David's Tip of the Day: A song is easier to remember if you wrote it

It can be a great challenge to study an artist's song and remember the order of the choruses and the fine elements they contain. It's common to hear complaints by students that songs take a tremendous amount of time to memorize well enough not to have a simple mistake lead them astray and cause a wreck.

If memorization is a big issue for you, I recommend you employ the songwriting lessons (Improvising Studies 1-11) to write your own instrumentals. Keep in mind that you don't have to come up with original licks, you can harvest licks from your favorite players and by using the Chorus Form, Focus Note, Textural and Soloing Theme process I teach, you can take these licks and create exciting instrumentals. This can take a lot of time, but not much more than the time required to learn a song of another artist.