Originals Bands - How much material do you have?

PolarityManPolarityMan Frets: 7273
Been making setlists tonight and finding it really difficult because we just have too many songs, all of which are really long.

Fellow originals band peeps, how much original material do you have?

I totted ours up and reckon its up to 2 and a half hours, excluding unfinished stuff we're currently working on.
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Comments

  • jpfampsjpfamps Frets: 2723
    We have 6 or 7 songs we throw into our blues / soul band sets.

    We'd have more, but don't get together often enough to rehearse at the moment.

    One thing I find with bands playing their own songs is that they are often quite long, possibly too long.

    OK I can understand if you are prog style band, but I always think it's better to play more shorter songs.
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  • PolarityManPolarityMan Frets: 7273
    Well our more recent songs are only about 6 mins......
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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    We've got a lot, because we've been going for 7 years or so at this point and I write a lot of songs. If I limit it to ones we've played as a band and could conceivably throw into a set, then between our 2 albums, three released EPs and the one we're recording at the moment, we've got 38 songs. Maybe another 20 or so that we never released but recorded and played live - for example with our last album we fully recorded/ mixed another 5 which ended up not going on the CD.

    So roughly speaking, about 60?

    And yeah, setlists can become a challenge because everyone has different favourites and if you're anything like us you could probably do two different one hour setlists that would give audiences a totally different impression of the band's style.
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  • lloydlloyd Frets: 5773
    We've got about 30 at last count, some we have dropped from the set list as we've moved on in terms of style, some we've dropped because they were shit....

    I like to do half hour gigs as you can lose some of the audience if you go on too long, gigs that we set up and get a decent crowd along to I'm happy to do longer.



    Manchester based original indie band Random White:

    https://www.facebook.com/RandomWhite

    https://twitter.com/randomwhite1

     

     

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  • PolarityManPolarityMan Frets: 7273
    yeah but you can only fit 3 songs in a half hour set :(

    We did a short set at the end of last year and it was pretty cool, in that you can be really really practiced up on a half hour set, maintian high energy the entire set etc. Doing 2-3 hours I think the average performance quality suffers a little, especially as we do half and half covers on the really long ones.

    picking 30mins out of 2 and a half hours of originals is pretty challenging though.

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  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
    tFB Trader
    I have 2 albums worth of songs and a few new ones I'm working on so for live gigs, if it's a headline set we'd do an hour and 20 max, festivals generally 45/50 minutes.
    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
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  • lloydlloyd Frets: 5773
    yeah but you can only fit 3 songs in a half hour set :(

    We did a short set at the end of last year and it was pretty cool, in that you can be really really practiced up on a half hour set, maintian high energy the entire set etc. Doing 2-3 hours I think the average performance quality suffers a little, especially as we do half and half covers on the really long ones.

    picking 30mins out of 2 and a half hours of originals is pretty challenging though.

    3 songs? How long are they?!

    We slot about 7/8 into a short set like that-we've got a few short tunes-less than 3 minutes and we run through the set pretty quickly, we run one song into another quite regular.

    I just think with originals bands, unless you're pulling in 50+ fans (not your mates) then people will lose focus on you as a lot of the time you end up playing to the other bands, their mates etc. You can be awesome yet people there can be non-music fans and jsut be there to support their mates.

    Depends on the gig, line up and crowd obviously but on a 4 band bill I prefer to keep it short and sweet.

    Manchester based original indie band Random White:

    https://www.facebook.com/RandomWhite

    https://twitter.com/randomwhite1

     

     

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  • bluechargeboybluechargeboy Frets: 1894

    Enough to do 2x 1 hour sets (20-odd songs). That covers pub gigs, festivals, weddings, etc etc.... Always more in the pipeline of course.

     

    We pick tunes based on:

    (a) Previous audience reception (i.e. dancing)

    (b) The mood of the venue/event/other bands

    (c) Personal gratification :)

    I'm just a Maserati in a world of Kias.
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