When I was at a Saves the Day concert a couple years ago, they took requests, and several times they responded to a request with “there are more than 100 Saves the Day songs and we can only memorize a limited number of them.”
On the other hand, the band Coheed and Cambria sometimes puts on “Neverenders,” in which they play their entire discography of around 50 songs from start to finish. Although I have never seen one, so I’m not entirely sure that they don’t use crib sheets for these, although unlike most rock bands and events, I would not think less of them for referring to music or lyrics if they happened to do so for Neverenders.
So I was wondering, what’s a good upper limit on the number of songs a fairly good memorizer and moderately perfectionist rock musician can memorize enough to play to their own satisfaction and without referring to sheet music or lyrics? I’m not talking about prodigies that can memorize Haydn’s entire collected scores or proto-punk artists who don’t care if they play right or not.
A godawful number, I’d wager. I once heard Alex Lifeson of Rush say he could still play everything they’d ever recorded. By my count that’s 186 fairly complicated songs.
And I saw local DC heroes, Emmit Swimming, hold shows where the first 20 people in the venue got to choose the set list from among anything they’d ever released. So they didn’t know what would be in the setlist until they walked on stage each night.
I think it depends on how often they actually play them. Certain bands play the same set list night after night on tour, rarely changing it. Rush is one that comes to mind, if you see them 3 consecutive nights on a tour you’ll hear the same songs every time. Other bands change it up a bit, some change significantly from show to show. Dream Theater comes to mind, every time I see them they play a different set.
Depends on the musicians. The Grateful Dead could play any song they recorded, as well as songs by other songwriters. They never played the same set list twice in a row (and probably never).
No real upper limit. Natalie Cole was playing a gig and I was talking to her sound guy - they had over 400 songs down - and these were jazz standards with some complex changes along with the pop stuff.
Issues - is there synth sequencing used to support the song? Are the jobs fairly standard across band members? Anything else “special”? If not, why not remember it? It really depends on whether the band trots it out every now and then to keep it fresh…
Irma Thomas takes requests from the crowd at each of her concerts, and she brings an enormously thick book with all the words of every song she’s ever done, in case she doesn’t remember the lyrics right away. It’s become such a tradition that she has to always bring the book with her on stage because she knows fans will be counting on her to perform a song and she doesn’t want to disappoint them.
As for the band, there were several songs which only the older musicians knew, but after a few bars everyone else picked up on them. And for a couple, she would start the song a cappella (since only she knew it).
The guys in Phish seem to know every song every written. I have a friend who’s a Phishhead (or whatever they call themselves) and he has hundreds of shows on CD/CDR/DVD and these guys seem to change their set list every night, sometimes playing covers of whole albums from other artists. A lot of it is impromptu, too. They’ll just get the mood to play something, or feel that the crowd would dig something, and play it.
Unfortunately, stylistically, the band is too tame for my tastes, but the guys are all unbelievably talented musicians, and they seem to have the whole damn catalog of pop music memorized.
The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison (all who play(ed) each night without a pre-determined set list) have/had a 200+ song repertoire available for any given show…
The Grateful Dead usually had even more songs that they could dust off at the drop of a hat, as they were a constant (with a few changes in thier 30 year career) unit, with the same core of 5 musicians steady from 1967-1995.
With Dylan and Morrison, both change thier backing bands on occasion-Van more often than Bob-and so the new lineups will add and drop songs, some fall out of rotation, others get new life after sitting on the shelf for many years.
Each of the acts I have mentioned have a)100’s of original songs to thier credit, b)100’s of cover songs picked up along the way, c)and a commonality of never playing the same show twice.
I bet it’s a lot harder to remember them when a band plays many of their songs in alternate key sigs (like dropping a song a half-tone or even a whole tone or two, to make it easier to sing live, say), or experiment with alternate tunings or radical instrumentation shifts (like changing a guitar part to a piano or keyboard one, or vice-versa). The cognitive dissonance between the slightly different versions (E, E-flat, or D? Capo or no?..) would drive me nuts.
Does anybody know if the artists with the largest repertoires stick almost entirely with the original keys and instrumentation, or are they maintaining those large reps with a full range of stylistic options for their songs, too?
Although I once read an article about him forgetting the words to “Born to Run,” and then, with a laugh, picking it up when audience members began singing it to him!
If someone told me to drop tune or put a capo on my guitar, I’d tell them find another guitar player or another band…but I can tune flat for someone if need be.
If its a piano tune, well you can make anything any key and still keep the same patterns.
If someone tried to add horns to and already established tune and tell me to play in a different key. It would really depend on the complexity for lead runs and such.
POP MUSIC and Orchestrated/Operatic Music are two different monsters.
I just want to chime in regarding Coheed and Cambria’s Neverender. First off: It’s fucking awesome! I’ve not watched it all yet, but what I have watched has been amazing. They play so tight, and sound as good as the recordings.
But more to the point of the OP, I didn’t notice any sheet music being used or anything like that. Except maybe from the keyboardist or secondary drummer…but I can’t remember for sure.
The Grateful Dead reputable had over 300 songs they could pick from, however it is known that in later years they had teleprompters to help with at least the words (I don’t know if it was music too.) Even with the teleprompters, if Jerry got the words right for three songs in a row it was called a Geri-Hat-Trick.
I also know that when they finally wanted to break out Unbroken Chain on their last tour (they had never played this gem from Live From the Mars Hotel live) that they had to practice it first. It was a very bittersweet moment because they had never played it and there was a legend that they would only play it on their last tour, which turned out to be true. Jerry died shortly after their last gig.
