How Big is your repertoire?

[turfguy]

Wow. You guys are impressive. How do you settle on a song? I hear something I like and by the time I’m home from a long day of work I, Ive forgotten about it. I probably only have a handful that I can pull out at any time, but would love to have more.

[gfirob]

I have a play list of about 70 songs for two hours. The play list is on an ipad, with a few individual lyrics in case I think I need them. This includes acoustic, electric, resonator and some instrumentals (though not very many because most people find them less interesting in my market).

[6L6]

Today i posted song #108 on FB. I started on March 29 with the quarantine and have put up a song a day.

All are in my head, so there was nothing new to learn. I have 8 songs left and then that will be it. So call it 116 songs in my quiver.

[3notes]

I'm a stay at home player. I have graduated from cover songs to 22 named instrumentals that are all originals. When I first started playing I had probably 50+ covers that I would play….. Dylan, Dead, Peter Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Jackson Browne.....

These days I play all originals. I can play for 90+ minutes without repeating myself.

[Earl49]

Originally Posted by EZYPIKINS

If I could remember the song titles I could do allot more I'm sure. Sometimes I can remember a song. But can't tell you the title, till I hit the chorus. Used to do an Eddie Rabbitt song back in the 70's and 80's

"He's Got You, I've Got Mexico" by any chance? I play that one, and even wrote an extra verse to fill it out some (no soloist handy to take a break).

Originally Posted by turfguy

How do you settle on a song? I hear something I like and by the time I’m home from a long day of work I, Ive forgotten about it. I probably only have a handful that I can pull out at any time, but would love to have more.

Send yourself a text or email with the song title or a lyric line. Any song has to interest you enough to be worth investing the considerable effort to memorize and then make it playable in public. Something you like on the radio or from a favorite album or artist usually. It is all about desire, then effort, then maintenance.

For a long time I kept 3 x 5 cards in my guitar case and would make note of any song that was new to me. Going to guitar camps for several years, I would come home with 10-15 new-to-me songs from the campfire jams which I learned for the next year. Do that for a dozen years and you have a bunch of songs under your fingers. And that's in addition to the others you wanted to learn for yourself anyway. At first my play list took up a 3 x 5 card, then both sides, then smaller fonts. I had to graduate to a 5 x 7 card, then a full sheet of paper, then both sides of a full sheet. Binders grew unwieldy and now I am converting everything to PDF's and producing a master list for an iPad. And even so there are probably another 50 songs I can wing from memory that do not appear on any of my lists. I may not get all the verses 100% correct or in order, but I can hear the chord changes and at least sing the chorus and one verse.

[ChrisE]

I keep a playlist on Spotify I called “Learn” and when a song comes on that I want to learn, I add it to the playlist.

Many that are on the list are songs or artists that people have requested that I didn’t know when it was requested. I learned a couple of songs by Midland because one of the bartenders asked me to.

Some are songs I haven’t heard in a while that I always liked.

The latest song I added was “Cruel to Be Kind” by Nick Lowe. I always liked that song.

Oh—and any song I learn has to be an easy strummy type song because I’m more of a singer than a guitar player.

[ceciltguitar]

Originally Posted by Benjo

If I can piggy back onto this thread:

For those of you who play all instrumental music of intermediate to advanced level fingerstyle and classical solo guitar music (bach, villa lobos, barrios, kottke, fahey, cooder, bensusan, blackshaw, and transcriptions of debussy, satie, couperin, etc), how large is your rep of pieces you can play at tempo from memory?

I have a total number of tunes I'm aiming for in the 80 or so range but I don't know if I'll ever get that many learned at tempo. There's some challenging stuff and I have a full-time job, so I practice between 2-6 hours a day. Around 25-30 seems to be around my max.

25 years ago I used to play Two to five hour gigs of finger style arrangements of pop standards as well as most of the composers that you just mentioned, and others in the same vein, without repeating a tune.

At least for me, I have to be out there playing those type of gigs a couple times a week to maintain that type of repertoire to remember and perform that many tunes at a decent level of performance.

For the 15 years that my wife and I performed 3 to 10 retirement home gigs a month we had five 1 hour shows: “oldies” (1900 - 1960), Hispanic, Irish, Patriotic, and Christmas. Since 4 of the shows were seasonal, we would rehearse once or twice A week or so before the beginning of the season for any given show. I usually had to spend a couple hours woodshedding before our first rehearsal in between rehearsals and before the first show to resurrect all my parts.

[M Sarad]

Three bands with 8 hours of music.

Solo guitar with two more.

[Mark Stone]

I don't play in clubz any more, and haven't for a couple of decades, so very few. However, I'm lead acoustic for a church band - we've been together for almost 9 years - therefore I can play the acoustic lines on any song on KayLuv!

[The Bard Rocks]

I have around 900 songs plus instrumentals that I play. In the list of 900 there are a small few I have not performed, ones I expect to learn. But not that many are really properly memorized, meaning ones i am sure i would not make mistakes on without something before me. Obviously, I am not too proud to avoid music stands.

The music is the easy part; there's only one of that to memorize. But verses complicate things.

I got together yesterday with a friend who hopes to play out with me once we settle on our repertoire. It was the first time in months for us and boy did it feel good to do that again.

[pukematrix]

I'm not a public performer, but if you asked my wife, she'd probably say I know one song and I play it over...and over...and over.

The active setlist is about 150 strong at the moment. Thanks for the thread, Andy. It forced me to open up a Google Sheet and refresh the list with some new ones and reminded me of some I haven't played in a while. Looking forward to spending some time with some old friends.

Austin

[David Rance]

Until 3y ago I played in a Classical ensemble and every year we would have a new repertoire of maybe 20-25 pieces we would work up to performance. We had a great musical director who could take just about any piece and write it into 3 or 4 parts. Since I left that and went back to acoustic I make CD's just for family and friends so I'm always looking for nice pieces and occasionally write one myself. At any one time there will be about 15 pieces in my file. I do a CD every year or so often for Christmas. I love 'producing' the CD's the artwork, labels etc. Copywrite laws on the artwork and the music would stop me distributing/selling. Even if the CD's were marketable which they probably aren't!! I really have never liked playing the same piece for much longer than ayear. However pretty they are.

[Slothead56]

I just checked and I have 354 songs on OnSong. So that’s active songs that I do plus songs I’ve rehearsed but don’t plan on unless someone asks nicely. Then there’s dozens still in my head from college in the 70’s that I could work up but don’t because of relevancy. And my own stuff, not all of which gets played to the public.

But, like Andy, not sure I’ll ever play in public again. Not being pessimistic but I’m not out there too much anyway and I don’t see open mics coming back anytime soon. Sucks!

[HFox]

Originally Posted by UncleJesse

I used to do this. All that paper became unmanageable. I found switching to an IPad much easier to add and retrieve what I wanted when I wanted.

You can print to PDF and import directly to IPad. Or you can copy and paste into a word document and format to your choosing and then export as PDF.

DID I mention that I copy on Paper because I can ENLARGE the font so I CAN SEE with out glasses ?.......If I were to do as you suggest I would need a 50" wide screen TV .

[fazool]

I keep mine on a spreadsheet which I maintain frequently. I constantly rank the songs as ones I can play from memory, to those I knew but forgot, the ones I know but need notes, etc.

I have just over 160 songs - about 150 if you take out the "fat" as Andy called it.