How many songs do you know?

[groove pump]

Not sure this is the right thread for this...

Just wondering, for those in bands (especially cover bands), how many songs do you "know" and how many have you "played".

By "know", I mean, if someone shouts it out, you got it right away. By "played" I mean you've played it before (in a band) but might have to check it out before playing it again.

I just made a list (probably not complete). I "know" around 90 and have played another 120. It's not bad but I'm sure some of you can put me to shame.

Thanks for playing!

Good news - bad news...

The good news is that I'm probably in your neighborhood in terms of songs I could play right now with a lot of confidence. It's been a while since I've been in that situation where we dust off something on the fly in the middle of a show. My current band has about 150 songs in the catalog - that includes a few tunes each for Halloween, X-mas, etc. I'm sure that I'd need to freshen up on at least a few of them that aren't in our regular rotation.

The bad news? Whatever my ballpark number might actually be, it's waaaay more than the rest of this band I've been playing with... for a few years... and they're honestly getting worse

So much worse in fact that I'll be pulling the ripcord on this hawt mess after this coming weekend. Don't want to leave them high and dry with a Fri/Sat doubleheader on the way, but I'll be wishing them well after Sat night. And now back to our program

 

[Fuzzbass]

As an old experienced bar band guy, I know many hundreds of tunes: hundreds that I "own" (can play in my sleep), and hundreds more that I could competently fake my way through. Also, my tablet has a set list app containing over 700 "charts"* accumulated from being called in to do short notice sub gigs. That overlaps with the songs I know well enough, but also contains hundreds of songs I played live just once or twice: my memory isn't good enough to hold them permanently, but because I played them once I can probably play them again using the chart for reference.


*These aren't real chord charts, they're written out in my simplified version of the Nashville number system. My brain thinks in numbers, not letters. And that works out just fine because I rarely play jazz with complex chords, or prog tunes with multiple modulations.

 

[mrcbass]

I have tablet notes on over 1,000 cover songs. I could probably whip out over 900 of them on the spot with my notes, which is the primary reason I mount my tablet every gig - to manage requests or unexpected call outs. I could probably get through about 200 without notes. Have probably played about a dozen songs on the fly on stage without having ever worked them out,

 

[Jay Corwin]

I've forgotten more than I can remember. Once I'm out of a band I pretty much lose that information and replace it with whatever my next project is.

 

[ebo]

I was in an originals band for years and recently was asked to sit in for a song or two. They took off on a song and I couldn’t remember the bass line, and I WROTE it! My memory is crap. I do have hundreds charted on my IPad just in case.

 

[pepj]

God knows..
Often I get asked do I know...and if I have heard it and can chart it in my head, we are probably going to do it, especially if there is a strong lead by one or others in the band.

 

[Pocket Dave]

Just guessing; I could be way off.

I sub or backup 14 different singer/guitarists (well, one singer/sax player) with as many setlists. Sure there's some overlap and some songs I need to run through again before a gig, but counting my main band which does hundreds of songs, plus ,dozens and dozens of standards everyone seems to know it's probably somewhere around 400.

 

[pepj]

I do not like a BL dropping a new song on the day of the gig and then expects me to nail everything.
Getting a decent pass through with no mistakes is one thing, but then to critique I'm using the wrong bass etc...??
I can get close to a picked sound via fingers..
Thats worth the 150..

 

[turf3]

It largely depends on what you mean by "know". Those who want rock and roll to be the reproduction of certain reference recordings, permanently embedded in amber, would consider "knowing" to be the ability to reproduce the detailed basslines on said reference recordings. In my world, "knowing" means remembering "starts on the four chord, and then here it goes to the six and around the circle; the bridge starts on the five". There's a mighty big range between those two models of "knowing" a tune.

 

[jimmydean]

I don't know..........how many you got ?