Song Arrangements and learning songs

Over the last year I have been working on learning songs for a cover band. I made a lot of mistakes that kept me from really learning songs early on. Over the last six months or so I have come with a better method of learning songs.

I had started using charts that you all are probably familiar with.

VERSE 1

C               Dm
Beth I hear you callin`
      Em                    Am    G
But I can`t come home right now
F                   G
Me and the Boys are playin`
       C                   Esus4  E
and we just can`t find the Sound

This works a little bit but the page gets long and sometimes isn't the easiest to read. A guitar player joined us last year and he had a template that he worked with that I thought was pretty cool. He would have the lyrics on the right and the song arrangement on the left. It was a pretty cool idea as you could get everything on one page.

Here is an example of a song I am working on called Bred to Die. You will need Word or a program that will read a Microsoft Word document to view.

So, now when I learn a new song I write out the arrangement in this format and I really learn it as opposed to trying to memorize tab or some sheet music. It seems so simple in hindsight but my song learning ability has increased tremendously and in turn so has my playing. Still a lot of work to do but there has been a lot of improvement as of late. Feel free to keep that document as a template to use for your song arrangments.

I also sync my arrangement with DropBox so that I have them available where ever I am. With my iPhone I can call them up anywhere to remember a part. In case you don't have the song handy to listen to it.

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