Preparation

Repertoire

One of the pillars of your presentation of course - without songs you….well obviously you can’t play anything.

Adding new material to the repertoire is essential if you want to keep the interest of your followers. If you’re like us you do a lot of standards that everyone knows, and you should be adding something to the songs by putting a fresh angle on them as well as rotating songs in and out of the line-up, hence the need for too many songs.

In SA the standard procedure for bands is to start around 8:00pm and finish at 12:00. This is largely due to the liquor laws and seems to be the norm everywhere. We always play 3 sets of 1 hour duration each giving us an effective time of 3 hours on stage. Other bands prefer doing 4 sets, and while this makes the sets shorter the night seems longer - if you get my drift. Sometimes the club owner / manager dictates the times and we stick to those instead.

We have enough songs in the repertoire to play 5 full hour-long sets without doing repeats. And I know bands who rotate 20 songs, repeating some of them every night. Whatever floats your boat. But I recommend a larger repertoire.

How many songs per hour?

This is dependent on many factors, but given our average of around 4 minutes per song we normally list between 12 and 15 numbers for every set. This gives us the chance to chop and change if required. 12 is the minimum if we do two or three longer songs like Roadhouse / Radar Love / Hotel California, but 14 should be ample for any band playing standard covers.

We need at least 14 songs per set for three sets so that means we have 42 songs ready to roll at any time. Our current repertoire consists of around 55-60 good songs and another 10-15 of ‘throw-away’ stuff we can use anytime.

How often do you do new numbers?

As often as possible. We try to add at least one song a month, and sometimes we’ve done 3 in one month. Bear in mind we are ‘Weekend Warriors’ with day jobs, so practise time is a rare commodity. It requires discipline to get this right, and we use time-saving methods to get a lot done in a short space of time. See the practise section for more details on how you can too.

Set lists

Love them or hate them I believe they are absolutely necessary. I personally dislike not knowing what’s coming up next, and the waiting between songs before someone decides what to do next. This is very unprofessional and causes the crowd and the band to lose focus. Your choice though.