Billboard Hottest 100 Hits

   One of the biggest challenges of playing in a cover band is the simple act of song selection. This simple task can make or break any band. A well chosen song list can give your band the edge in a very competitive cover band market. So how do you choose a winning setlist for your live band to play?

   I’ve learned the hard way over the years not to pick songs from the heart. That’s the biggest mistake that most bands make when choosing songs. They will pick songs that they love and assume that if they love the song, everyone else will too. That’s not necessarily the case because I can tell you that a lot of the songs I love and would like to play in a band have never been huge sellers. I like complicated, progressive rock music that most people that aren’t musicians just can’t grasp.  

   So that brings me to my main point. You want to build your song list by choosing songs that are extremely well known by as many people as possible. If you choose a song that has sold several million copies as a single, then your chances of any audience you play for being familiar with that song have are very high. And that’s the key, you want any audience you play for to be familiar with the songs you are playing. If you play a huge seller like The Beatles – I Want To Hold Your Hand, which sold 12 million copies, you are going to have a lot of people in your audience singing along.

   Choosing songs based on number of sales and highest chart position will settle a lot of arguments in the band as well. I’m sure you’ve had band members bring in a song they want to learn and are completely committed to learning. It’s a song they love but it’s a song that’s an obscure album track off a medium selling album. If you decide in advance that the band is only going to play multi-million selling singles then you won’t have to waste your time learning a song that’s most likely going to flop at your shows.  

There are some excellent resources on Live Musician Central for choosing your band setlist. Just check out our Live Band Setlists for complete lists of songs that are multi-million selling singles. All the songs on our live band setlists are proven hits and are widely known by millions of people. The songs have been chosen from the top selling singles of all time. So check them out and start building a winning setlist that will set your band apart from all the other cover bands out there!

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How To Choose Songs For Your Live Band To Play

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Elvis Rockin' Christmas

  The season is upon us and it’s time to play those holiday gigs that come to all working live bands. I don’t know if you’re band is like mine, but it seems like every year we talk about learning a Christmas song or two and we just never seem to get around to it. So the holidays come and we just play the same old stuff at our shows. That’s why I’m going to give you some tips on preparing some holiday songs for your live band so you can be ready for the season.

   Obviously the most important thing is timing when to learn the song. It’s better to learn the song well before your holiday shows. So if you’re planning on playing some Christmas songs in December, it’s a good idea to start learning them in October. By learning the songs that far in advance, you’ll be able to iron out the rough spots and really do a good performance of the song when your holiday shows come. Believe me, your audience will be able to tell if you learned the song 3 days before the show.    

   The next thing you want to do is pick some songs to fit the occasion. If you’re going to be playing in a dance club, then pulling out Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” probably isn’t going to go over really well. There are some great danceable Christmas songs like “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” that would really fly at a dance gig.  If you’re playing some corporate parties for the holidays then some good old Christmas classics like “The Christmas Song” could really fit the bill.

   Another thing you want to remember when it comes to playing Christmas songs in your live band is to be sure your audience is ready and wants to hear a Christmas song. I’ve been shouted down doing a Christmas song because the people in the club were not in a Christmas mood even though Christmas was about two weeks away! The best thing to do is get on the microphone and with a cheerful shout say “Who wants a rockin’ Christmas song!!”. Your audience will let you know if they’re ready to hear one.

   Finally, don’t play too many holiday songs unless the management has specifically asked you to play a lot of them. It’s always better to just play one or two holiday songs and leave the audience wanting more. Some of my favorite holiday shows have featured exactly one Christmas song, as an encore. It leaves everyone in a a positive and upbeat mood and will have them talking about your band all the way home.

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Playing Christmas Songs In Your Live Band

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Download High Quality MP3's From Amazon.com

   As a live musician, one of the most essential tools of our trade is having a good collection of current and “greatest of all time” music. With the advent of the Internet, downloading great music has become as easy as picking a song and clicking on the download button. What’s really great for musicians playing in live bands is the ease of getting everyone in your band to download the same song. It makes things a lot easier when your band is learning songs to be able to send out a download link for the songs you’re learning. As you know, iTunes is currently the largest retailer of music in the United States. CD sales continue to slide as sales of music in downloadable digital form continue to increase.

   Tuesday April 7, 2009 iTunes started charging $1.29 per track for their most popular downloads. It was inevitable that the giant music retailer would boost prices to test the waters and see what music consumers are willing to pay to download their music. My opinion is, lousy timing Apple. With the current huge percentage of unemployed Americans and the declining value of a dollar it just seems ludicrous to jack music download prices up now. I know it’s just the consumer in me speaking but we consumers bear the burden of this poor economy. It was nice to know that you could get a top hit song from iTunes for under a dollar. We felt good because it’s an okay deal and we didn’t steal anything from the artist by downloading illegally. Well don’t despair musicians and music lovers! You have more options than ever for quality, legal music downloading. Today I’m going to talk about the best option of all, Amazon.com MP3 Downloads.

   Amazon.com has a proven 14-year track record as an online retailer. They’ve grown with the Internet and know how to make their site work well with the technology that’s connected all over the world. You can buy MP3’s with complete confidence from Amazon.com because you know they’ll be guaranteed to work with your player. There are several things I really like about Amazon.com MP3’s. The biggest thing I like is the price. Their top sellers are all priced at $.99 per download. If you download complete albums you can get even better deals than that. I’ve seen full album downloads for as cheap as $.45 per song. So you can obviously save a bundle buying MP3’s at Amazon.com instead of iTunes.

   Let’s look at an example of the savings you can get. Let’s assume you buy 100 songs per year which is approximately 10 albums. At iTunes you would pay $129.00 per year for your 100 songs. While at Amazon.com you spend only $99.00 which is a savings of $30 per year. That’s a lot of savings and you can save even more with all the special download deals that Amazon.com offers. Which is another thing I like about Amazon.com MP3’s. Amazon.com is really pushing to sell MP3 downloads and because of that, they are always offering incredible download deals. You can check out the top deals by clicking the banners on this site.

   There are couple more things I really like about Amazon’s MP3 service. All their MP3’s are encoded at 256kbps which gives you a file size appropriate for all the top MP3 players on the market while giving you excellent audio quality. I’m an audiophile and I can hear too many artifacts in MP3’s ripped at less than 256kbps. Another thing I like is the fact that Amazon.com MP3’s are all DRM free which means you can download the song to your computer and put it on as many MP3 players as you own. There’s no limit and the copy of the song belongs to you. Finally, MP3’s are more universally compatible than the Apple iTunes format. There are hundreds of MP3 players you can buy that will work with Amazon.com MP3’s and they will still work fine with your iPod and iPhone.

   So today I’m highly recommending Amazon.com MP3 Downloads.
You can download with or without the Amazon MP3 Downloader which is great for me bacause I don’t like tons of applications running on my computer. Just click on the banner below to get started and keep a smile on knowing you’re saving some cash!

Get the full experience at www.livemusiciancentral.com

Beat The iTunes Price Increase and Download MP3’s From Amazon.com

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Live Musician Central Downloadable Set Lists

   Earlier on Live Musician Central I wrote a post detailing the benefits of using iTunes custom iMix feature to create set lists for your live band to learn. You can check out that article here: Creating A Setlist Using iTunes iMix. There are a lot of advantages to using the iMix feature to create your band set lists. The top reason to do it is so that all members of your band can get the same version of the song from the same place. That way you don’t have your bass player learning the live version of a song, your drummer learning a studio outtake and your guitarist learning the radio edit.

   Today I want to point you to the Live Musician Central Downloadable Setlist page that has links to all the custom iMixes that I have created. These setlists were created using the Top 200 dance songs of all time. I created the setlists to have a flow to them that will work very well in a club. If you’re looking for a starting place to build up your band set list then these iMixes are a great place to start.

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Build Your Set List With Live Musician Central’s Custom iMix

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In Stereo Playing To A Packed Dance Floor

   In my many years of playing in a live band I’ve made a lot of observations about what types of songs fill the dance floor and what types leave people sitting in their seats. One aspect that has always fascinated me is how an old, well known song will pack the floor while a new song will sometimes clear the floor. It’s been something that I’ve struggled to define over the years. Having a new song clear the floor isn’t something that happens every time but it happens enough that I’ve thought about it quite a bit. So why does an old song such as Sweet Home Alabama fill the dance floor every time you play it while a hot newer song like U2 – Vertigo is hit and miss? They’re both excellent songs and have a great danceable beat to them.

   I believe there are several reasons for this phenomenon. The easiest explanation is that the older song is more recognizable than the new one. More people have had a chance to hear it over and over.  Another reason is it’s a lot easier to get up and dance to a song that you know well simply because there are no surprises in it. Nobody wants to look stupid on the dance floor so the tendency is to get up and dance to a song that they’ve heard and probably danced to before. There’s also the acceptance factor for a new song. People don’t like to take risks socially and commit that they like a new song. If you’re the only one that gets up and dances to a new song then you’ve put yourself out there for the public to see that you’ve made your own decision on a song instead of following the crowd. No one wants to turn to their peers and say “Am I the only one that likes this song?” In all fairness though, somebody has to get up and take a chance and the people that get up and dance to a new song are actually secretly admired by everyone else and especially by the band. It warms my heart to see people get up and dance to a new song that the band has taken the time to learn. Still, it’s hit and miss when we play the new songs. That being said, if a new song is a really great song then people will get up and dance to it.

   So why do the old songs consistently outperform the new ones in the clubs? I believe the number one reason is because the song has been around for years, aged and had a chance to weave itself into the fabric of our lives. Old songs become bigger than the song itself over time. The song begins to represent a moment in time, an experience, an emotion or even a place. Think of The Police song “Every Breath You Take”. I’ll bet you have some specific memory associated with that song and you think of that memory every time you hear the song. Now that song has become a part of your own personal life history. I honestly believe that’s why the old songs are such sure things for filling the dance floor. They have come to mean more than the song itself. That’s why I really don’t mind playing a song that I’ve played hundreds of times over the years. It’s because when I look at the smiles on the faces of my audience I know that what I’m playing really means something to them. That’s a great reward for me as a live musician to keep banging out at least a decent selection of oldies.

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Playing Old Songs Versus New Songs With Your Live Band

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Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash

   One of the greatest challenges I’ve had as a live musician is learning new songs to play live with my band. I don’t know why I’ve struggled with it because I’ve been playing other people’s songs for as long as I’ve been playing music. Think about it, when you began learning your instrument you most likely learned how to play music that other people have written. If you took piano, I’m sure you learned out of basic piano books that had some classic folk songs or some great classical music. You probably learned how to play some pop music on the piano to keep things interesting as well. Well it’s a whole lot different when you’re learning music to play in a live band. To do it right, you need to learn to pick out and play parts by ear. That’s a real challenge for those of us that learned how to play instruments by reading music. It took me a long time to develop my ear to the point where I could play my parts exactly like the record. Here are some suggestions on how to learn a cover song to play in your live band.

   As I said, to do it right you need to be able pick out and play the parts by ear. The best way to do that is to start with an easy song. If you pick a song that’s not too complicated it will be a lot easier for you to learn the entire song because the basic parts will repeat a lot. You’ll want to pick a song that’s not overproduced with lots of overdubbed parts that are difficult to reproduce live with a basic band lineup. All those overdubs on a lot of recordings make it hard to hear the individual parts as well. So my first suggestion is to pick some easy songs. Here’s a short list of very easy songs to learn:

• Seven Nation Army – White Stripes
• Should I Stay Or Should I Go – The Clash
• Highway To Hell – AC/DC
• Wonderful Tonight – Eric Clapton
• Folsom Prison – Johnny Cash
• You Really Got Me – The Kinks
• Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
• Won’t Back Down – Tom Petty
• Good Riddance – Green Day

   Once you’ve decided what to learn then you’re going to want to get it playing on your computer so you can quickly find the parts of the song you want to work on. I use a program called Goldwave that allows me to zoom in and loop individual sections of the song. Another excellent tool for learning songs on guitar is the Tascam MP-GT1 which will let you loop parts, slow them down and even eliminate other parts so you can hear yours better. The main thing you want is a way to rewind and loop parts so you can practice them over and over. Once you have the song on your playback device grab your instrument and get ready to pick that part out by ear!

   It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you hit play and you try to play along with the entire song right off the bat. The thing you want to do is break the song down into pieces. Break it down into the following pieces:

• Introduction
• Verse
• Chorus
• Bridge
• Solos

Once you have the song broken down into these parts, it’s a lot easier to learn the song piece by piece. You also don’t have to learn the song linearly. If the chorus is the easiest part of the song, then learn that first. It’s a good idea to try and play along with each section early on so you can find and learn the easiest parts first.

   I personally really struggle picking out guitar solos. There are a couple ways to approach learning a solo. The first way is to try and learn the solo exactly like the record, note for note. This can be agonizing and slow even with a good tool like the Tascam trainer. Again, you can try breaking down the solo into small pieces and learn it bit by bit. Sometimes a solo is just to far beyond your playing ability. That’s okay because another way to approach a solo is to try and catch the “spirit” of the solo. Which means you play close to what you’re hearing but play within your personal ability. That’s the beauty of a solo, you can express yourself as long is it still fits within the framework of the song. The only time you’ll want to learn a solo exactly is when the solo has a very recognizable melody. Sweet Child Of Mine by Guns-N-Roses has a solo that people recognize so that’s one you’ll want to spend time on learning note for note. Here’s a good rule of thumb for learning solos, if you can sing it then you should learn it note for note. If you can’t sing it, then go ahead and make it your own!

   Once you have all the parts down, it’s time to start playing along with the entire recording. This is where you’ll polish up your transitions from intro to verse to chorus etc. When I learn a new song, I play along with it 3 times a day for about a week before I play it with the live band. This saves a lot of time at practice and lets the band focus on the fun of playing the song instead of the pain of learning individual parts at practice. I’ve already told you that you need to have fun at band practice and learning your part while everyone else stands around is not fun. So make sure you can play along with the recording. It’s honestly very satisfying to play along at full speed from beginning to end with the original recording.

   Once you’ve learned a new song and you can play right along with the original recording then give yourself a pat on the back. It’s not always easy during the learning process but when you get in front of that audience and you play the song perfectly the crowd’s going to let you know they appreciate the effort. That’s what makes it all worth it.

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How To Learn A Cover Song To Play In A Live Band

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#1 on the list: Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode

   I’m always looking for song selection ideas for my band In Stereo. One of the greatest challenges musicians face when playing live music is playing music that the audience knows and wants to hear. One resource I like to use is industry magazines. Rolling Stone magazine has been covering the music scene since 1967 and I believe it has some authority in the music industry. Rolling Stone Magazine has released several articles with compiled lists of the greatest songs of all time. Today I’d like to point you to their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs Of All Time.

   Naturally this list is subjective and I disagree with the placement of a lot of the songs. But the premise behind the list is good in the fact that it focuses on top hit guitar songs. Rolling Stone’s own criteria for the songs on this list is that the song has a feeling that only the guitar can convey. With the premise that the guitar itself is the essential voice of Rock-N-Roll. The songs on the list are a fantastic resource for building your bands live setlist. You can pick ten or twenty songs off this list and you’ll have a guaranteed good set for your band to play live.

   I’m going to link you to the printable text version of the article. Make sure you check out the list at the bottom of the article which has clickable links to a special page featuring each individual song on the list. The individual song pages will have links to audio and video clips of each song. You can spend a good long time immersing yourself into this list.

    So thanks to Rolling Stone for giving us such a great list of songs to build our bands setlist from. Click the link to read:

Rolling Stone Magazine – The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs Of All Time

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Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitar Songs Of All Time

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Led Zeppelin Set List

   One of the most common problems I’ve seen playing in bands is the fact that bands don’t change their set lists often enough. Having a good set list and maintaining it is essential stagecraft. There are two common problems that arise with set lists. First, a band will learn 40 songs and then play them for the next 5 years without ever changing them out with new material. Second, bands will play the same songs in the exact same order every night for 5 years. The reason I say 5 years is because that’s the typical life of a band, especially when you don’t change up your set list. So how do you avoid these pitfalls?

   The first thing you need to do is make a goal to learn a new song every month. That’s a minimum, it would be better to learn 3 new songs every month. But even learning 1 song a month will keep you with 12 new songs every year. That’s a really good thing because that’s an entire set worth of songs. For help choosing songs to learn, Live Musician Central has created 5 sets worth of downloadable songs for your set list. You can check them out on our Live Musician Central Set List page. You really owe it to yourself and your audience to keep your set list fresh with new music.

   The next thing you need to do is mix up your songs every night. This seems like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised at the comments I’ve heard from bar personnel. One night at a gig I was talking to the bartender and he told me “It’s so nice how you guys mix up your songs. We get some bands in here that you can set your clock to the song that they’re playing.” Bands will play the same songs every set, every night in the same order. It gets predictable and boring after people have seen your band a couple of times. People like to hear some different things and even changing the order of your songs will go a long way toward keeping your sound fresh for the audience. My band likes to keep several different set lists and then rotate them out on a nightly basis. It helps keep your band on it’s toes as well and that little extra shot of energy can give a routine song a little boost.

   So remember, it’s very easy to avoid getting stuck in a rut with your set list. Just keep on learning new songs and remember to change up the order you play your songs from night to night.

Get the full experience at www.livemusiciancentral.com

How To Keep Your Band Set List Fresh

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Elvis Presley Covers Blue Suede Shoes

   A cover song is a song that has been recorded by another artist and that your band will be playing. Some famous artists that have played cover songs are Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Van Halen, The Rolling Stones. A lot of current artists will play cover songs as well and go on to have big hits playing them. The good thing about playing cover songs is that the song has already been marketed to the masses and has been proven to be a well loved hit. So your chances of having success playing the song is very high. There are a couple ways you can approach playing a cover song.

   The first way of course is to play the song exactly like the original recording. My band tries to do this with the current hits. These are songs that everyone is listening to right now and so they’re very familiar to the listener as currently recorded. We will take the time to learn all the parts note for note as well as duplicate little nuances in the playing and phrasing. So when we play the song it’s instantly recognizable to the audience. It’s a good way of guaranteeing that the song is going to go over well when we play it.

   The advantage we have as a live musician is the simple fact that we are free to add to or change up the song that we are copying. We do that to a certain degree with every song we play including the current hits but employ it to a greater degree on older or lesser known songs. Which brings us to the second approach to playing cover songs.

    The second approach you can take to playing cover songs is to completely change the style and sound of the original and make it your own. This usually works the best on older songs that are still familiar to the audience. For example we took Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones and sped the beat up, added a driving punk rock guitar and added a harder edge to the song. It sounds more like a punk rock song but people still recognize that it’s Paint It Black. We’ll also take a song and combine familiar elements from other songs into it. For instance we combine Pink Cadillac by Bruce Springsteen with the main riff from the Peter Gunn theme. The two songs fit together perfectly and we always get a good round of applause when we play that song.

   If you listen to covers by Van Halen you can really tell that the band has made those songs their own. The Van Halen versions of Dancing In The Street and Pretty Woman are still 100% Van Halen. When you hear Elvis Presley sing Blue Suede Shoes you don’t even remember that it was written and recorded by Carl Perkins. Another very famous cover song that gets credited to The Beatles is Twist and Shout which was originally made famous by The Isley Brothers. Elvis, Van Halen and The Beatles have taken the songs to a new level with their own original sound and approach to them.

   If you are playing in an all original band it’s a great idea to throw in a few cover songs as well. It’s a real treat for the audience to hear you play a song they know and they’ll love it even more if you make the cover song your own.

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How To Approach A Cover Song

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Click For Set Lists

   Every band has it’s own unique talent level that comes from each individual band member’s personal skill level. I’ve played with guitarists that are just amazing with Jazz music but couldn’t play even the simplest of Rock-N-Roll music. I’ve played with bass players that could hold down a perfectly steady beat, until they had to play a funk bass line and then they struggled like crazy. I’ve had the same thing happen with bands as whole that I’ve been in. I’ve been in bands that could play classic Rock-N-Roll flawlessly but couldn’t even start to play any heavy metal. I’ve seen bands that play Country like nobody’s business but can’t rock at all.

   So it stands to reason that a band should stick to its strengths when choosing a songlist. That sounds simple but here’s some problems I’ve seen trying to do this simple thing. The first problem I’ve seen is a band member that loves funk and passionately wants to play funk, even though they can’t play funk to save their life. I was in a band where the 2nd guitarist brought in funk song after funk song to learn. We’d try one andspend hours practicing it only to end up doing a lousy job on the song. When we played it live the audience didn’t really enjoy it. What was truly interesting is that this guitar player thought we were playing it great and I finally convinced him that we sucked at that style after we tried recording a demo of some of those funk songs. When he heard the playback he realized how bad we were at funk. So you may end up with a musician that’s just got it stuck in their head that they want to play music of a style that you’re no good at as a band. The best way I’ve found to cure that is recording and honestly evaluating your performance.

   Another problem is being with a group that’s committed to playing a style that isn’t going to go over well with general audiences. A friend of mine assembled a group of musician’s that were technically amazing. They played a lot of complex heavy metal and a lot of progressive music and they did it very well. They booked a gig at a local club and they were fired after about 2 sets. The band broke up soon after that because they couldn’t find gigs. I think they would have been fine if there would have been an audience in the area that enjoyed the kind of music they played. They would have had to create that scene themselves since there wasn’t one happening like that locally. So you really need to get out and see what’s being played in the clubs that are filled with people in your area. If you don’t have your own audience and you need to play places that people go to every weekend then you need to find out what kind of music is going over in those clubs.

   If you stick to playing music that your band actually plays well, then you’re going to be a lot better off in the long run. There’s nothing wrong with playing songs that seem simple if you really rock them and the crowd loves it. Remember, a song that seems simple to you is probably a song that plays to your strengths. Don’t be afraid to use them!

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Play To Your Strengths With Your Song Selection

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