Deciding what songs to add: As Amanda says, this changes over time - and it’s great to keep challenging yourself to learn new material. I’ve been learning songs since I was in elementary school and now that I am in my 70s, I have a lot of favorites that I keep coming back to. I also love to learn new songs, though. Sometimes I've needed to learn something for a particular reason, for example, a Woody Guthrie song to sing in a Bound For Glory production, when the group I was in decided to add a new song to our repertoire, or if I needed something for a themed song swap. Some of those songs have stuck with me, but the real keepers are the ones that I hear - or discover in a book - that speak to me immediately. I know it right away. In fact, sometimes they won’t leave me alone until I have internalized them! I have a bunch of notebooks that I have put together over the years that help me keep track (more or less) of the songs I have learned and I try to keep a smaller notebook of songs that are in my current repertoire handy at singing events for easy reference. At this point in my life, I have a pretty good idea of which of my songs are appropriate for the situation I am in at the time. I like to involve everyone when I can - that’s one of the great joys of group singing - so that’s my main focus when I am at a song swap.

Learning new songs/memorization tricks: I do lots of the things Amanda does, especially listening in the car. I also keep a hard copy of the words with me at all times. That way, if I’m running through the song in my head while I’m waiting in the checkout line in the grocery store, I can check any words I’m not sure of. I agree that making the song your own is very important, so I move away from listening to the original to listening to myself as soon as I feel confident that I know what I’m doing. Re memorizing, again Amanda has great suggestions. I consider myself fortunate that in elementary school, I had to memorize poems and recite them in front of the class. (I can still remember most of The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Highwayman!) Maybe that’s why I find memorizing ballads much easier than songs without a plot. The good part about singing songs with a chorus is that the chorus comes around so many times that those words aren’t usually an issue, although people still do expect the verses to come in a specific order. I can remember when a group I was in was struggling with Jean Ritchie’s "Come Fare Away". We always reminded ourselves just before we started the song that the order of the verses was Bright Sails Leave Lace (the first word of each verse). Although I love singing as a duo with my partner Brian, it’s worth noting that singing with even one other person makes the issue of memorization all the more critical. You really should both be singing the same words at the same time. That’s a different topic, though!