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Learning a large setlist FAST - Tips?

#41
jmattbassplaya said:
2. Ask the band if they do any of the songs differently from the recordings. Do they do a song in a different key, is there an added chorus, is the whole song played with a different feel, etc... I recently had to learn a CCR song. Nothing hard, but I took a good 20 minutes to get it down. I showed up to rehearsal only to find out the band plays it nothing like the original, so I had wasted my time even bothering with the song.
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The band wants to meet up at a bar and chat with me next week (to size me up? Haha who knows), but this will be one of the first things I ask.

I am taking someone's advice about transposing the songs to Nashville Numbers, that way if they play it in a different key, it will be simple transposition.
 
#42
Good advice right here! I usually will only learn 4-5 songs for an "audition" unless I already have played some more of the songs. And yes some bands can't cop the "feel" of songs right which is even more important, for instance I have heard very few bands play Whole Lotta Love at the right tempo (it is pretty slow) and with the right "groove" and correct bassline- HAS to be a pick to hit the low E and E octave chord thru the whole song.
jmattbassplaya said:
+1 to all of this.

The only things I'll add are:

1. Before you learn more than a handful of tunes, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE GIG! Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more frustrating than having to buckle down and learn a lot of material just to find out you the gig was 100% yours in the first place, and now you have learned a lot of material for nothing. Always make sure you know the deal first.

2. Ask the band if they do any of the songs differently from the recordings. Do they do a song in a different key, is there an added chorus, is the whole song played with a different feel, etc... I recently had to learn a CCR song. Nothing hard, but I took a good 20 minutes to get it down. I showed up to rehearsal only to find out the band plays it nothing like the original, so I had wasted my time even bothering with the song.
Click to expand...
 
#43
m0ranwad said:
The band wants to meet up at a bar and chat with me next week (to size me up? Haha who knows), but this will be one of the first things I ask.

I am taking someone's advice about transposing the songs to Nashville Numbers, that way if they play it in a different key, it will be simple transposition.
Click to expand...

That's really smart. Nashville Numbers will save you a LOT of time and energy.
 
#44
Write down the beginning note. write down the begginning note of the change. lead is over the chorus groove....or the verse groove. write down which groove lead rides over.


If u miss a note or a change.....slide into the correct one....if u miss that
....put on your Bass Face and headbang for a few bars.


Always works!
 
#46
jeffbonny said:
In defense of bassbully I don't think he's talking about playing everything note for note.
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Then, to paraphrase Winston Churchill - we're just haggling about price.

It's then about DEGREES of faking it.


At a dinner party Churchill says to his dinner companion, "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?"

The woman responds, "My goodness, Mr. Churchill. I suppose I would."

Churchill replies, "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"

She answers, "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?"

Churchill answers, "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price."
 
#49
aborgman said:
Then, to paraphrase Winston Churchill - we're just haggling about price.
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Not really...no one (including you and your nice story) has actually defined what "faking it" is. Over the years I've been accused of faking it for using charts and on other occasions for NOT using charts.

OK, I'm being kinda snarky and I know we're probably talking about completely memorizing cover tunes here but lets back up a little to the OP asking for tips on getting a bunch of tunes together fast. The implication was that he wanted alternatives to just relying on memorizing the tunes pre-rehearsal. Sure, under most circumstances 3 weeks should be enough time to memorize 50 covers but that wasn't ever really the point. How those of us who have dealt with getting set lists together fast have pulled it off is the point.
 
#52
Good thread for me. I'm playing a one-off next week and the band has seriously procrastinated- until I threatened to cancel- in getting me a set list. There's maybe four semi-recognizable song titles on it and five traditional Hawaiian songs that I have never heard before. The rest is country, which I hate. It's all stuff that i would never listen to so i have no idea how to approach it. The band is all like "eh, no problem! We're not worried at all if you're there!...." and I'm all like thanks for the stroking but I'd really rather know what I'm playing than spend three hours chasing chords and watching your fretboards..."
 
#53
aborgman said:
Anything other than exact, note for note recreation, is some degree of faking it.
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That's utterly absurd. By that obstructed thinking anyone who's ever made someone else's song their own was "faking it". The Beatles were "faking it" with all their early covers? The Band was "faking" Don't Do It? Johnny Cash was "faking" Hurt? Seriously?

But back to the OP's dilemma. I really dislike the term "faking" and its negative connotations. If you have good ears, good knowledge of the genre and are paying undistracted attention to your fellow musicians the ability to play a simple song you haven't rehearsed is just part of your arsenal for making good music. In my dotage I don't do many pickup gigs or play in 8 bands at once anymore. There was a long period though when if I'd insisted on sitting down with the recording of every song I played I wouldn't have slept and would have had to say no to a lot of work.

Now maybe through lack of available experience or opportunity or just through choice and plain old Protestant work ethic playing music unrehearsed doesn't seem to apply much to your reality. That's fine, I'm not saying it does or it needs to. What I am saying is that it widely exists and anyone exploring life as a working musician is well served by acknowledging this and getting together the skills to pull it off.
 
#54
I get what aborgman means, and it's a pretty accurate assessment....it helps to look at the situation rather than one specific word in it's description. Yes, if Johnny Cash had been thrown onstage with Trent Reznor unrehearsed he would indeed have been "faking" it... i.e. finding a way to fit within the musical context so as not to sound like he didn't know the song.
Not everyone is good at doing it, which is why not everyone gets pickup gigs.
 
#55
But by that measure, Pino's been faking it with the Who, by not playing Entwistle's parts exactly as recorded. And similarly, over the years Entwistle was consistently faking it but not playing his own parts live exactly as recorded.

Most forms of music are about playing within (and playing with) a basic structure. "Faking it," in my world, is not knowing the song's architecture—and so either guessing entirely about what might work or else playing the odds and playing a bassline most likely to work, given the places the tune is probably going to go.

Knowing the structure and choosing to play something appropriate from a big set of lines that would work with that structure? As long as you're not doing it in a moment that calls for one of the tune's signature parts, that's knowing the tune, not faking it. I'd go so far as to say that musicians don't really know a song until they have a range of options for things they might play at any particular moment *other* than the recorded phrase. (That's true, I think, even if in live performance I always play a part exactly as recorded.)
 
#56
Transcribe the substantial parts of the bassline for the song form parts (ABACAB etc) to music paper in bass clef (downloadable off the internet for free). Transcription makes your brain work, and also you now have the parts written down on sheet music. Then transcribe the song form and chord changes to a new sheet of paper. That's your fakebook for the songs (and good to give to the guitar player so he isn't missing the bridge regularly anymore).

If your reading and music notation knowledge is such that you're unable to transcribe a bassline, well, the bright side is, now you have something to work on during practice time.
 
#58
bassinplace said:
Memorizing 50 songs in 3 weeks is a cake walk? :hmm: Guess I'll never be a real bassist...:eek:
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You'd be surprised man. I've had to do 20 songs in a day before. It's definitely not a cake walk for me, but I think it's a level most people can get to if they train their ear, learn a little bit of theory, and use some good ol' fashioned elbow grease on. The internet helps a lot, too :ninja:
 
#59
I write down these and keep on the floor:
1. Key of song
2. First note you play
3. Song structure Intro-V1-Ch-V2-etc.
4. First chord/note of each section
5. Number of bars in each section (if unusual).

These are the bits where mistakes are made (even when you know songs). Master 10-20 songs quickly, run off charts for the rest.
 

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