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How many songs in a 45 minute set?


josie

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A friend asked this on Twitter but got only my reply, so I thought I'd ask here. 

I'd been working on the setlist for a 45-minute gig, so I knew our answer (as a 5-piece blues band, with lots of instrumental solos, and not much patter between songs) - 9 or 10 songs, depending on whether we include our 10-minute version of Stormy Monday. (If our excellent occasional guest guitarist is there, make that 8 or 9.) 

It will depend on the genre - the answer could be 15 for a punk band or 1 for a Grateful Dead tribute! - I'd be interested to hear from others.  

 

 

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Depends on the band.

The Ramones would probably have done close to 20 songs live in 45 minutes, Led Zep at their most bloated maybe 3 or 4 (less if one of them was the interminable 20 minute +  live version of  'Dazed and Confused'.)

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7 hours ago, josie said:

It will depend on the genre - the answer could be 15 for a punk band or 1 for a Grateful Dead tribute! - I'd be interested to hear from others.  

We (the Grateful Dudes - a Dead tribute band) usually do between 8 and 10 songs per set - for every 20 minute plus 'Dark Star' or 'Playing in the Band' there will be several 3 minute blues/country songs. Our sets are usually around an hour for the first, and about an hour and a half for the second.

Usually no gaps or banter between songs unless we need to tune, we make sure we can smoothly transition from one number to another with no breaks.

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We're normally asked to do a 45 minute set, or 1/2 hour if we're first on a bill of 3 or more...

Which is 10 songs ranging from 2-6 minutes with only a tiny bit of chat in between. We run 2x2 of them together with just bass feedback to cover the drummer changing the bpm on his metronome!

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Just checked. The last cover band gig I did we had 32 songs in the list. That's 16 songs a set, with not a lot of waffle in between,. Some were extras, so we probably played about 12 of them.

Edited by chris_b
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When I was in a blues band playing a bar at a festival in Dundee, as we finished our set the landlord said he would pay us an £175 on top of our fee if we could do an extra 45 minutes. We did another 3 songs and played for a hour and 15 minutes...

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2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Unless you are playing popular covers, or as an originals band have at least an album's worth of well known material, or have a wildly entertain stage show, 45 minutes is too long.

I used to really enjoy 30 minute sets. You can go full steam ahead. Cut the chat and hopefully have left people wanting more.

 

 

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The last few Terrortones sets were 10-12 songs and last somewhere between 30 and 35 minutes, depending on which songs we'd picked and how much faster we played them compared to the recorded versions.

42 minutes ago, Low End Bee said:

I used to really enjoy 30 minute sets. You can go full steam ahead. Cut the chat and hopefully have left people wanting more.

Exactly this. I would always want to have the audience wanting more instead of thinking we had outstayed our welcome.

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It depends on what the gig is. If you are playing original rock music to a new audience, you may want to play a short set packed with your best material to make the maximum impact and finish before you outstay your welcome. If you are playing to a blues crowd you might want to extend the songs and play a bit longer. A typical covers pub gig to a crowd that have come to see a band is generally 2x45 plus an encore, whereas a venue with a constantly changing clientele moving from one bat to another may want three one-hour sets.

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