Bandeoke

[tycobb73]

I know there was a thread on this a few weeks ago but can't find it. I'm interested in doing this. Can those who do it tell me all the details? How many songs? How do you practice the female songs? What songs are popular? How did you go about selling it to bars? ect.

[fdeck]

http://beeftone.com/gomers.html

[funkingroovin]

@ tycobb73----Hey! I'm the original poster on the other thread you mentioned,and I'm as interested as you to get more info.

As I mentioned before,I brought it up to the guys at practice,and they were in.We currently have a "poll" going to find out the most popular/least painful songs

We have been testing the waters since our happy misfortune,by letting a "guest appearance" happen now and then. Usually at the start of 3rd and middle of last set.

So far it's been a lot of fun for everyone. We've even found a couple people learned songs we normally play,so they could join in on back-up.

I still don't think I'd want to do an entire night of it,but it would be fun for a set!

[Jason P Bass]

I once played a house party where we did this.

It was just two piece - bass and guitar.

We practiced as many songs as we could 2 or 3 times through, and printed the lyrics. All the lyrics went into a folder.

We set up PA at the party and told people to pick anything out of the folder.

It was awesome. Everybody loved it. There were no expectations that the cover songs were faithful to the original, and nobody cared when mistakes were made. We were kept busy by the guest singers for hours - longest set I have ever played. Took a break and people want to keep singing, so we did it some more.

It's definitely not rock star glory, but it was a lot of fun and really easy to do.

[funkingroovin]

Yeah,the best part is the "no expectations" part. Makes it "interesting" at times ,but everyone knows it's just good fun!

[JimmyM]

universal citywalk in orlando has a live karaoke club. went there one night, my wife signs me up to sing. now i'm a pretty good singer, certainly not the best ever, but at karaoke gigs i'm always one of the best ones there. at this club, the only singers worse than me were these two drunk girls who sang "single ladies." everyone else was fabulous. crazy!

[BryanM]

My band occasionally sort of does this. It started as us being the house band for a few open mic nights and having a lot of people who want to sing. It also helps that our keyboardist has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop and rock songs and can pick up anything on a moment's notice. We actually took a tally of the songs we know how to play and got to about 340 or so. It's definitely a great way for a band to expand it's repertoire. Careful if you're selling it to bars though, as you're going to want to have a fairly strong repertoire to begin with. I've found that singers aren't too picky about whether you can play the song exactly as long as you can stay in the tempo range as the original. It also helps for the whole band to be able to transpose on a singer's whim. If you do decide to go forward with it, the open mic thing might be a good way to jump in, good luck.