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A comment on Paul McCartney's Freakish Memory. Parent comment

Re:Paul McCartney's Freakish Memory by avip on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @08:13AM (#33079234)
It's true. Lots of amateur musicians can do that to some degree. Of-course results vary, but it's common.

I'm probably "not even an amateur", whatever that means, and with popular music I can usually play a song (the chords) after hearing it once. Pop music is oftentimes 4-5 chords picked from a well known set of ~7 progressions, without any scale change. I'm not able to hear-play more complex harmonics s.a Jazz, or things like Queen which are not totally trivial.

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Re:Paul McCartney's Freakish Memory by Maursault on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @08:48AM (#33079535)
> I'm not able to hear-play more complex harmonics s.a Jazz, or things like Queen which are not totally trivial.

Granted, but Queen didn't just show up at the studio unprepared. Given the same preparation Queen gave, it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that you could pick up any of their songs, making it look easy to someone that didn't observe your preparation.

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