Medleys. Want to get involved in another band's argument?

[uk_lefty]

Hehe not so much an argument now but... For those of you who perform a medley of covers, not a "mash up", a medley. How do you manage the whole process? 

 

Situation: we chose six songs from the same genre we wanted to medley. Now, once in a medley having everything quieten down and the drummer counts in for the next song is probably ok but managing the transitions is tricky. Took me a while to convince others that while it may be very skillful to try to manage transition from one key to another, sometimes the flow is better and the audience experience better if we just change the key of one of the songs, perhaps. 

 

We were close to giving up until moving one song half a step down seemed to unlock the whole situation. I think we could have done the whole thing differently... And we were thinking of doing another medley from a different genre. It's a good way of getting in audience favourites that are too weak to stand on their own as whole songs. So next time round how would you manage this?

 

Would you pull out the songs you want irrespective of tempo or key? Or would you target songs in the same key or tempo or at least not far off? Would you bring it to the band with you able to play it on an acoustic guitar, for example?

 

Interested in others' approaches. Thanks!

[Bolo]

I think it's important to pick the most iconic bits of the selected songs. Nobody wants to hear some obscure reference or figure out what it was supposed to be near the end of the bit.

 

Connect the pieces with drumfills or other transitional indicators. If you stop and count in again then you effectively start a new song.

[SumOne]

The only correct way to do a medley:

 

 

[casapete]

39 minutes ago, Bolo said:

I think it's important to pick the most iconic bits of the selected songs. Nobody wants to hear some obscure reference or figure out what it was supposed to be near the end of the bit.

 

Connect the pieces with drumfills or other transitional indicators. If you stop and count in again then you effectively start a new song.

Absolutely. In my old band we used to do a few medleys, and the various songs were joined together

by either the main riffs or a few bars of drums. For example,we did a ten minute Motown medley which

made this quite easy, as many have well known riffs / intros which are recognisable and share the same tempo.

Our aim was to get people on the dance floor and keep ‘em there! The band played functions of all

kinds, and we were usually successful in this.

( Other medleys we did included Disco, 60’s, 70’s, Rock and Xmas ). 
 

Even now when I hear one of the songs we ‘Medlied’ I still think of how it went into the next one!
 

 

[Doctor J]

If Jive Bunny could do it, you can do it. Just come in on instantly recognisable parts of the next song, preferably in or around the same tempo. You can get away with key changes quite easily if the new key makes harmonic sense in the context of the old song. If not, you and add a short section where you modulate up or down to the new key.

[JapanAxe]

By the time you’ve learned, say, a chorus and verse from each song, you may as well have learned them all in full and have 3 to 5 new numbers to play rather than one slightly longer one. They take more work to get right as the structure and transitions have to be agreed, learned and remembered. That said, a medley can be worth doing if its impact is greater than that of the original songs. The Grease medley springs to mind, and that has the advantage of having been issued as a single already.

[TimR]

Use of rit. and passing chords. 

[12stringbassist]

We just picked a few songs from our set and some extra bits and sewed them together....
 

 

[Franticsmurf]

We used to play a medley of rock cliches as although none of us really wanted to play them, we recognised that many of the audiences we played to wanted to hear them. It consisted of the 'recognisable' bits of Alright Now, Wishing Well, Sweet Home Alabama and Sweet Child of Mine. We were a busy and tight 3 piece and the medley evolved over a few gigs as the singer called the changes. Nothing was ever formalised and the transitions were quite good most of the time (when the singer was on top form). The tempo remained the same (or within a few bpm). Often the bit in Wishing Well after the descending riff, which we would play four times through at the start, would briefly veer into '500 Miles' and/or 'Psychokiller' before coming back out into Wishing Well again. Or, if the audience was bouncing to 500 Miles (which they often did) we'd just stick with it and drop the rest of the medley. It worked because we could react to each other after hundreds of gigs together.

 

I did consider formalising the arrangement but to be honest in this scenario it worked well and I didn't want to mess with something that wasn't broken.      

 

From my experience if I was going to work out a medley from scratch, I'd be concentrating on getting the tempo right first. As we used the example above to keep people on the dance floor, we kept the tempo danceable. Had we inserted an abrupt tempo change it wouldn't have worked. 

[hubrad]

7 hours ago, SumOne said:

The only correct way to do a medley:

 

 

That's superb, both comedically in that very skilled performance and so well arranged. It doesn't have to be Jive Bunny! Actually I found JB irritating the first time round; successful formula, mind.

Edit.. jings, 35 years ago! 😳

Edited November 14 by hubrad

[tauzero]

Current band does Twist and Shout/La Bamba, very simple, we just change the words being sung (and the singer).

 

Previous band did Message for you Rudy/OK Fred with a tiny burst of Tide is high, again just changing the words.

[petebassist]

4 hours ago, 12stringbassist said:

We just picked a few songs from our set and some extra bits and sewed them together....
 

 

Great vocals as well mate!!

[Pea Turgh]

I can’t stand medleys.  I also hugely dislike key changes.  I appreciate I may be in the minority here!  😂

[scalpy]

We’re a function band and medleys have become a blessing and curse for us as a) we’re pretty good at them, they keep people on the dance floor and most people at these things have the attention span of a toddler so they’re a useful tool but b) you don’t half crunch through material which just widens the search for songs and you need players that can handle the changes. We mostly book musos who have done a lot of orchestra pit work so that helps.

 

I do the arrangements, so I start with the selection of songs, research the keys and tempos and put mini groups of songs together, then look for possible overlaps like a DJ doing a fade from one song to the next. I try not to shift keys by more than a semitone. Some modulations I’ll use some tricks to make it. 
 

Then I have a book I’ll score out all the bars, work out the structure, put double bars in and rehearsal marks. I then start a Sibelius file, put a piano in, then without putting a note in type out the form, so the file matches my book. Keys transcription comes next, followed by trumpet and sax at the same time. The file gets re-saved and I’ll add another trumpet, bari sax and trombone for our larger gigs. This file gets exported to logic, where I have a routine of putting in the click and rehearsal marks again, then I’ll add any sweeps/ risers/ additional keys or guitars, percussion. Four files get exported from that- guide, click, additional instruments and horns for smaller gigs with them on track. They go to MainStage for playback. 
 

After that it’s another computer for MainStage keys sounds. Once those are decided it’s back to Sibelius to add the changes to the chart then those can get exported to pdf for players. I’ll do a crib sheet for guitar and drums too, then sit down with my wife so her lyric book has the same rehearsal marks. That’s about it 😬

 

Most of the medleys have between 5 to 15 songs in, some have taken a week to sort, but the prep means actually rehearsing/ performing them isn’t that tricky.

[Norris]

In a previous band we once did a continuous medley for an entire 45 minute set. The dancers were knackered afterwards and we were in stiches with laughing.

 

Obviously called on the fly. The continuous tempo is essential to keep them dancing

[franzbassist]

 Rebel Rebel into Jean Genie into Blockbuster works really well.  A couple of verses of the first two is all you need.

[Franticsmurf]

4 hours ago, Norris said:

In a previous band we once did a continuous medley for an entire 45 minute set. The dancers were knackered afterwards and we were in stiches with laughing.

 

Obviously called on the fly. The continuous tempo is essential to keep them dancing

We did that once, many years ago. We were the last act of a charity night and it had been a bit slow and down tempo so we figured we had nothing to lose. It was completely unplanned (basically we did all the up tempo songs from our set), but we were in the midst of a run of years when the gigs were plentiful and the band was very tight and we played non-stop for about an hour. There were some dodgy transitions, some stutters when we were trying to understand the singer/guitarist's gestures and mimes, definitely too many extended choruses and probably a few too many drum solos and bass solos but we did it. The dancers were up and down in relays but the dance floor was never empty. I was knackered coming off but I still remember it as one of the highlights of my live career.

[Passinwind]

Modulate keys by circle of 4ths/5ths. Whole songs, not fragments. Interpose lyrics between songs, ignore the changes and do it all to one groove.

 

All of those approaches worked well in the one band I fronted for many years, but my stated goal for audiences was sit down and shut up, not dance monkeys. 

Edited Wednesday at 04:10 by Passinwind