How to inconspicuously meld two songs into one :D

[Shroom]

So my band is entered in our upcoming school talent show, and we're only allowed to play 5 minutes or one song. We have 2 songs we'd really like ot play (before the audition, we were all arguing on which one it was gonna be), and each of them is around 2 minutes and 30 seconds (a little over actually, but we can pick up the tempo to make em fit), so our brilliant and completely original plan is to shift from one into the other without stopping.

Here's the problem: They're in different keys. Even worse, the first song has a distinctive intro and outro, and the the second song also has an intro (although we could probably get away with pretending it's "the bridge").

So, does anyone have any tips on how ot get away with this?

[Lanztek]

You nailed it when you said "pretent it's a bridge."

That's pretty much how you make a medly of two songs that are in different keys. Don't worry about keeping the songs intact (keeping the outro of the first song and the intro of the second song). Simply find a spot on the first song just prior to the outro and then modulate from the key of the first song into the key of the second song.

An example of some modulation connecting songs of diff keys can be heard in Greenday's "Jesus of Suburbia"

[mambo4]

You might also consider honestly which one is better and dump the other song.

It's a contest, you want to make the overall best impression you can.

consider:

2.5 minutes of Awsome is better than 5 minutes of Pretty Good.

Longer songs = greater chance of losing the audience/judges, or making mistakes.

shorter song = more focused and efficient rehearsal effort, more time to polish the arrangement.

just a suggestion, YMMV

[hartke20g]

Originally Posted by mambo4

You might also consider honestly which one is better and dump the other song.

It's a contest, you want to make the overall best impression you can.

consider:

2.5 minutes of Awsome is better than 5 minutes of Pretty Good.

Longer songs = greater chance of losing the audience/judges, or making mistakes.

shorter song = more focused and efficient rehearsal effort, more time to polish the arrangement.

i agree, but there could also be the problem that
shorter song= less time for the audience to get into it.

there are a lot of factors that'll go into this, so it's important to have a nice long look at all of them.

and also, +1 to playing more than 1 song without stopping. later on, when you get bigger gigs, that'll be an important technique to keep the crowd interested. 2 famous bands off the top of my head that i know do this quite a bit are The Mars Volta and Muse.

[Shroom]

I think I posted this thread a little too early. My band just finished a new song at practice today and I think we're going to try to play it instead of either of the other two. I'm not sure how long it is, but it happens to be in the same key as the first song mentioned, so if it is actually significant whether or not we play the same song we auditioned, no one will probably notice except a "rival" band of ours.

None the less, thanks for all the help