Stop Panicking And Start Organizing Your Gig Prep

Thirty songs for Saturday. A totally different set for Monday. No rehearsals. If that sounds familiar, you already know the real enemy isn’t your technique, it’s the scramble to keep everything in your head while you switch styles and expectations from gig to gig. We talk through the exact approach we use to stay organized, reduce panic, and get songs back under our fingers fast when we’re playing with multiple bands or rotating church sets. 

We start with a simple habit that pays off immediately: building dedicated Spotify playlists for each musical situation so we can learn faster through focused listening. We explain what to listen for beyond the guitar part, how to mentally map the song form, and how to flag the moments that usually cause train wrecks on stage like stops, endings, dynamic shifts, and solo sections. If you’re working on cover songs and want better guitar memorization, this step alone can make practice feel far more efficient. 

Then we get practical about cheat sheets. Rather than drowning in full tabs, we show how to make compact charts that capture only what you need: the tricky riff, the odd chord, the key center, the tone change, or the one bar that always derails you. We also share why iPad chart organization (using apps like forScore) and a MIDI page-turn pedal can keep you confident while still letting you watch the band and react to live cues. Finally, we cover a “future you will thank you” move: recording quick videos of your own playthroughs and saving them to Google Drive so you can instantly relearn parts months later. 

If you want a cleaner gig prep workflow, less stress, and more musical freedom on stage, listen now, then subscribe, share the episode with a gigging friend, and leave a review with your go-to method for remembering songs.

Thanks for being here!! I will continue to do my best to bring you the best, most informative guitar discussions to help you along your guitar journey!

The more you share this podcast with others, the more I can continue to grow this channel and offer the best information and advice I can to you.
Thank you!
Steve

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus... 
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0... 
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... . 

Transcript

The Multi-Band Memory Problem

Steve 0:00

Hey, Steve Stein here from Guitar Zoom Academy. Thought I'd talk to you about a situation that I run into a lot where I'm playing with a lot of different bands. And so I've got a lot of different material that I need to work on. You know, sometimes it's it's easier if you play with one band and you're playing the same songs all the time, you know, maybe swapping out a new song here and there. But you're you're rehearsing all of this stuff over and over and over, and then you start playing, and you're playing the stuff over and over and over all the time. And you get into a groove and you know the material because you're playing with the same people in the same band and the same songs. And again, maybe swapping out a song here or there. But it's harder when you do a lot of different things because you're constantly having to learn a large swath of music for different situations. And um, I love the challenge, but it it's difficult because you have to can continually change hats. You have to, you have to put on a different hat for this band and work on this material. And then, you know, the next week all of a sudden you've got you've got to learn a completely different group of of songs or or whatever it might be. And it's hard to keep track of everything. And what makes it difficult is that you it's hard to push into your memory because there's so many songs, again, depending on what your situation is. So I want to talk to you about a couple of things that could help you either way, whether you play with different bands or whether you play with the same band, but you struggle with memorization and that sort of thing. I thought I would give you some ideas to try and help you a little bit with that. So, what I like to do is the first thing I do is I create playlists on Spotify. Now, you could use whatever you want, but I create playlists of all the songs that I play or could potentially play in each one of these musical situations I find myself in. So that way, when something is coming up, let's say I have a gig I've got to play this weekend and I've got 30 songs to learn, or, you know, whatever, 40 songs or what or 20 songs or whatever it is. I can put all those in a playlist. And then every time I'm driving around,

Build Playlists To Learn Faster

Steve 2:10

I can listen to them. Every time I'm sitting around, you know, doing whatever, I can listen to these songs and start getting them in my head, get the feel of how the song goes in my brain. Um, and then start kind of making a checklist as I'm listening to these songs of what seems like it might be difficult or, you know, what I'm confused by, that sort of thing. So that's step number one. Step number two, then, is I find making charts, cheat sheets, if you will, is very, very helpful for me. So you might grab um, for instance, the tablature off of Ultimate Guitar for a particular song, but you're probably not going to be staring at that entire tab trying to play this song. It's you've got to you've got to uh absorb some element of this song, right? I mean, you don't want to just rely on try trying to read the charts the entire time. That's a whole lot of work, um, unless you're really, really good at reading, you know, charts. For

Cheat Sheets That Actually Help

Steve 3:11

me, it it still comes down to it's not just charts, it comes down to feel and you know, I still want to be able to interact with the band and you know make eye contact and have some fun and and have the songs in my head as best I can, but have some sort of cheat sheet on parts that I'm confused about or I need a little bit of work on. So it's not the entire song, it's just a little bit of whatever I might need. So I might, you know, get a piece of sheet music off of Ultimate Guitar. Maybe it's just a chord chart, or maybe it's um, you know, the the tab, but it's only the first page or the third page, which is where the solo is or something that I need some assistance with. And then the other thing that I'll do is I'll make my own chart of how the song goes in my head. Like, you know, this part, you know, intro, I'm doing this, verse, I'm doing this, chorus, I'm doing this. And then I'll just write verse if it's the same thing, and then chorus if it's the same thing. But if there's any changes, I'll write it next to the word verse or the word chorus, or and then I'll write down different dynamic elements. Play quiet, play clean, play distorted, you know, solo in D minor, or whatever it might be. Little cues on that piece of music. So if I just take a look over at my sheet music, uh, my cheat sheet, I can I can be reminded of that place in my brain of where I was listening to the song and you know, what I was thinking in my head, all that kind of stuff. I can make some sort of chart. So sometimes that works even better than just trying to get the sheet music and then trying to follow the entire sheet music. You know, you might get, again, it could be any song. Maybe it's a Stevie Wonder song, maybe it's a Chili Pepper song, maybe it's a Metallica song, but there's some little part in there, you know most of the song, but there's one little part that kind of throws you off. So instead of getting all stressed out, you might just put that little part in a chart, and then that's what you can follow. So then what I'll do is I'll take all of those and I'll put them in an iPad. And I learned this a long time ago, that like paper charts, you know, if it's windy out, they're all over the place. So it just became easier for me to use an actual iPad. So I use there's a lot of different apps out there that you can use, and they're all great. But I use an app called Forescore. F-O-R, uh score, I believe it is, F-O-R. Let me see if I can find it on here. Yeah, for score, F-O-R, and then the word score. Um, and it just works really great for me. So I have a little MIDI pedal

iPad Charts And Page Turns

Steve 5:44

that I can use with this, so it turns the pages for me as I need. But then what I'll do in here, let me show you an example. So we do uh one of the bands I play with, we do for the love of God by Steve Vai. Now, I don't play the song enough, you know, it's not like I play it every weekend with these guys. We play it once every six weeks or every two months or every three months. And in between there, I've played with, you know, five other bands during that time. And so I might have forgotten how, you know, some of it I remember, but some of it I don't remember. And so what I'll do is I'll make a chart. Now you're not really going to be able to see this anyway, but I'll make a cheat sheet chart that kind of tells me how the parts go. And then little tablature cues of, you know, little key things that might tick my brain and go, hey, this is this is that thing. So I'll take all of those and I'll put them in here and then I can put them in playlist order. So once we've decided what songs we're doing, what order we're doing them, I'll put them in here and then I can use this. The other part that I really like to do is if it's certainly a band that you're going to revisit, you know, maybe it's songs that you play. Like if I play in church a lot of times, the songs we're playing in church, we don't do them every weekend, but they're gonna come around and I'm gonna do them again. Same with some of these bands that I play with, you know, sporadically here and there. I don't play with them all the time. And some of the stuff we play is kind of difficult. So I make charts and things like that. But again, the length of time between the shows, I forget half of it because I'm doing other stuff as well, you know, in between all of that stuff. And so making these charts helps me to remember where those things are. So the other thing I'll do is I'll make videos of me playing. So once I've, you know, I'm in a zone where I'm, you know, I can play the tune however I'm playing it, I'll record myself and then I'll put it in a folder on my computer, and then I'll put it on Google Drive. That way, you know, if I'm at home or something like that and I'm not in my studio where I'm at right now, and I want to work on something, it's okay. I can jump on Google Drive, I can watch the video and see myself play and go, oh, that's how I did that. And then if I have that chart,

Record Practice Videos For Recall

Steve 7:54

I can use that and A, B back and forth. And then, of course, practice. But practice is based on my availability of time. You know, I'm gonna practice as much as I possibly can. But if I have three different bands in the span of a week or four different bands in the span of a week, I can't practice everything all together. I'm gonna get completely confused. So I have to focus on whatever I'm doing for a band on Wednesday. And then when that gig's over, I'm trying to get ready for the one on Saturday. And when that's over, I'm trying to get ready for the thing on Monday or whatever it might be. So I'm shifting gears a lot. So I'm not saying that you have to do that. I'm just saying these are really good ways of being able to keep things organized for yourself so you don't panic and have to start all over every single time. The charts, I use them as needed. I don't rely solely on charts, so I don't have to practice. I'm way more comfortable knowing how the songs go, you know, as much as I can. 100%, it'd be wonderful. If I can get to 75-80%, even 90%, I'm good to go. You know, like Hotel California would be a perfect example. Most of Hotel California is pretty straightforward, but there might be little things in the solo that I just need to touch up on because I don't, you know, I haven't practiced it for a few months. So I may not remember exactly how things go. And so I'll just watch the video or look at the chart or whatever it might be, and then it comes back and then I'll practice and go, oh, there it is. I'm good to go. And so these are just little tips that you can use to try and keep yourself organized for the different things that you might encounter in your life, um, you know, playing with different kinds of bands. So kind of a good idea, especially the complexity of the band. You know, I play with one band where I we don't, I mean, none of these bands that I'm talking about have any rehearsals because you're you're playing, you're just jumping in and you're playing. And um, you know, maybe they're established and they know how the songs go, but you're jumping in and playing with them and you don't necessarily know how the songs go. So there's one band that I play with. It's a um a funk band, a large big band with a large horn section. And they have their own arrangements for things. So even though I'm learning the songs, I'm learning these Earth, Wind, and Fire songs or these Chicago

Staying Flexible With Live Arrangements

Steve 10:07

tunes or Stevie Wonder songs or, you know, whatever it might be. Even though I learn them, I don't necessarily know how they're going to play certain parts because they do different arrangements differently. And so when I get together with them, I've got to balance knowing how the song goes, but being prepared for, you know, when do they want me to solo? How long am I soloing? Uh, is there a different ending, or do they have a break in there that maybe I'm not aware of? So I can't just be stuck to a chart. I have to be ready to make adjustments by listening to them and watching them. So when they go, you know, it's time to solo, or, you know, now, now be done, I got to be watching for that kind of stuff during the song. So those are the challenges that I really enjoy, actually. Um, you know, they keep me on my toes instead of just playing the same songs over and over and over. And don't get me wrong, I've done that many times in my life as well. And that's great. Uh, I'm just saying that these are great ways of being able to keep yourself organized. That way, even if you're in a band that plays every weekend and you're always doing the same stuff, but maybe there's some song that you're not really doing anymore, right? You've moved on to some other tune, and then all of a sudden you find that you, you know, need an extra song or you want to bring it back for some reason, and you're like, well, how did I used to play that? You'd have those charts and you'd have that video. So that's a great way of approaching it.