Ska Progress

I've been fretting a bit for a while now that I would not be able to memorize the setlist for the Feb 15th show. It seemed too hard.  The songs are longer and more complicated than what I'm used to...and they are all really similiar...making it easy to mix up parts.

I finally decided to stop fretting and just fucking do it. I reminded myself that, when I was learning the P songs...I played them every single day...and listened to them every single day. Not listening to the ska songs AT ALL and only playing them once a week or so and hoping to memorize them was kind of stupid.  So I have vowed to try to play them every day now.

On last Saturday I finally got all the songs in the set together in a play list (in the correct keys) and gave myself the ultimate test (something I do with P songs all the time)...put the playlist on random, put away the notes, and tried to play the songs totally from memory. I was surprised to learn that I know most of the songs. There are blips here and there (plus one full song that I've not got in hand at all), but they can be isolated and worked on. And now I can do that rather than fretting that I've got nothing. The brain and the hands are magical things...muscle memory is a miracle...you just have to let them do their thing. And nothing is a substitute for putting the time and work in.