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Having trouble creating a medley


nousername

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The band is getting smarter; they are realizing women on the dance floor = a better night for everyone. As a result, we'd like to create a few medleys to help encourage people to stay out there dancing.

 

But we're stuck. Just unable to figure out how to create a medley of even two songs. What tips do you have?

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The idea is to find two songs that have the same basic key and chord structure, or very similar, and find the parts that go together. That's Not My Name into Mickey into My Sharona is an example. What I Like About You into Authority Song. There's a gazillion things you can do.

 

If you're having trouble getting startd, start by picking a fun dance song that you like, then go to youtube and search for that song with "medley" and see what comes up. See how other people have done it. Then you'll start to get the hang of it and start seeing how you can medley things on your own.

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I have found that having similar keys is not important unless you're going to be transitioning back and forth between two songs in more of a "mashup" style. We jump wildly from key-to-key sometimes in our medleys and it doesn't seem to have much effect one way or the other. In fact, sometimes I think a big key change works to help create that sense of "OK....we're into a new song now."

 

Having similar drum beats and tempos is the big thing. Especially if your medleying up dance songs. Those are the main elements going to keep your dancefloor moving. Any medley idea I come up with I always run past my drummer first to ask him if it will work from a drum-beat standpoint. He's the one providing the most commonality between the songs.

 

One trick we'll use is just to keep the drum beat going between the songs. That also gives you a chance to grab a swig of water, and try to whip up the crowd a bit more with a "put your hands together" bit or some such.

 

But the main thing you're looking to do is just eliminate any dead space whatsoever. So I'd start by just looking at two or three songs already on the set list that seem to go well together, butt them up back-to-back and always play them a single piece. The main thing---especially with doing longer medleys---is to have the band learn to hear them as such. Once the band is all on board with "this is how the medley works" then it just becomes a new single piece of music for you and will flow much easier.

 

Another thing we've ended up doing over time is shortening the individuals songs within the medleys. "Play the meat of the song and get on to the next one" is the term we use. A 12-minute medley might consist of 6 or 7 songs. If the idea is to keep the dancefloor full, then you don't want to draw out solos or choruses to the point where the dancers start to feel bored with it.

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Like Opus said, sometimes it's just a matter of finding songs that are so similar that they beg to be medleyed together. "What I Like About You" and "R.O.C.K. In the USA" is a classic that has been done many times by many bands because it's they are pretty much the same damned song and they both work. Forgive me if you've seen me post this stuff before, but here's a couple of examples of medleys that work for us in case you haven't.

 

"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody". These fall into that "same damned song" category. Same beat, same tempo, same key. And appeals to the same dancefloor demographic---they are both Chick songs from the 80s. They are so much the same that we are able to bring it back around to the first song at the end just to give it a nice little wrap-up.

 

[video=youtube;CLoTTn6IWYk]

 

Mickey/That's Not My Name/My Sharona/Happy

 

"Mickey" and "That's Not My Name" have similar drum beats and are the same key. So they are another pretty obvious choice to put together. "My Sharona" has the similar rhythm and tempo but the key moves from E to G. The new drum beat separates the key changes. We bring it back around to "Mickey" and "TNMN" because---why not---and then we jump right into "Happy" which is in F, and isn't necessarily a natural fit for the other songs, but you can hear how just butting the two things together works. We were already doing the first 3 songs together and when it came time to learn "Happy" somebody suggested just slapping it onto the end of it and---voila!---instant longer medley.

 

Sometimes all you have to do is just butt two songs together and you've got a medley.

 

This clip is missing the 3 minutes or so of "Mickey" before we go into TNMN with essentially the same beat.

 

[video=youtube;53SuXe1GSiE]

 

Dynamite/California Gurls/We Found Love/Low/Party Rock Anthem/Good Vibrations

 

Not a whole lot to hold all of these together other than just similar beats and tempos and energy, really. And not even that so much.

 

Dynamite is in E. at about 2:45 you hear the drummer just start the beat to the next song while we let it go around a couple of times before we start CG in the key of Dm. We could start it right away, but it feels good to let it 'breathe' a bit before the next riff.

 

At 5:38 I go right into WFF which starts on Ebm. It's always probably a bit better to go up than down with such sudden shifts. We re-arranged the song a bit so we could go back to the "sunrise" earlier and then bust right into Low at 7:52 which is also in Ebm.

 

Low has a completely different feel than anything else in the medley, but it works to give the long medley some atmosphere, I think. But it probably wouldn't work except that A) the song is so dang familiar to everyone and B) we start right out with the chorus so that before they can realize we've changed things up they are all singing along with "Apple Bottom Jeans...."

 

 

at around 9:20 we go right into Party Rock which is tough one for me to always hit and you can hear me miss the first chord on the keys and come in late. haha. We do this song in Bbm to accommodate the female vocalists (I think the original is in Ebm, IIRC.) Big key change from the original, but nobody seems to notice or mind.

 

At 11;40 we kick into Good Vibrations----also in Bbm. And which is always a bit of a mindf**k for me because it's the same three chords as Party Rock and a very similar rhythmic pattern, just played in a different order. It usually takes me a second or two to get my brain turned around the right way.

 

As if that wasn't all long enough, we've since added "Starships" (key of D) in between Low and Party Rock. That works great too.

 

[video=youtube;U8SmPFbn5rE]

 

Stayin' Alive/Another Brick In The Wall/Rapper's Delight/Good Times/Get Lucky

 

Stayin Alive and Brick is a complete mash up. I stole the idea from a video mashup I saw online (posted here, I think!) but the arrangement is ours. Same beat and from the same era. (The story is that Bob Ezrin told Nick Mason to play the Stayin' Alive beat when they recorded Brick.) But the Bee Gees/Floyd juxtaposition is odd but works FOR the reason. Nobody expects it but they love it. Stayin' Alive is originally in Fm and Brick in Dm. We play it in Em to meet the two halfway.

 

Rapper's Delight keeps us in the era and since the bass line was lifted from Good Times in the first place, that's an obvious choice. Also in Em. Get Lucky sounds like a Chic song (what with Nile Rodgers playing the guitar part on it and all). It's in Bm, but the relative nature of the chord progressions flow pretty naturally into each other.

 

We have since slapped on both "Oh What A Night" (by playing a drum riff for a couple of bars between the two) and then "What Makes You Beautiful" (with just a dead stop into the guitar riff) at the end of this, but after a handful of plays, I'm not sure it's working like I dreamed it up. We may dump OWAN or move that bit to somewhere else in the set. Many times this stuff ends up being trial and error.

 

[video=youtube;U5mcrSCRyZE]

 

Good Feeling/Die Young/Peace Of Mind

 

Good Feeling and Die Young are another of those obvious choices. Key of E, same basic rhythm, just the order of the chord changes shifts. While we were working it up we realized it was virtually the same thing (just again with a shift in the order of the changes) as the guitar riff to Boston's Peace of Mind. So we tossed that in there as well. At the end we bring back the choruses to both songs on top of the Boston chord changes and riff.

 

I forgot how much I liked this medley. We've back burner-ed it to the point where it pretty much has fallen off the set list. Listening to it again makes me think that I think I want to bring it back! This is a pretty early version of it and you can hear that we're still not all quite sure of the transitions. So there's a bit of standing around and looking at each other sometimes wondering which bit to go into next. Again---there's often some trial and error before you figure out what works best sometimes.

 

[video=youtube;_4hxWKoJtt8]

 

 

 

 

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I think I managed to create one: 30 Days in the Hole > I Hate Myself For Loving You.

 

End 30 Days with a D to E chord starting on the and of 4, ending on 1. Hold the E for a measure, repeat four times. Hold the last E. Drums count 1, 2, then a quick pickup on snare for 2 beats and I Hate starts on the and of 4.

 

We'll see on Thursday at rehearsal.

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That sounds like a good start! I can hear it.

 

BTW....How does "30 Days" work for you? I always loved that song as a kid, but I don't think I've even heard it on the radio in the last 30 years.

 

Cool tune, though! I hope your audiences dig it. That'd be awesome! It'd be a major fail for us, for sure, but I'd sure love to hear some other band play it!

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That sounds like a good start! I can hear it.

 

BTW....How does "30 Days" work for you? I always loved that song as a kid, but I don't think I've even heard it on the radio in the last 30 years.

 

Cool tune, though! I hope your audiences dig it. That'd be awesome! It'd be a major fail for us, for sure, but I'd sure love to hear some other band play it!

 

We're still working it out, so we haven't played it out yet. I assume it will go better than The Sad Bag of Shakey Jake, mainly because 30 Days is uptempo. Although Jake was well received...

 

As a general rule, our local bar crowds are 'different'. They love just about anything that's danceable.

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yeah, that's how it's done! Sounds good.

 

One thing to also consider is flipping the song order around if you find that "30 Days" isn't bringing them out on the floor and using the more-chick-friendly IHMFLY or ILRR up front.

 

We had this problem with the Mickey/That's Not My Name medley. Originally we were doing TNMN first and while it went over OK, it was when we kicked into Mickey that the medley took off. So we flipped the order around and now the audience stays more engaged through the whole thing.

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We managed to create another medley: silverchair's "Tomorrow" ends on A, hold the A and start right into Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!). :)

 

Unfortunately, Camille has a nodule on her vocal cords, so she's just talking lyrics during rehearsal. We're hoping for an eight week break being enough for it to repair, and the underlying acid reflux issue to be resolved. More delays...

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Wow....sorry to hear about that! All the best for a speedy recovery. Tiffany has been dealing with that for over 2 years now. Rest alone has not healed her in her case. We've managed to find a way to work around her issues, but her vocal abilities have been seriously limited by it. Not a fun situation at all.

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