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Suggestions: songs from the 80s that work acoustically


Brook_fan

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Acoustic, or for choir? They are very different things - well it depends how you define acoustic. Its to do with the attack. In general, if a piece of music is predominantly guitar-based with a lot of the rhythm coming from the guitar strumming or riffs, then its not going to translate well to other 'instruments' which don't have a similar attack such as voice/choir. But it might be okay on piano/acoustic guitar.

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Don’t Stop Believing, they did it in Glee which gave Journey a hit all over again.

Others that might work:

Died In Your Arms Tonight; Gold; Alone; Rosanna; Africa; We Built This City; Every Little Thing (She Does Is Magic); Video Killed The Radio Star.

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Pretty much anything will work given the right arrangement and suitable musicians.

If you are short on inspiration have a listen to the Nouvelle Vague and Susanna and the Magical Orchestra albums.

BTW the 80s covers an awful lot of musical styles. It's not all post-punk synth pop. There were a load of dull guitar bands later on off the back of The Smiths and of course Acid House at the end of the decade.

Edited by BigRedX
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Thanks for all the suggestions guys.  Just to clarify, my ‘choir’ are 14 very keen 11 year olds, not intending to create harmonies, just to be a bit of fun and get them enjoying singing,  I would accompany them on acoustic guitar, but could possibly bring in some piano, bass and drums to support.

Robbie

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12 minutes ago, mingsta said:

Erasure A Little Respect. Always goes down a treat whenever we play it and would still sound good with a strummy acoustic guitar type thing going on. 

I respectfully have to differ on this one! When my band did it I discovered it had no tune😩

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If you're going to do this at a parents evening you should finish with 'I Will Always Love You'. Skip the 'bittersweet memories' verse then right at the end get the winsome, smiling 11 year-olds to stretch out their little arms to the audience and tilt their heads to one side.

Outcome: doting parents in floods, roof-raising applause. Ker-ching!

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19 hours ago, mingsta said:

Erasure A Little Respect. Always goes down a treat whenever we play it and would still sound good with a strummy acoustic guitar type thing going on. 

Good song and works well in terms of acoustic guitar and a singer. I don't think there's much in there for a choir to do tho.

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On 19/12/2018 at 10:29, Paul S said:

Nik Kershaw arranged a lot of his stuff for acoustic, I think there was an acoustic album back in the day but he toured last year with an acoustic one man show.  Works fantastically well.

It certainly does work well.

"Wouldn't it be good" is way better when stripped of its pop trappings and 80's production values.

And "Dancing Girls" is simply sublime compared to its pop counterpart.

 

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23 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

If you're going to do this at a parents evening you should finish with 'I Will Always Love You'. Skip the 'bittersweet memories' verse then right at the end get the winsome, smiling 11 year-olds to stretch out their little arms to the audience and tilt their heads to one side.

Outcome: doting parents in floods, roof-raising applause. Ker-ching!

Alternatively you could aim for notoriety by reproducing one of Madonna's ditties of the era. Like a Virgin? Papa don't Preach? You could get even more juicy by delving into the 90s :D

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