Learning a new song.

What is everyone’s favorite way to learn a new song. Do you write it down on a piece of paper and sit there and learn it or do you look at your phone or computer screen and go from section to section over and over again to learn it or are there other ways?

Lead parts I follow along with the lesson. Long complex rhythm pieces I write out on blank chord charts. On both, I use the loop on the practice sessions and even write the start and stop times on paper so I can move to them quickly when coming back to practice.

I'm more of a singer. I start out with the melody, simple strumming, and simple chords. And I fit the sounds around the singing or melody, want to give it the priority.

Often I'll come across a song that I want to sing, but it's in a key that isn't right for my voice. So I'll have to find the right Key. For example GuitarTricks has Crazy in the key of Bb, sung by Patsy Cline. That's a great song for singers, because it's ranges is about 14 whole notes. It's a workout for singers. But I'm more comfortable singing it like Willie in D. So I go through the process of listening to Willie, how he uses his voice with the chords, and try to image how he wrote it. He has a very unusual progression for country music of 1, 7, 6, 5, 2 in his style. Very rare in Country to be playing D and then 2 measures of verse with a B or BM7. He's a music rebel.

Once I have the basic down, I'll start trying to add the details. Sometimes I'll ask other players how they would play it.

Well, I'm pretty new to this but this is what I've been doing. I look at a lot of youtube videos and often find 2 or 3 that are helpful. As I get more into it, I type up the lyrics, print it out, write chords on top. If they are chords I'm not too familiar with or variations on something I am familiar with, I have a rubber stamp that is a chord diagram that I'll put in the margin and pencil in the fingering. I may pencil in numbers here and there and then, on another page, a footnote (e.g., "try to play these chords with a stacatto kind of a feel"). I likely also will print out a tab sheet (I make these in excel) for sections where that is helpful. However, because I am not able to accurately figure out and notate the timing (like if something is a dotted half note or syncopated or whatever), I am interested in starting to create a library of sound or video files with me playing the song, that I can refer back to to refresh my memory of how it is suppose to go. Almost all of the songs I do are more accurately described as renditions rather than straight copies of the original so I can't just refer back to the source.