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Song medley/blending ideas??? please share

QORC

QORC

Aug 22, 2003
3,882
3,813
Elberon, New Jersey
#1
Hey, what seems to set some bands apart is the way they are able to blend songs one into another - medleys, whether by the same group or not.

Would love to hear some ideas of songs that would work well together and one seamless transition (not merely stopping, keeping the beat going, but literally half of one song and half of another).

Here's ours that we were doing.

ZZ Top - Gimme All Your Lovin' (1/2) right into Sharp Dressed Man (full song)

What I Like About You - The Authority Song - Dancing With Myself

Every Rose Has its Thorn-Hotel California

Alright Now-The Other Woman - Shook Me All Night Long

Looking for some ideas in my new project!
 
#2
If you are into pleasing the average crowd, you need a late 70s disco/funk medley. Think KC and The Sunshine Band, Earth Wind And Fire, Commodores, Rick James, Average White Band, etc. This will get ALL of the women on the floor and many of the drunk men. Guaranteed.
 
#3
Whilst this idea is a good, crowd pleasing one, you need to be very careful about overusing it. It gets tired really quickly.

Our band do two or three only in a 4 hour set. And we mix it up fairly well.

We play "Taylor" by jack johnson into "No Woman No Cry" by Bob Marley, and back into jack johnson at the finish.

We play "Laid" by James into "Steal My Kisses" by ben harper and then into a "last time i saw her" by beatles.

It works, the punters love it, but don't overdo it - it gets lame.
 
#4
Most of these are pretty old, but I've done them at one time or another.

CCR: Green River, Suzy Q (just about any 2 CCR songs)

Some Kind Of Wonderful -> Hard To Handle (or vice-versa)

Born To Be Wild -> Magic Carpet Ride

Knock On Wood -> Midnight Hour (or vice-versa)

Pipeline -> Lil Sister -> Peter Gunn -> Pink Cadillac -> various James Bond Themes -> Pipeline.

Piece Of the Rock (Mothers Finest) -> Get Ready (Rare Earth) -> Free Ride (Edgar Winter Group) -> Never Been Any Reason (Head East)

Also check out Dream Theater's medleys.
 
#5
baba said:
If you are into pleasing the average crowd, you need a late 70s disco/funk medley. Think KC and The Sunshine Band, Earth Wind And Fire, Commodores, Rick James, Average White Band, etc. This will get ALL of the women on the floor and many of the drunk men. Guaranteed.
Click to expand...

Here's what we use for the late 70's disco/funk medley:
female volunteers to do YMCA(with hard hat, biker hat, etc.)whole song, then
Shake your booty > Get down tonight >We are family(we put
on women's wigs for this and sing in falsetto) > Celebration(whole song).
Crowds dig it, and the comedy of the wigs always gets a good reaction.
 
#6
You can mix any two songs together... you just need a good drummer that is able to change tempos(if necessary). Pretty much all of my bands second set is "medlied"(no chatter/tuning between songs) and it keeps the butts on the dance floor.
 
#7
Jontom said:
You can mix any two songs together... you just need a good drummer that is able to change tempos(if necessary). Pretty much all of my bands second set is "medlied"(no chatter/tuning between songs) and it keeps the butts on the dance floor.
Click to expand...

+1

Roadhouse Blues > Some Kind of Wonderful > Gary Glitter(Rock and Roll) > Roadhouse Blues

I Got You > Diggin' a Hole > Smoke on the Water > In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida > Owner of a Lonely Heart > Diggin' a Hole
 
#10
We actually did a pretty cool medley at our last show, we had a bunch of songs we were going to try to string together some didn't work to well(it was a local botbs thing, all for fun) but a few songs that we blended together good were.

Heartbreaker (zeppelin) > smoke on the water > I'd love to change the world (ten years after)

I think heartbreaker was the name of the song, I could be wrong, but it worked out pretty good, and we actually got some compliments on those transitions.
 
#11
The metal band i play in used to do like a metallica medley it went

pulling teeth/bass solo- For whom bell toals intro- Master Of puppets intro then straight into solo- Middle bit of four horsemen (bit that shouts death, famine an all that)- and ended with the end of one and the solo

ppl went ****in mad for it but we stopped doin it coz we started to sort of become known as 'that band that does the Metallica Medley' instead of 'that band called Lead Cube who write original, catchy metal songs and can play their instruments really well.'
 
#14
We do "keep your hands to yourself", to the roof is on fire" by the bloodhound gang, back to keep your hands, into keep on rockin me by steve miller.

Also working on another that goes from queens we will rock you, into closer by nine inch nails, to pour sugar on me.

It's kind of hard to pick the right songs to make it all work, and not ripping off other bands ideas.
 
#15
My band does a Motley Crue medley: Shout at the Devil; Looks That Kill; Wild Side; Kickstart My Heart; Girls, Girls, Girls; Dr. Feelgood; Home Sweet Home; Live Wire. I think they use to do Hell in High Heels too before I joined up with them, but people would leave the dance floor so they dropped it.

We usually have the soundman play the intro clip to Shout at the Devil. That gives our guitarist a chance to switch guitars (he uses a Charvel with that wierd Mick Mars tuning). The hardest transition was probaly between Dr. Feelgood and Home Sweet Home. We switch after the high falsetto parts of Dr. Feelgood (an A) into the chorus of Home Sweet Home (Ab). The half-step transition use to throw our singer off, and it would take him a few seconds to find the key, but now he can nail it perfectly.

I find that medleys are a nice way to play abbreviated versions of songs that, otherwise, you would be unable to play. For example, we don't have a keyboardist, so we can't play the piano intro/outros to Home Sweet Home, but we can play it in a medley.
 
#18
We do what we call Santana Succotash; Start with two verses of Evil Ways then instead of the keyboard break, do two verses of Black Magic Woman, then the lead break from Black Magic Women and third verse, then switch back to Evil Ways for that third verse and close it out with the fast part at the end. We started doing this because the keyboard player could never get the hang of the keyboard break and we could never get the intro to Black Magic Woman right.

Funny thing is when the keyboard player left the band he took our medley with him and then added Oye Como Va onto the end of it as he managed to learn the intro to that. :hmm:

(I hope that makes sense as this is my first post after lurking for a couple of years) Wow! I'm a TalkBasser now! And a Smilie yet!
 
#20
We did Rush's "2112 Overture/The Temples Of Syrinx" segueing into Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". The final chord of "Temples" (B minor) is the same for CN, so instead of that last acoustic guitar chord, we threw the Floyd tune. Also mixed Led Zeppelin's "Dazed And Confused" with "Whole Lotta Love". We played "Dazed" edited (less verses) and instead of the final chord, we put the guitar solo section of WLL up to the end of the tune.
 

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