Howdy,
I hope all of you are well and having a great start to your New Year.
Since I learned my lesson last year regarding too much detail in the writing of Gig Preparation; with this series I will just write about the highlights.
Today, I started to process of booking the location and dates of availability of the musicians and sound production team.
I also developed the setlist, which I will probably change a hundred times before rehearsals start.
OCD. It makes a person crazy.
The process of choosing the songs that will be in the setlist has been far less stressful since I developed and instituted a rating system of songs based on their general style.
In the current list, I have: one ballad, two smooth tunes, some jazz, latin, & blues, one rock instrumental/Muzak sort of tune, some funk, a couple of TV themes and two songs that are not in 4/4 time. The program will be organized so that we will not jump around or lurch from one style to the next, but rather segue from one group of similar songs to another.
I recently read that Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and RatDog keeps a database of songs that he can arrange by tempo, time signature, key and a couple of other bits of information. I found his explanation very interesting. He said that he can slow down during the show without losing the groove that has been setup by the previous songs in the set by going from a tune at 110 bpm to a song that is 55 bpm. Since the tempo is divided in half, the basic pulse that the audience senses can be the same.
Even though I am not much of a ‘wavelength/cosmic-plane’ sort of dude, I still ‘get it’ with this great way of thinking and arranging a music program.
Hopefully, I will have it right by gig-time.
-Justin