chris_b Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 It's standard practice to run songs together and if you are a "dance" band you'll understand all about it. James Brown, Geno Washington and many others have done this from the 60's onwards. You can keep to the same tempo or vary it, but it seems to me that the object here is to keep people on the dance floor. For me the deciding factor would be what numbers are chosen and how well the numbers are put together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimR Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 (edited) Segues are different to medleys. I hate medleys with a vengeance. Why learn the verse and a chorus of a song and only play it once. May as well play it 3 times and learn the mid section. My last band tried to do this. It worked fairly well with about 3 tunes from one artist and play at least two verses and two choruses but you could see people's confusion when you're playing well known songs that people sing along to and you change the tune. The guitarist used to write the links and they were murder because they were not intuitive to play. If we had a dep we couldn't do the song due to trying to teach the links on the fly. In the band I play now we had a Stones and a Quo medley. I rewrote the links to the Quo medley so that it keeps going and is natural. We play 2 verses and choruses of each tune. Previously they practically stopped each tune by linking each one with a guitar bridge. The Stones medley they played was awful and they couldn't link them at all. I persuaded them to learn the three tunes properly and we play the full versions individually with segues now. Which they actually prefer. Edited July 30, 2011 by TimR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 Not so keen on medleys, but segues are brilliant. We do them a lot. Our current ones include [i]Hard To Handle > Crazy In Love > I Wish[/i] and [i]I Want You Back > ABC[/i] and [i]Reach Out (I'll Be There) > Lady Marmalade > Ain't Too Proud > Night Boat To Cairo[/i] (sounds absurd I know, but it works). The biggest one we ever did was [i]Black Eyed Boy > Two Tribes > War > 25 Miles > Papa Was A Rolling Stone > Move On Up[/i] complete with audience karaoke in Papa Was. Tipped the scales at nearly 20 minutes..! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LawrenceH Posted July 31, 2011 Share Posted July 31, 2011 Segues are awesome. Medleys...hey, why not suggest to the band leader an even better idea - he could program the backing parts into a machine, that way it'll be really consistent night after night and the rest of the band could put their feet up. In fact, why not take the actual recordings, mix those into a few choice medleys, then simply take that out to gigs with a light show, a soundsystem and a laptop. That way no-one has to worry about singing, plus he saves a ton of money not having to pay a band. And he can call himself Disco Dave and get a banner made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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