Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

One of the things I occasionally do is combine two or more songs together in one continuous tune. Of course my genre of choice is blues. There's a lot of similarities between tunes, musically and lyrically. However some of the tunes I have combined are dfferent genres. This makes us appear like we're musical geniuses when really it's super easy to do. (I've been labeled often something other than "genius.") Here's some of the tunes I hae combined: Help Me (Sonny Boy Williamson) with Yonder Wall (Junior Wells), Washout (Freddie King instrumental) with Wipeout (Surfaris instrumental), Kansas City (Wilbert Harrison) with my own parody of Kansas City called Jersey City, Hideaway (Freddie King instrumental) with Peter Gunn (Henry Mancini instrumental), Sidetracked (Freddie King instrumental) with Wait On Time (Fabulous Thunderbirds), etc. Just wondering if any of you experienced muscians do something similar for your shows...

Yeah Bob I think we all do, I know JW was talking,
about some his group combines. We combine our
tunes on the basis of like music, subject matter, or
how much we've had to drink. Lately we've been
combining the Beatles Revolution with Helter Skelter,
but you don't have to stop at 2 songs, hell combine,
4 or 5 of them. It beats the 15 minute guitar solo, I
love the 15 minute guitar solo, especially when I get
10 or 15 minutes of it.

Beatles Twist and Shout into Birthday
Cheap Trick Medley

Bob, my band doesnt really practice and thru the years weve played so many songs, that before almost every gig, I will say I want to do this song but I dont want to play the whole thing, so we may just play a verse and chorus of one and bleed into another, some work some dont, we have about 10 that we do regularly, but its kinda been trial and error thru the years.

I like the combinations you do, we used to do Wipeout and morph into Johnny Be Goode, havent dont that in a few years so who knows maybe I will bring that one back the next gig.

To me doing stuff like this makes us think a little more, cause we dont really practice it, just discuss it before a set, and sometimes it leads to some totally off the wall improv when we screw up, that old adage dont ever stop, well we dont, and sometimes those little deals are the funniest part of the night for me.

jw123 wrote:Bob, my band doesnt really practice and thru the years weve played so many songs, that before almost every gig, I will say I want to do this song but I dont want to play the whole thing, so we may just play a verse and chorus of one and bleed into another, some work some dont, we have about 10 that we do regularly, but its kinda been trial and error thru the years.

I like the combinations you do, we used to do Wipeout and morph into Johnny Be Goode, havent dont that in a few years so who knows maybe I will bring that one back the next gig.

To me doing stuff like this makes us think a little more, cause we dont really practice it, just discuss it before a set, and sometimes it leads to some totally off the wall improv when we screw up, that old adage dont ever stop, well we dont, and sometimes those little deals are the funniest part of the night for me.

. Now doing it on the spot without rehearsing it beforehand IS impressive. The part about NOT stopping is important. I sing most of the tunes and when I'm singing and I cue for a band stop I HAVE to keep singing. I told the guitarist and sax or harmonica guys when they are soloing and the band stops they HAVE to keep playing. If you're screwing something up and the whole band stops you're screwed. If you're screwing something up and keep playing you can un-screw it. Does that make sense?

Makes perfect sense to me.

Ive been playing with these guys off and on for close to 25 years so we are so in tune.

Our drummer has this little roll he does when he wants to end a song, one night he shorted a song, so we kinda had fun with this idea. He stopped every song after a verse and a chorus, we wound up playing about 40 different songs in one one hour set.

I guess the moral is, if you are gonna stop then all stop together like you planned it that way and noone knows the difference.

we call it a block party >>> Van Morrison - Wild nights, Moon Dance , Brown Eyes Girl and sometimes Gloria.

Doing the on-the-spot changes gives a jam-band effect. Band members can't be on auto-pilot, audience enjoys the spontaneity, it's a good thing. Playing the same tunes the same way every time gets old for the band AND the audience. I've met a bunch of musicians who think it's sacrilige to alter a classic song. Funny thing is most likely the song they are "altering" was probably played the way it was originally recorded ONE time, and that was in the studio. I, the honorable fisherman bob, grant all of you the license to play any song you want any way you want to play it. Now don't you all feel better?

Hell Yeah !!!

Ice cream man >> You ain't nothing but a hound dog >>Pride and Joy or Dazed and Confused if that's the end of the set.

fisherman bob wrote:One of the things I occasionally do is combine two or more songs together in one continuous tune. Of course my genre of choice is blues. There's a lot of similarities between tunes, musically and lyrically. However some of the tunes I have combined are dfferent genres. This makes us appear like we're musical geniuses when really it's super easy to do. (I've been labeled often something other than "genius.") Here's some of the tunes I hae combined: Help Me (Sonny Boy Williamson) with Yonder Wall (Junior Wells), Washout (Freddie King instrumental) with Wipeout (Surfaris instrumental), Kansas City (Wilbert Harrison) with my own parody of Kansas City called Jersey City, Hideaway (Freddie King instrumental) with Peter Gunn (Henry Mancini instrumental), Sidetracked (Freddie King instrumental) with Wait On Time (Fabulous Thunderbirds), etc. Just wondering if any of you experienced muscians do something similar for your shows...

Bob, I believe what you are referring to is called a 'mash-up" which is the prevailing practice these days with the younger hip-hop crowds. For example, somebody took Nine-Inch Nails "Closer" and mashed it up with Beatles "Come Together".. The result was astounding. It does take some precision editing to get it right...
BTW, you don't need to mash-up your music , I still think your regular stuff is great!


"Come Closer Together" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9kOjJdYZ_8

Stones medly: Live with me / Bitch. Pretty much the same song anyway.

Talbot

We all do it, but I don't like it. When my singer would do a medley I would always tell him. Great. You just pi$$ed away several of our best covers in one shot. Now we have to fill in with our B grade crap that we don't do all that well. Make the A material last. But that's just me.

Slacker G wrote:We all do it, but I don't like it. When my singer would do a medley I would always tell him. Great. You just pi$$ed away several of our best covers in one shot. Now we have to fill in with our B grade crap that we don't do all that well. Make the A material last. But that's just me.

. I'm not talking about medleys. I'm talking about taking parts of songs and incorporating them inside other songs. I understand a medley is stringing whole tunes together. Slacker, there's no reason to have any "B grade crap" in your repertoire. You're too good a guitar player to allow that....

Live with Me, I love that song,

"I got nasty habits I take tea at three
and the meat I eat for dinner must be
hung up for a week."

We do a medley of Bop Pills and Tear It Up by the Cramps, and now we do All Women Are Bad, maybe we can add that one. We do part of Willie the Pimp (Frank Zappa) in the middle of Pincushion Sue, one of our originals.