Set lists

A Former User

Hi BigDub,
If you don't want to lose the director and the director is rather stubborn, then it is what it is. Just be up on the songs. Two possible ideas;

Possibly ask if the director can rotate through the entire library during rehearsals.
Take a pool and see which songs people are worried about that needs polished

Richard III

I have a friend that runs a big band that has been together for years. Their book is in the low two hundreds. All numbered. He'll call out the tune by number. Everybody flips to that page and away they go. I suspect they could almost do them from memory.

My small band has currently 33 songs in the book. The other horn player wants to number them. When I call the song, he wants to know the number. All well and good except I keep adding songs, so the numbers change. Poor guy ends up flipping around. Piano player looks around (all memorized) and asks if we're ready. Waiting on the other horn player is always the reply.

Why so few songs? My fault. All of our songs are originally just for piano. It takes me a bit of time to re-work them for our instrumentation and get the kinks out. We've been doing this for 6-7 months.

fels

A "gigging" musician is different from my current experience. I saw a piece from Nick Drozdoff that listed all the tunes that a "gigging" player should know by heart. Too long for me .. although i am familiar with most bu not memorized.

My concerts with the Jazz Big Band and my Quintet are rehearsed -- over and over. I also play in a sight reading big band jazz -- both experiences are great.

I am training myself on an iPad 3 with FourScore. As an Eagle Scout and charter member of paranoids anomymous i will have the hard copy play list easily available. Pedal issues suck. But i have size 13 feet. Generally take of my shoe to use socked foot for control.

fels

take off

J. Jericho

@Tobylou8 said in Set lists:

We have a set list. We practice the eventual list plus a few extras. Sometimes good tunes get cut, but the week of a performance, the list is set and there are no audibles for extraneous tunes. We've played one encore since I've been there. There are two folders, practice and performance. Only the performance folder attends the concert. I feel sorry for you having to lug all that music around. I used to play in a church band that did that. 500 charts and any song could be called up at any time. We played 8 different tunes on any given Sunday. I took my file "bucket" home to practice the tough songs (the ones George Rawlins recorded!!) and lo and behold an audible was called. The other trumpet player wouldn't let me look on his music, he turned it away!
Anyway, The conductor isn't going to change, none of them do, so maybe a little cart for your horns and file "folder". This is what I used for years and it is still in good shape!

That's a great-looking cart! There are smaller, but flimsier folding luggage carts available for cheap, or you could simply use a small carry-on size suitcase.

BigDub

Let me add a clarification of my original intent of this post:
My reasons for bemoaning the deviation from the setlist is selfish, lazy, and not generally looking to improve the workings and practices of my band.
I just want a smaller amount of music to carry to the gig without the looming possibility, more probability of one or more surprise entries added to the setlist. On the spot. I do have an iPad, and I put as much music as I can on it, but as some of you have shared, it has it's glitches, not to mention my ineptness at navigating ForScore and those things that seem to come easier to others as well. I think it might be just a small trade off to what I have been doing...
Here's another admission on my part: it isn't really that hard for me to carry my whole book and a separate small gig play list folder and keep the big book near my chair for those additions. I can really do that. People run marathons and triathlons and feats of great physical strength. Also, the percussionists have to bring many pieces of equipment, and tuba players have their tubas.....I do not, so I guess I can suck it up and be a big boy now.

Kehaulani

I'm confused.

barliman2001

@Dr-Mark In our Big Band (or rather dance orchestra) we are carrying TWO two-inch folders... And one for the current setlist... but then, we play up to thirty five-piece sets in one gig, and need to be prepared for the audience to ask for specific pieces... and many halls can't provide enough sockets or wiring for 29 ipads... batteries don't last long enough for, say, Austrian weddings which can last up to twenty-four hours!

A Former User

Hi barliman2001,
I have around 500 songs ranging from Broadway and hard bop to country (old and new) Each time an audience member requests a song that I do not have, I promise that the next time I come to their venue, I will have it.
That helps get me back to the venue again!
I know that 500 songs seems like a lot but this has taken years to develop. The downside is that I have so many songs, I can't play all of them all the way through so when I rehearse, I'll play bits and pieces of the songs to keep me familiarized. This probably comes from my days in high school marching band where we had to memorize our shows.

barliman2001

@Dr-Mark If you've got too much music, you should look at our band library... only 20 years in existence, and more than 9,000 pieces... with about 800 of them new pieces by our band leader...

BigDub

Speaking of too much music, we had a gig last night, which went very well with no set list issues (LOL)
The opposite of too much music happened, however. Our drummer's music never got there, he wasn’t responsible for it. He did an amazing job of ad libbing the whole night.
No one was the wiser. He would ask us how the intro went and a little about the song and go from there!

Richard III

@BigDub

All the drummers I know wouldn't have any use for sheet music anyway. Why? None of them can read it. Of course the drummers I've used had another problem. They couldn't keep time. Seriously. After the last one, we just gave up having a drummer. Life is so much better. Same story with guitar players.

BigDub

@Richard-III said in Set lists:

@BigDub

All the drummers I know wouldn't have any use for sheet music anyway. Why? None of them can read it. Of course the drummers I've used had another problem. They couldn't keep time. Seriously. After the last one, we just gave up having a drummer. Life is so much better. Same story with guitar players.

This drummer is super. He stays on tempo, very skilled at all the components. He is also a member of the Philadelphia Eagles Drum Line. As a NY Giant fan, I do not hold that against him and I am his biggest fan.....in spite of his misguided allegiances!

Dr GO

Just came back from a gig. No set list. We exclusively took requests from the audience. Heck half of the songs we didn't even have the music. The gig went fabulously well.

BigDub

@Dr-GO said in Set lists:

Just came back from a gig. No set list. We exclusively took requests from the audience. Heck half of the songs we didn't even have the music. The gig went fabulously well.

ooooh. That would be a tremendous step up for our group....a bigger step than our legs can reach. At least we can manage sight reading a piece we have never done.....we do a pretty good job sight reading.

A Former User

Hi Dr-GO
That's what I did last night too! I spent 3 1/2 hours playing the heads of tunes followed by a pocket full of ad lib. I'll share with you something an old jazzer told me decades ago; "If you play a wrong note or passage, do it twice. That way the audience will think it was intentional and you were just being
avant-garde"

Dr GO

@BigDub said in Set lists:

@Dr-GO said in Set lists:

Just came back from a gig. No set list. We exclusively took requests from the audience. Heck half of the songs we didn't even have the music. The gig went fabulously well.

ooooh. That would be a tremendous step up for our group....a bigger step than our legs can reach. At least we can manage sight reading a piece we have never done.....we do a pretty good job sight reading.

Um... Our organist is blind. Believe it or not, that really helps us out as he literally knows EVERY song in the standard books. So we are never in need of the changes. It is his sixth sense and this serves him well.

Dr GO

@Dr-Mark said in Set lists:

Hi Dr-GO
..."If you play a wrong note or passage, do it twice. That way the audience will think it was intentional and you were just being
avant-garde"

That's EXACTLY what I do! That's EXACTLY what I do!

A Former User

Hi Dr-GO,
Holy Cow! I too use to perform with a blind B3 player named Bobbie Reed from around Washington, PA. The guy was bat blind but could do maintenance on a 400 lb. Hammond organ and set up his gear like he was as sighted as us. Sadly, Bobbie passed away a couple of years ago. He was scary good and is missed.

A Former User

Dr-GO sez;
That's EXACTLY what I do! That's EXACTLY what I do!
Are you sure we don't have the same Mom or Dad?