How many songs do you currently know?

[jamcat]

My biggest gripe with Malmsteen is abuse of the Harmonic Minor scale of which he attributes to his love of Beethoven.

Beethoven attributed his abuse of the harmonic minor to his love of Mozart.

[mystran]

My biggest gripe with Malmsteen is abuse of the Harmonic Minor scale of which he attributes to his love of Beethoven.

Beethoven attributed his abuse of the harmonic minor to his love of Mozart.

Already in baroque era it was very common to mix and match natural, harmonic and melodic minors in the very same composition and the reason is that this gives you flexibility in terms of harmony, perhaps originally motivated by the desire to stick to the "consonant" major and minor chords and avoid the more dissonant diminished and augmented chords, although you can see these used intentionally to create tension pretty early.

Raising the 7th turns v into V which, which is much more powerful dominant with more tension, so V-i tends to sound a lot stronger than the fairly lame v-i. On the other hand, III becomes III+ which might me more dramatic than desired, so if you're just trying to use it as a passing chord, so you might want to keep the 7th flat in this case.

Similar thing with raising the 6th too, although kinda the opposite way: ii° turns into a less dramatic ii, but iv becomes IV which might make things sound a bit "too major" (and having the regular VI instead of raised vi° can be nice too), so you might often see sharp 6th on a passing ii, but then the "harmonic" iv-V-i for a cadence.

So for all intents and purposes, there really isn't a "natural", "harmonic" and "melodic" minor in classical music as much as there's just the minor scale where the 6ths and 7ths can vary depending on what the context demands.

[cryophonik]

I probably still remember somewhere between half and three-quarters of the songs I played (bass) in various cover bands in the 80s/90s, and from a few other projects since then, so I'd guess probably around 100 +/- songs that I could play without listening or relearning. I'm both formally trained and trained by ear and I play several instruments (including keys), so I tend to remember songs by their key and can hear them in terms of chord progressions, so that makes things easier for me.

The funny part is, I remember popular cover songs far better than my own compositions. From memory, I can probably only remember the key and chord progressions without hearing them for maybe 4 or 5 of my own songs. Weird...

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

Counting my own or...?

[Dirk Diggler]

I'd say about 750 currently, though some of the older tunes may be a little fuzzy.

[tapper mike]

I'd say about 750 currently, though some of the older tunes may be a little fuzzy.

As I age I find it more challenging to relearn some songs by memory. Before all I'd need is a foot in the door and it would come back to me. Being able to read chord charts is sometimes sufficient and other times I'm reading either notation or tablature. The only issue I have with this is that I become addicted to sight reading and it affects my recall ability without the score in front of me.

Turning off the monitor walking away and trying to play the song without backing tracks should be easy after a quick refresher. However I'm finding less and less the self discipline to do so.

[tapper mike]

Also as I age I prefer singing and playing guitar simultaneously more than years gone by. When I sing and play guitar I generally minimize/focus my playing to rhythm guitar parts be they strummed or fingerpicked. And while I was a rather agile fingerstyle player previously and had some formalized education in classical and jazz fingerstyle there are still some approaches that I feel I could do better if I studied travis picking. Which is what I'm doing and ....it's taking considerably longer than I expected. Still I do see progress in the area and am able to play a more convincing travis style accompaniment than when I started.

Travis picking has not been a detriment to my other playing techniques

[Dirk Diggler]

FYI 300 tunes was all from one big band I was in. Many of the tunes I hadn't ever heard before, was a challenge for sure.
Oh yeah had to have those tunes down cold in just over a month. The Bandleader could call any of the 300 tunes at his whim. Set lists also tended to change on the fly.

Yeah I try not to use any paperwork as the bands I was in required no cheating on stage, all had to be in memory only. It's really easy to get used to charts and reading, but then it becomes a crutch.

And yeah singing and playing requires I have the part down cold on my instrument and then focus on the singing. It certainly works well for me.

[tapper mike]

I too was a member of a jazz band that played Music from WWI through WWII. So yeah lots of big band stuff. This was through the 80's and what's funny to me was that he as bandleader/singer/pianist would always have sheet music in front of him but we were required to memorize it. He too would mix up the setlist at any given gig.

Nonetheless he was a crowd pleaser and quite ruthless when his musicians messed up. Trial by fire.