Weekly gigs at a venue- how much do you change it up?

demolicious · Weekly gigs at a venue- how much do you change it up?

I know there is no right answer to this, but I was just wondering for those of you who play a regular weekly show at a venue, how much do you change your set? I'm sure a lot has to do with the repetoire you have at hand, but is there an audience expectation of a completely new show each week?

Tishe

From the venue owners perspective, I doubt the audience remembers the set list from week to week BUT if you don't mix it up some, it will become stale. I've seen some extremely talented musicians fail on this point.

As to how much you should change it up? I dunno. Maybe some other folks will have suggestions on that.

RayW

I have my "Pretty Regular" show on Tuesday nights. There are the few songs folks pretty much would like to hear (which are my basic trademarks, you might say). Then, I may do between 2 and 5 covers of all over the place. Then I have my "experimentals" of my songs that I don't do very often (and many are still on the paper, written in pencil, from when I first wrote them).

Thursdays nights is my new slot and can be all over the board because the people there mostly like my soft voice (cough-cough).

But, all totalled, maybe half of my gig is repetitive, while the rest can be almost anything.

Alazarin

I cycle through my repertoire in a semi-random rotation so that I never play the same stuff any 2 nights in a row. Sort of like set list sudoku.

Soundcircel Flanagan

i constantly change my set.

there are a few songs that i know that people love to hear, but i also might decide to NOT play them.

i try to have new songs in my set as much as possible.
It also depends if its a 1 or 2 hour show offcourse

Fyrm Fouroux

I play my 60 minute shows in two halves: First 30 mins with guitar (mainly original songs) + second 30 mins piano (mainly cover songs). Here goes....

At one time I did keep a spreadsheet for each of my regular weekly repeat venues and just put an X in the cells for each of the songs (rows) that I played that week (columns), cycling through the repertoire and keeping repeats to perhaps around 3 out of the 9 songs I typically play for a show. This computerised record keeping did provide me with a really good record and forced me to play songs that I had neglected, so to speak. But it was way to obsessively time-consuming and I abandoned it for a simpler method where I simply highlighted the songs on a sheet listing the repertoire in columns (separate for piano) and then glanced at the previous week's sheet (for the venue) when making up my new songlist the following week. I still tried not to include more than about 3 repeats out of 9.

Then I switched my approach to focus more on the handful of faithful supporters who come to nearly all my gigs, irrespective of venue. So I tried to cycle through the repertoire gig-by-gig (ignoring which particular venue I was playing). That way, my regular supporters would get a more varied diet, and the variation at the regular venues would just be a matter of chance.

For the past few weeks, I have abandoned that system, too. At present, I look at the list of songs I have in my repertoire (a guitar list and a piano list) and just jot down the short names of song titles that I feel like playing that day (on a spiral notepad). This is much more unsystematic than hitherto, but it does give me more flexibility. For example, I sometimes include an a capella song in the show, or one where I play my Roland synth. I also occasionally do a timed (set a kitchen timer for 3 minutes) atonal improvisation using a string quartet voicing on my digital piano. I have sometimes improvised a sung poem over piano chords. I think my motivation for abandoning the rather rigid systems I previously had is that they tended to inhibit me somewhat, pushing me into safer and more regular forms of song.

I do need to make a songlist ahead of time, though, because I always arrange my sheet music so that I have it easily to hand and don't have to hunt around for it between songs. That allows me to concentrate on my inter-song chat (which I regard as an extremely important element of my shows). Hope some of this helps Smile

EvaMoon

I've always thought it would be cool to keep track of what I play, but I am constitutionally incapable of doing it for more than two gigs in a row.

I have a stack of lyric sheets and I flip through it before a show and pull out the ones I feel like playing and put them in the order I want to play them in. Not that I particularly need to look at them but flipping through them tells me what to play next.

I have a varied set of criteria for putting a show together.

1. the venue will usually determine the level of focus on sex. Some are more adult than others.
2. the occasion. If it's a benefit I might do different songs than if it's a rezday party. I try to find songs that are appropriate to the purpose of the event
3. the flow. I like to tell stories. Not just within a song but over the whole set. For example, if it's a rezday party, I might do a whole set about getting ready for the party, shopping for a gift, dancing and celebrating.
4. songs I haven't played for a while.
5. songs for people at the show. I'll change my set on the fly if people seem to be responding to certain things or if certain people show up and I know they'd appreciate something.
6. requests

That said, I have a more finite song list than some others. I have about 50ish songs I think and only a couple of covers. I am always concerned about variety and getting stale for my regulars. Also, I don't have ANY regular weekly gigs. If I knew hundreds of songs I might consider it, but the more limited your repertoire, the more important it is to have fresh ears. Going to the same venue week after week is easy, but it's not the way to find those new ears.

demolicious

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

Fyrm, you're approach to keeping track of your set lists is impressive. Wish I had that level of organization.

Eva, you make a good point about weekly gigs and fresh ears. Now I'm thinking that taking a weekly gig might not have been a great move. It just sounded so appealing at the time.

I have basically 2 sets worth of material, one is rock-n-roll/new wave/punk, and the other is acoustic/downtempo stuff. They don't mix well. Hmm . . . well I've got some thinking to do.

Thanks!