Set List?

[Buc McMaster]

For you buskers and open mic-ers out there, where do you keep your set list?  When I worked with a band we kept multiple sets on paper on the floor of the stage......everyone had a copy and knew what's next without prompting.........worked well.  Performing solo is different though and I've found this solution:  the back-of-the-headstock setlist.  Listed in no order other than by capo position, in my case O (open) through the 6th.  How do you cats keep a setlist handy?

 

[fortyearspickn]

No way I would  be able to read that if on the floor !    I seem to recall a popular location was taped to the upper bout, on the inside top. I guess you could use those sticky glue dots to keep from marring the nitro.   

[Jim Wilson]

I put mine on the floor in front of me.  As the years have gone by, I've learned to print REALLY BIG.

[E-minor7]

Kool set. What's behind the colour-code ?

 

I used to be the 2-sheets-on-floor-type - using a big slightly infantile handwritten black tusch font.  Necessary with a vibe from the list, , , it must not make me feel like an office clerk.

[Buc McMaster]

49 minutes ago, fortyearspickn said:

No way I would  be able to read that if on the floor !

And that's why it's on the headstock........I can put it right up in my face!

33 minutes ago, E-minor7 said:

Kool set. What's behind the colour-code?

The tunes in red are originals, as if I didn't know which was which already 🙄 

This is not a "do-'em-in-this-order" kind of list, rather tunes I can play and sing well enough to do as the mood strikes or the situation seems to call for.  I run them all regularly here at home so as not to lose touch with any of them.............if they're on the list they are ready to go.

[uncle fester]

I say put it up on a billboard so you can see it and passersby as well, and take requests as people walk by.  I bet you'd pull more than just a couple in - you've got a good list, people will be drawn to one thing or another in there.

[EuroAussie]

I get my roadies to place it on the floor in large print, afer they put the water around, got the towels ready and soundchecked all the gear.

[Leonard McCoy]

Back of guitar body.

[QuestionMark]

At my gigs  keep mine on a music stand, securely clipped.

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

Edited April 22, 2020 by QuestionMark

[j45nick]

side of the upper bout, taped on.

[j45nick]

4 hours ago, EuroAussie said:

I get my roadies to place it on the floor in large print, afer they put the water around, got the towels ready and soundchecked all the gear.

Spoiled, ain'tcha Mark?

[62burst]

8 hours ago, uncle fester said:

I say put it up on a billboard so you can see it and passersby as well, and take requests as people walk by.  I bet you'd pull more than just a couple in - you've got a good list, people will be drawn to one thing or another in there.

A  Buc Billboard.  Perfect. . .  set it up on an easel. . . with donation basket directly under.

get right on it, Fester 🎨.

[Guth]

Buc, Et al.,

I have had a life-long fear of playing in front of other people. Fear probably isn't quite the right way to describe it as it is not like I lose any sleep over the matter. Nor do I develop any uneasiness when thinking about. I suppose that for the most part I simply do not enjoy playing in front of others and it does tend to make me feel awkward (hell, I feel awkward amongst large groups of people even if I'm not playing guitar). Sadly, I even feel much the same way when I get around to recording my playing. At this point in my life I'm okay with playing for a few friends, or family and certainly for all of the neighborhood cats who seemingly always find their way to our front porch should I be playing outside.  I'm okay sharing my recordings with the folks on this forum because everyone tends to be so kind. (Don't think that I don't appreciate this.)

At any rate, I have played in front of a crowd of people that I didn't know a total of four times. Out near our cabin there is a cool, funky restaurant/bar that has an open mic on Thursday nights. One night while I was there having a beer,  no one had yet signed up on "the list". So the host was up there playing. Not singing, just playing acoustic guitar (except he would capture a portion of his playing and then place that recording into a loop so that he could solo over it). Nice playing and a pretty fancy presentation. After he finished I asked him if anyone else ever "just played guitar" and he replied that, every once in a while someone would get up on stage and play instrumentals. At that point I decided that I would give it a try if for no other reason than to make myself suffer, lol. Somehow I thought that I should at least try to face my "fear" of playing in front of others.

I practiced a variety of my tunes for a few weeks until I felt plenty  comfortable with a half-dozen  or so of them. One of the beautiful things about being a newbie at an open mic playing instrumental tunes of my own creation was that I knew there would only be so much that the audience could take. The first night I showed up to play I was pretty damn nervous. I wouldn't let myself drink a beer beforehand for fear of really messing things up. When I asked the host how long or how many tunes should I play, he told me to play as much as I wanted as there wasn't anyone who had signed up after me. Right after making it through my first tune, I acknowledged those in the crowd who were clapping with a very low-key "t h a n k s" (I don't think I even looked anyone in the eye). As I was re-tuning my guitar for the next tune the amplification cut out. The host came up to check on things and it turns out that the battery for the internal pickup in my guitar  had gone dead (it was the same battery that came in the guitar when I bought it years earlier and I never had thought to check it as I never even used it before. So the host set up a mic for me and cut me loose again. I made it through four or five more songs. By then I decided that I had had enough for that night and I figured that I likely wasn't the only one. 

Right after that I slammed a couple of beers (I never slam beers) and then began talking to the owner of the place *who I already knew) after I finished. He started telling me about his acoustic guitar - an old Gibson. Cool, I was all in on that conversation. Then he asked me if I wanted to see it. "Sure!" He and his wife live in the space above the restaurant so he went upstairs and retrieved it. He brought it over to me and I could see that it was an old LG-2. He saw the smile on my face and then asked me if I wanted to play it. "Absolutely! Are you sure?" He was sure. He told me that he was going to grab his harmonica's and would meet me up on the stage. At that point I felt obliged to tell him that I do not know anything about music or how it is constructed. I can only identify a handful of cowboy chords by memory and I have no idea what key I might be playing in or what notes I might be playing for that matter. He told me not to worry about it. 

Had I not slammed the beers a little bit earlier I likely would have walked out, but we got up there and he told me just to play whatever I wanted. He then pointed to his binder of poems he had written that he had with him and once again told me not to worry. Now I don't really know how to come up with any kind of an "intro" to anything I play. While I have heard of these things, I couldn't tell you whether or not any of my tunes have verses or choruses or bridges (or overpasses, tollways, onramps and offramps for that matter). This is why I always refer to my guitar-based creations as "tunes". The only time that I call anything that I've created a "song" is when I've done so by mistake. 

Trust me when I tell you that I was plenty nervous. We "played" maybe five "songs" in total and I still had absolutely no clue what I was doing. The crowd loved it because Tom (the owner) almost never get up on stage and his poetry was totally off-the-wall. He was having a great time. I was just glad that all eyes weren't on me, this tended to make things a bit easier. Oh, and I truly enjoyed his old LG-2 that had such a massive repair history I could hardly believe it. But it played and sounded great. That was the highlight of the evening for me.

I would end up going back to the open mic three more times in total. Tom and I performed together once again during one of those evenings. Each time I went back to play things got harder, lol. There were a variety of reasons for this, and they don't really matter in the context of this story. Four times was enough for me. I had proven whatever it was that I needed to prove to myself by then. I was good.

I don't retell this sequence of events to distract from this thread. Instead, I am reliving this experience so that you'll know I mean it when I tell you what I'd like to finish up with below.

To all of you on this forum who make a habit of getting up and performing in front of other people, whether it be for their benefit, your benefit, or both, know that you have my deepest respect. I am making no references to to the level of skill involved, or whether or not money is involved, the size of the audience, or anything else for that matter. If you perform for others I tip my cap to you. My appreciation doesn't just come from the experience I've replayed for you above, although that had deepened the feelings that I have had for a long time. For me it has always primarily had to do more with the fact that at some point  early in my life I developed an appreciation for the fact that while making music might come easier to some than it does to the rest of us, those who wind up deciding to perform for others end up putting in the work in order to do so. What drives someone to do so does not matter to me — be it notoriety, money, picking up chicks/dudes/trans/whatever, I don't care. This is why ever since I was young almost any time I have gone to see live music in my life if I had the opportunity to thank the musicians involved for playing I have made the effort to do so. 

The appreciation in my case is truly genuine. That's really what I wanted to get across here. It just doesn't seem to carry the same weight without the full backstory. It is kind of like when you watch someone play guitar before you've tried to do so yourself. You can still enjoy it greatly and also have a great deal of appreciation for at the same time. But once you've started to play guitar yourself the enjoyment and appreciation only grows. At least that's how life tends to work for me.

All the best,
Guth

[Murph]

I just "wing it".

Pretty much everything I do, actually...

[fortyearspickn]

Guth - "You're a better man than I,  Gunga Din."  

[QuestionMark]

Great background story, Guth!  Thanks for sharing it!

 

QM aka “Jazzman” Jeff

[kwalker201]

One heck of a set list Buc, you must have one hell of a memory.

Edited April 23, 2020 by kwalker201

[Lars68]

I hope to one day reach the point when a setlist would be needed, but that won’t happen anytime soon. So no help there.

Nice capo!

Lars

 

[PrairieSchooner]

On 4/22/2020 at 6:10 PM, j45nick said:

side of the upper bout, taped on.

 

Me too, back in the day.  Later, written larger and on the floor.  These days, I'd probably need all the lyrics there too 😅... 

[Guth]

So Buc, does this mean that we can now request these tunes on your YouTube channel?

I do have a number that I'd want to watch for myself (any originals never before posted, plus Rikki Don't Lose That Number, Ramblin' Man, Carmelita, etc, etc.) Shoot, I guess I'd want to watch 'em all. But I will note that Melissa is my wife's name so that'd definitely be my first request as I always share your videos with her when I watch them. Our common love for music is what brought she and I together in the first place.

I actually played what I could of that tune for her back when we were still just friends — before we started to date. It has never been clear to me whether doing so might have been one of the reasons that we ultimately did end up dating, or if that only caused the actual occurrence of dating to be pushed further back, lol.

[EuroAussie]

On 4/23/2020 at 1:12 AM, j45nick said:

Spoiled, ain'tcha Mark?

 

yeah, but sometime they put it a little to the left of me ... have to fire their asses for that.

[uncle fester]

42 minutes ago, EuroAussie said:

 

yeah, but sometime they put it a little to the left of me ... have to fire their asses for that.

my issue with my roadies is they sometimes forget to separate all the colors of the m&ms in my dressing room before I get there.  throws off the karma of the whole night.

[uncle fester]

BTW Buc - Looking at your set list, if you're ever looking for something to do, would love to hear your versions of 'I'm so tired' and 'watchtower'...  no pressure, just saying.

[Larsongs]

On April 22, 2020 at 10:35 PM, Guth said:

Buc, Et al.,

I have had a life-long fear of playing in front of other people. Fear probably isn't quite the right way to describe it as it is not like I lose any sleep over the matter. Nor do I develop any uneasiness when thinking about. I suppose that for the most part I simply do not enjoy playing in front of others and it does tend to make me feel awkward (hell, I feel awkward amongst large groups of people even if I'm not playing guitar). Sadly, I even feel much the same way when I get around to recording my playing. At this point in my life I'm okay with playing for a few friends, or family and certainly for all of the neighborhood cats who seemingly always find their way to our front porch should I be playing outside.  I'm okay sharing my recordings with the folks on this forum because everyone tends to be so kind. (Don't think that I don't appreciate this.)

At any rate, I have played in front of a crowd of people that I didn't know a total of four times. Out near our cabin there is a cool, funky restaurant/bar that has an open mic on Thursday nights. One night while I was there having a beer,  no one had yet signed up on "the list". So the host was up there playing. Not singing, just playing acoustic guitar (except he would capture a portion of his playing and then place that recording into a loop so that he could solo over it). Nice playing and a pretty fancy presentation. After he finished I asked him if anyone else ever "just played guitar" and he replied that, every once in a while someone would get up on stage and play instrumentals. At that point I decided that I would give it a try if for no other reason than to make myself suffer, lol. Somehow I thought that I should at least try to face my "fear" of playing in front of others.

I practiced a variety of my tunes for a few weeks until I felt plenty  comfortable with a half-dozen  or so of them. One of the beautiful things about being a newbie at an open mic playing instrumental tunes of my own creation was that I knew there would only be so much that the audience could take. The first night I showed up to play I was pretty damn nervous. I wouldn't let myself drink a beer beforehand for fear of really messing things up. When I asked the host how long or how many tunes should I play, he told me to play as much as I wanted as there wasn't anyone who had signed up after me. Right after making it through my first tune, I acknowledged those in the crowd who were clapping with a very low-key "t h a n k s" (I don't think I even looked anyone in the eye). As I was re-tuning my guitar for the next tune the amplification cut out. The host came up to check on things and it turns out that the battery for the internal pickup in my guitar  had gone dead (it was the same battery that came in the guitar when I bought it years earlier and I never had thought to check it as I never even used it before. So the host set up a mic for me and cut me loose again. I made it through four or five more songs. By then I decided that I had had enough for that night and I figured that I likely wasn't the only one. 

Right after that I slammed a couple of beers (I never slam beers) and then began talking to the owner of the place *who I already knew) after I finished. He started telling me about his acoustic guitar - an old Gibson. Cool, I was all in on that conversation. Then he asked me if I wanted to see it. "Sure!" He and his wife live in the space above the restaurant so he went upstairs and retrieved it. He brought it over to me and I could see that it was an old LG-2. He saw the smile on my face and then asked me if I wanted to play it. "Absolutely! Are you sure?" He was sure. He told me that he was going to grab his harmonica's and would meet me up on the stage. At that point I felt obliged to tell him that I do not know anything about music or how it is constructed. I can only identify a handful of cowboy chords by memory and I have no idea what key I might be playing in or what notes I might be playing for that matter. He told me not to worry about it. 

Had I not slammed the beers a little bit earlier I likely would have walked out, but we got up there and he told me just to play whatever I wanted. He then pointed to his binder of poems he had written that he had with him and once again told me not to worry. Now I don't really know how to come up with any kind of an "intro" to anything I play. While I have heard of these things, I couldn't tell you whether or not any of my tunes have verses or choruses or bridges (or overpasses, tollways, onramps and offramps for that matter). This is why I always refer to my guitar-based creations as "tunes". The only time that I call anything that I've created a "song" is when I've done so by mistake. 

Trust me when I tell you that I was plenty nervous. We "played" maybe five "songs" in total and I still had absolutely no clue what I was doing. The crowd loved it because Tom (the owner) almost never get up on stage and his poetry was totally off-the-wall. He was having a great time. I was just glad that all eyes weren't on me, this tended to make things a bit easier. Oh, and I truly enjoyed his old LG-2 that had such a massive repair history I could hardly believe it. But it played and sounded great. That was the highlight of the evening for me.

I would end up going back to the open mic three more times in total. Tom and I performed together once again during one of those evenings. Each time I went back to play things got harder, lol. There were a variety of reasons for this, and they don't really matter in the context of this story. Four times was enough for me. I had proven whatever it was that I needed to prove to myself by then. I was good.

I don't retell this sequence of events to distract from this thread. Instead, I am reliving this experience so that you'll know I mean it when I tell you what I'd like to finish up with below.

To all of you on this forum who make a habit of getting up and performing in front of other people, whether it be for their benefit, your benefit, or both, know that you have my deepest respect. I am making no references to to the level of skill involved, or whether or not money is involved, the size of the audience, or anything else for that matter. If you perform for others I tip my cap to you. My appreciation doesn't just come from the experience I've replayed for you above, although that had deepened the feelings that I have had for a long time. For me it has always primarily had to do more with the fact that at some point  early in my life I developed an appreciation for the fact that while making music might come easier to some than it does to the rest of us, those who wind up deciding to perform for others end up putting in the work in order to do so. What drives someone to do so does not matter to me — be it notoriety, money, picking up chicks/dudes/trans/whatever, I don't care. This is why ever since I was young almost any time I have gone to see live music in my life if I had the opportunity to thank the musicians involved for playing I have made the effort to do so. 

The appreciation in my case is truly genuine. That's really what I wanted to get across here. It just doesn't seem to carry the same weight without the full backstory. It is kind of like when you watch someone play guitar before you've tried to do so yourself. You can still enjoy it greatly and also have a great deal of appreciation for at the same time. But once you've started to play guitar yourself the enjoyment and appreciation only grows. At least that's how life tends to work for me.

All the best,
Guth

 

The nervousness is usually the adrenaline you need to help you excel in your performance be it Music or whatever.. In most cases it's a good thing.. 

If you got a light you should let it shine....

I've used all the above mentioned ways for Set Lists.. I've even written them on my Arms. LOL.. I'd really like to figure out how to use an IPad on my Mic Stand... 

Edited April 26, 2020 by Larsongs

[EuroAussie]

On 4/25/2020 at 11:56 AM, uncle fester said:

my issue with my roadies is they sometimes forget to separate all the colors of the m&ms in my dressing room before I get there.  throws off the karma of the whole night.

oh i hate it when they do that !