Comments on: Arranging Your Setlist for Maximum Impact http://www.wiser-rocker.com/blog/2007/03/31/setlists-arranging-your-songs-for-maximum-impact/ Gear Reviews, Videos, Articles, Songwriting and Performance Tips Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:02:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Rickdini http://www.wiser-rocker.com/blog/2007/03/31/setlists-arranging-your-songs-for-maximum-impact/#comment-3 Rickdini Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:58:10 +0000 http://www.wiser-rocker.com/wordpress/?p=7#comment-3 Hey Tom - Excellent comment, I'm glad you brought this up. I'm totally just throwing this out there, but... It seems like maintaining the same key back to back could be beneficial in the beginning part of your set as you are basically asking people to start absorbing your band's 'flavor'. Although I'm sure it's done all the time, switching keys this early on in the game may do more harm then good...your goal at the beginning is to lock people into a vibe, and it will take a few songs of similar dynamics and possibly matching key to do that. Ethereal intros ONLY work when the song they are segueing into are of matching key...otherwise it would be like throwing your listeners into a wall. Songs with matching keys can make for great segues throughout your set because they require less mental effort on the listener's part to transition. One obvious problem I can see with playing too many songs of the same key is that it can create 'audio blindness' - where a listener's brain will convince them they have been listening to ONE...LONG...SONG for the past hour, and they will grow bored or fall asleep. As far as keys and their role on influencing dynamics...I would say there is a definite correlation. A great place to put an upward key change would be right after the slow middle of your set - to perk up the fans. ANY key change during a set will get a listener's attention...just have to play around with the right times to do it. My final thoughts are just to maintain the same key when needing to build familiarity and establish mood, and shift the key when needing to re-capture and excite. My previous article goes into when those dynamics happen so I just say correspond key-shifts to them and the overall effect will enhance! Hope this helps! - Rick Hey Tom -

Excellent comment, I’m glad you brought this up. I’m totally just throwing this out there, but…

It seems like maintaining the same key back to back could be beneficial in the beginning part of your set as you are basically asking people to start absorbing your band’s ‘flavor’. Although I’m sure it’s done all the time, switching keys this early on in the game may do more harm then good…your goal at the beginning is to lock people into a vibe, and it will take a few songs of similar dynamics and possibly matching key to do that.

Ethereal intros ONLY work when the song they are segueing into are of matching key…otherwise it would be like throwing your listeners into a wall. Songs with matching keys can make for great segues throughout your set because they require less mental effort on the listener’s part to transition.

One obvious problem I can see with playing too many songs of the same key is that it can create ‘audio blindness’ - where a listener’s brain will convince them they have been listening to ONE…LONG…SONG for the past hour, and they will grow bored or fall asleep.

As far as keys and their role on influencing dynamics…I would say there is a definite correlation. A great place to put an upward key change would be right after the slow middle of your set - to perk up the fans. ANY key change during a set will get a listener’s attention…just have to play around with the right times to do it.

My final thoughts are just to maintain the same key when needing to build familiarity and establish mood, and shift the key when needing to re-capture and excite. My previous article goes into when those dynamics happen so I just say correspond key-shifts to them and the overall effect will enhance!

Hope this helps!

- Rick

]]> By: Tom http://www.wiser-rocker.com/blog/2007/03/31/setlists-arranging-your-songs-for-maximum-impact/#comment-2 Tom Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:28:31 +0000 http://www.wiser-rocker.com/wordpress/?p=7#comment-2 Hi Do you know anything about the theory on how to order your setlist according to which key each song is in? Apparently in the same way a set's order based on song dynamics can 'work' the crowd (like you just described) - the effect can be enhanced (or, I assume, dissipated) by which key follows which key, but I can't find any info on it anywhere. Apparently dance DJs and classical musicians use it quite a lot (maybe cos they have less obvious variance in tempo/dynamics/rockin-out etc?). I'm assuming it kind of works in a similar way to key-shifts within songs, but I don't know. Any ideas? Cheers tom Hi
Do you know anything about the theory on how to order your setlist according to which key each song is in? Apparently in the same way a set’s order based on song dynamics can ‘work’ the crowd (like you just described) - the effect can be enhanced (or, I assume, dissipated) by which key follows which key, but I can’t find any info on it anywhere. Apparently dance DJs and classical musicians use it quite a lot (maybe cos they have less obvious variance in tempo/dynamics/rockin-out etc?). I’m assuming it kind of works in a similar way to key-shifts within songs, but I don’t know.
Any ideas?

Cheers
tom

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