Instrumental music

[JDHayes]

My band has recently started doing wedding receptions and most of the time the people ask that we play some background music as people come in. I was wondering what you all would suggest. We are a classic rock/party band. We have been playing the bar scene around here with the normal cover songs everybody wants to hear. Most of the time if some ones wants some background music we just start jamming in a key.

[bkbirge]

Since you are a classic rock cover band...
Frankenstein
Soul Sacrifice
Glad

[BassChuck]

I used to do that kind of thing. The background music thing can be a real cool experience. You might try getting into jazz standards to broaden your musical horizons, tastes and techniques.

Or.... surprisingly, there are a lot of people who really like the old 'surf' music stuff, "Telestar", "Pipeline", "Wipeout", "Walk Don't Run", "Hawaii 5-0" you know... good guitar leads and fun music.

[BlacksHole]

Since you mentioned weddings and classic rock, may I suggest Europa and In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.

[Bruce Lindfield]

You could learn some nice Jazz tunes!

Seriously - tunes like "So What" and "The Sidewinder" can be quite funky and good to jam on,while not being very hard to play!

[MonetBass]

You also might consider just playing a song without the vocals. What Bruce suggested is a good idea too.

[JDHayes]

thanks for the ideas guys. Yeah we jam out some songs without the words and it comes out pretty good. Its fun getting up there and seeing where things go on stage. Great idea bruce we could learn some jazzy stuff. We all have 10 or more years playing experience so I think we could probaly pull off some simple jazz stuff.