Should i master one song? or play multiple song?

I have been learning guitar myself for about a month and I am getting used to changing chords including barre chord and some strumming patterns (yet far from being perfect)

I have been playing multiple different songs usually whichever song I feel like during the practice .

However, the more I play, the more I feel I am not going to master any of those song however, I still feel I am improving.

I am not quite sure if I need to continue practice multiple different song or should "master" one song?

And how important is it to memorise the song from the beginning to the end?

How important it is to memorize a song all depends on your goal with the guitar, if you plan to go play in a band at some point or going to join jamming sessions then you need to memorize a lot of songs, it just doesn't look good on a gig if somebody in the band has to look at the tabs all the time.

I knew people that played perfectly with the tabs in front of them but from the moment you took the tabs a way they stopped playing simply because they didn't really know the song.

If you know the song out of your head then that is where the freedom of improvisation can start, not if you are to occupied looking at a paper sheet.

Herman

Originally Posted by: hsb1007

I have been learning guitar myself for about a month and I am getting used to changing chords including barre chord and some strumming patterns (yet far from being perfect)

I have been playing multiple different songs usually whichever song I feel like during the practice .

However, the more I play, the more I feel I am not going to master any of those song however, I still feel I am improving.

I am not quite sure if I need to continue practice multiple different song or should "master" one song?

And how important is it to memorise the song from the beginning to the end?

I'm long guilty of learning bits of songs and not learning a song all the way through. I mean I've played in bands in the past so I'm fully capable of learning fulls songs. Sometimes I just want to learn a lick...and that happens more often than it should.

If you can, learn the full song.

Why?

You learn much more that just a series of chord/note progressions. You learn how songs works. Why some chord changes from one song section to another work. Different ways to approach verses, choruses, bridges, breakdowns and so on.

If you have any interesting in writing your own material, the best way to learn how to arite a song is by breaking dowm and learning other people's songs. We learn how to speak by emulating people around us. Songwriting is the same.

As often I've said on these boards, don't do what I do.

That's very helpful advise, Jeff. I definitely like playing full songs but I've also wondered if it's "ok" to be learning multiple songs at once. Music Stand Monday (as I like to call it) at my place involves getting out some of my practice pieces, adding them to my music stand, and sticking with just those for the week. Sometimes I hit a wall with one, and will go to another for awhile. But when I finally come back to the first one, I find I am better at some aspect of the song. Sometimes just letting your brain think about music/notes/melody in a different arrangment for a little while and successfully playing a piece will transfer over to the other musical piece in a way that we often don't understand. I find I'll have some improvement in how I play. Confidence has a lot to do with that too.

I feel the improvement wheels turning, even if they are going slow.

The hardest thing I find in learning a new song is downloading all the notation pages and not being able to get them all on my music stand in a row. When I played Piano I could flip the pages over as I went along, difficult for me on the guitar so now its memorise one page at a time.I cant seem to get on to well with the rolling notation pages on line.