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Shiny Song Syndrome
I have been trying to focus on adding some more songs into my “Performance” category and it hasn’t gone that well. I spent the past couple of days doing a post mortem to figure out why it hasn’t gone well and what I need to do going forward to fix it. The analysis revealed that for the past few months I have had what I’m calling “Shiny Song Syndrome”. I will hear a song played by a another guitar player, or a song we play at the weekly guitar jam, or a song on the radio, or see a YouTube video, etc and think to myself…”I really like that song, I should learn how to play it”. I will then spend the next 3-7 days playing that song during practice. That part is OK, the problem is that sometime during that 3-7 days I will hear another song and say “Oooooh, I should be playing that song instead”. Rinse-Repeat.
The end result is that I have started playing 37 new songs in the past 4 months, jumping from song to song and end up learning none of them.
So I’m in the process of picking 3 of these (which is proving to be very difficult) that I’m going to focus on and put into my practice plan and I will not remove any of them from the practice plan until they have moved into the “Performance” category. I am also going to refrain from playing any other new songs in the meantime and will place songs that peak my interest into a queue that will inform the next song to practice. It’s going to be a challenge.
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10 Replies
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I know exactly what you talking about. I listen to KCBX out of San Luis Obispo a lot in the mornings and there is a 3 hour music show that i listen to pretty much every week day. i have a binder full of songs that I have heard and downloaded from Songsterr.com.
I finally had to limit the learning to a whole week for each song and not allow any of he other songs to interfere with learning that tune. On Friday I heard Going Down the Road feeling Bad by the Dead and have worked on it every day for an hour or two and am adding more every day, but not allowing other songs to interfere with the learning process. Should have my own version down by Wednesday and I’ll Start on another new tune probably on Friday.
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This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by jorgemac.
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This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by
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I sometimes think I’m like Scooby Doo and get easily distracted by whatever shiny thing is in front of me. It is a good analogy. I am in process of making a play list of songs by category. I have been trying to come up with a system to refresh old songs and have add new ones for over a year now and not been very successful. This is my latest attempt. Examples of my categories are 1) Love songs 2) Fingerpicking instrumentals 3) Flatpicking instrumentals 4) Traveling songs 5) Old Protest Folk Songs 6) Folks Songs 5) Crying Songs 7) R&B Songs. This plan is very much a work in progress. My intent is to review a category each week. To add new songs, I have to not have more than three working at a time or I end up too diffused to make any progress. Once the song is performance ready or posted, I can put it on the refresher category list. I would solicit any other suggestions to consider for improvement. It is not yet a true Atomic Habit with me.
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@Moose408 I do the same thing, mostly it’s songs from my Spotify playlist that I here and go: “I really like that one, it doesn’t appear to be that hard so let me try. Normally I’ll just fool around with the song for a few hours, put it on my future songs list and it’s not too disruptive to my routine. But I have one that I really like a lot and I’m devoting too much time to it because I want to be able to play and sing it so badly. It’s a bit more advanced for my skills, all fingerstyle and it’s taken me a month to learn the intro, verse and chorus. I still have to memorize the lyrics and get some command of the quite lengthy interlude (or solo).
For the first time I’m really seeing the pitfalls of learning other people’s songs. I avoided this for 2 years almost, waiting patiently for my fingers and brain to acquire some skills. Now I’ve pivoted slightly and moved towards covering songs, and my perfectionism that I worked diligently to suppress is resurfacing because I want to sound like the original.
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OMG, this is a very timely post, and I do this constantly. For me, I don’t know if it’s ADD, or just my lack of patience. Seems like I’m bouncing around from song to song, and never quite finish them. As a matter of fact, I probably only have a dozen or so songs I know all the way through. Some days I sit down and don’t even know what to play. But once I start playing something, I start to get into a groove. I try not to stress about it too much, and keep telling myself I’m doing this for me, and as long as I still keep having fun, I’m OK with it. I still need to find a way to change this pattern though.
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The goal is to get to the point where you don’t have to learn songs anymore, like my son in law who just spent the day with us on the 4th of July, he is able to play just sight reading the chords. (He could probably do it with only the notes in music notation)
We were pulling up songs on our phones and he could play and sing just from the chords and the memory of the song. It’s astounding, he makes it look so easy! He played dozens of songs on my guitar that day, if I practiced one of them all day I wouldn’t be able to play it as well as he played each one. Guitar isn’t even his major instrument – or piano but he’s probably even better on the piano.
He is extremely musical, has a music degree from Moody Bible in Chicago and he majored in voice. He was going to become a professional singer – opera, operetta, musicals but he took a very different path instead. He’s the music director at the Church I have been attending since we moved up here to Jacksonville.
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I’m almost there with songs I’ve heard a lot and with relatively simple chords. I bring them up on Ultimate Guitar and can typically follow along. It helps that that is what we do at my weekly Guitar Jam.
I’ve been trying to get to the point where I can play songs from memory and I have nine currently, but it takes a a lot of effort as a new song mainly because of the lyrics. I’m also reaching the point I’m not sure I can do more from memory. So do I just use a crutch like SongbookPro or Ultimate Guitar and consider that good? I’m not quite there yet.
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Yes! The lyrics do take a lot of effort, it was so easy when we were kids to memorize them but now it’s sure hard to get them down. I have a lot from my youth in memory but most of those I can’t play yet. I did receive a Beatles guitar book for my birthday and there are quite a few of songs in there where I remember most of the words that I learned about 60 years ago
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Great discussion @Moose408 and ive got it bad. Music is always going in the car and a song will come up and i’ll think “how is it i dont play this song…better learn it”. Then when i get home will look it up and add it to the growing list. I do the same as many and have three lists: performance ready, developing/practicing, and next up. The developing list has a sub category called learning. There is a distiction between learning a song and practicing it. I may know how to play a song…I just dont play it very well…it doesnt sound very good and in fact may suck pretty bad at first. When i do pick a new song to learn from my shiny list I pretty much exclusively work on that song and not much else until i know it beginning to end. Depending on difficulty this can take 15 minutes or most of a week. Again I might not be able to play it well at all and only barely recognizable, but i know how to play it…I know what my hands and fingers are supposed to do. So it now moves into the practicing category, where it may stay for a long time…months, years… before it moves to the performance list, again depending on degree of difficulty. So Im usually only learning one song at a time. But theres 25-30 in the developing/practicing list of which 7 or 8 are new additions ie just recently learned. I have 15-20 songs I consider performance ready and of course have to regularly play them or I risk losing them. So theres always something to play…
Im a big proponent of learning songs as early on as possible. We have access to a ton of songs with just a few simple chords. As well I think its important to learn the whole song, whether its instrumental only or youre singing. Stick with it until you have the whole thing under your fingers. Being able to learn and eventually play the whole tune is very satisfying, lots of fun and makes for a better performance down the road. Adding the singing to the playing is a whole new challenge. Some songs are just easier to sing than others. My advice is to learn the guitar and lyrics separately before putting them together. And go slow and simple when you do combine. And theres nothing wrong with getting som e help from an IPOD etc.
One last thing…I took to heart when I heard Tony and other teachers say to make the song your own. Play it the way you want to play it and as your skills allow…it doesnt have to sound like the original, it just needs to be recognizable. Dont let perfect get in the way of good, or at least not half bad. Takes the pressure off.
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It’s the same for me. I’ve enthusiastically started learning too many interesting songs, only to stop—without even getting halfway through—after a short while to move on to the next one.
This pattern started for me a few quarters after the live goal-setting parties were discontinued. I’ve been around for quite a while now, but unfortunately, I haven’t had enough motivation lately to set well-thought-out quarterly song learning goals. I should start to use the guitar journal regularly and with intention again.
Then there are the daily challenges, which I always tackle first—usually spending more than 10 minutes on them, or even working on the same one for two in a row. Unfortunately, that often leaves too little time for songs afterwards. I really ought to cut down the time spent on challenges, but I find that hard to do.
I’ll take this opportunity to commit to two songs: “Hotel California” and “Choosing Texas” by Ella Langley.
Thanks for the post.
It came at exactly the right time. I’m heading off on summer vacation the day after tomorrow—with my guitar and the tabs for just this two songs. -
@Braden, I think you make a couple of very good points with your post.
Learn songs as soon as you can. Even if they’re very simplistic. You can always make it less simple as you learn. I still think this is the best way of incorporating techniques you are learning. Better than drills IMO.
Make the song your own. This is the best way to bring out your own personal connection with your guitar. Connect with it, and make it your own song. I feel when I try to play just like an original, I lose some emotion. Probably because I’m focused more on playing like the original, probably with more tension and not just letting loose. This also means singing it like your song.
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