important, at least to you, you'll remember. If it's all just a bunch of words, then who cares anyway?
RD

It's a shame nobody explained that to Paul while he was doing the "wings" thing.

 

[LI_Slim]

There's no shame in using crib sheets, but the problem is that they tend to become a crutch. The more experience you have playing out the less you will tend to forget the lyrics. Just stay in the moment and have fun.

 

[glynb]

Yeh that's right they can become a crutch and indespensible, so you never get away from using them and can't perform without them. To start of with my (covers) band we both had music stands with lyrics and chords. I did slightly less singing so I was the first to dump my stand and just rely on memory. i think it took about six months of occasional giiging before i did away with it. The main singer took about a year. even now, three years on, he still needs to use a sheet of one or two songs. You may find that try as you might there are a copuple of tricky lyrics that just WON'T go into your memory and you just go blank on them.

The only song that I must have my lyric sheet on stage for now is Come Together byt the Beatles - try memorising THOSE words, jujueyeballs and muddy waters with a mojo filter, probaly because it doesn't make any 'sense' its not so easy to remember. Then again I bet if I really tried I could remember it, its jusy I have become reliant on the prop and panic if its not there!

I don't have a problem with a singer using a prop, as long as he/she looks cool and in complete control of the situation and confident, THAT's the more important factor.

 

[Toker41]

Axl Rose had teleprompters all over the stage for the 2 days his tour lasted.

 

[Smokepole]

Re: I use the music stand

I do occasional solo gigs.

With me, the chords are usually not the problem. I forget the lyrics, or one word to the third verse of a lyric, just enough to mess up the timing and then I'm lost.

So I use a music stand, off to one side a bit. In a three ring binder I have each song printed
IN LARGE, BOLD PRINT
and it usually takes up one full page, or perhaps two. In that case, I set it up like a "centerfold" with print on the left hand and right hand page - no page turning during a tune! Works slick. Nobody (except another musician) has commented on it, and he liked the idea.

This is exactly what I do....?
I do a lot of open mics now. I print the lyrics out on the computer using no borders so I can get the words as big as possible on one page. I just keep changing the font after it's finished until it tries to jump to a second page, then I stop. For real long songs I do the centerfold thing. I also print the chords in red above the lyric line.

Practicing hard to memorize tunes is cool. But if you're like me, doing tunes at open mics isn't a priority thing. I can cover so much material with my three ring binder that I can alter the set to the crowd and to their requests with minimal rehearsing.

A couple of factors that are important in how quickly you memorize tunes are...
Your age...when I was younger I despised cheat sheets

And how often you actually perform the tunes. If you have a grinding schedule it'll force you to memorize whether you try to or not. Playing 6 nights a week gives you repetition time.

Joe