Originally Posted by
ralph johansson
I’m a bit puzzled by the fact that no one asks how you go about learning a new tune. What are your sources? I’m asking this because when I got started on mandolin (after ten years of guitar) I was into colloquial, non-notation, genres such as old-time and Bluegrass. The moment I was through transposing a song from a record I “knew” it ,what the notes and chords were, how they related to one another, the structure and story line, as it were. “All” that remained was to work the tune up for performance, deciding on the groove and key and harmonic details, finding variations and possibly ideas for an arrangement (in time you will have to learn how to transpose a song by ear, not by “figuring”).
The key to memorization, as always, is understanding: how the tune is constructed, what makes it work, how it builds and progresses, how and where it reaches some kind of conclusion, what makes it stand out
(as even worth remembering). There are theoretical concepts that facilitate this kind of understanding, and you should start by getting the big picture before going into details.
Small example, Fire on the Mountain. Before you even try to find he individual notes you will note its structure: One part in A (possibly repeated), followed by a par in D, and a two bar tag re-establishing the original key.
I’t’s important to realize that learning an instrument (at least a first instrument) involves quite a bit of theory.