Setlist for a three piece?

Danny1969

You can do most things quite well as a 3 piece. I played in a 3 piece for years and there are some tricks you can use to sound less empty in places. 

Contrast / dynamics  .... if you play full on all the time as a band there's no where to go dynamically. Don't be afraid to ease right back as a band, drop out so it's just drum and bass, build it back up with the single  guitar coming back in. Dynamics is an under used weapon by most pub bands. 

Chord implying  ..... you can fake the existence of a chord with 2 notes and then your bass player will be playing one of them. When solo'ing use open strings, harmonics etc to imply chords while you solo. For example if the bass player plays an E then an open G or G harmonic will imply an E minor chord. You don't need to hold this while you solo, the trick is to build the chord implying into the solo. Other tricks like drone strings, double stops, octaves, low root and high third also work well. 

Roland SPD .... this is my favourite weapon and I've done hundreds of gigs with one. Everyone thinks it's a drummers tool but with 6 easily available pads for a guitarist to step on it's perfect for adding stealth keys.  The trick is, like anything, don't over use it. Here's somethings I used it for.

Hard to handle - Just one pad used, organ chord of B while I solo'ed over it. 

Where the streets have no name - 4 pads. the 4 basic chords which I just hit with the foot while playing the riffs 

This is how we do it  - Montell Jordon - just 2 pads,  2 basic chords of the song. 

Never too much - Luther - 4 pads with the basic 4 chords. 

Price Tag - Jessie J .... 4 pads, 4 chords

Whisky in the jar - 4 pads and 4 chords but using G and B notes to function as G Maj and Em to to make 5 chords form 4 pads

Purple Rain - 4 pads for the 4 chords under the solo.

Superstition - 4 Pads  - brass bits on chorus, bit of foot work to be honest but really effective 

Human - Rag n Bone - 4 pads with 4 basic soft atmospheric pads to under pin  the song

Use Somebody - KOL - just one pad with a basic halo of a chord that goes all the way through and 3 pads for the bridge

There's tons more but you get the idea. Nothing was time based, I just recorded the sound of me playing what I wanted on my Korg keyboard and recorded it into the SPD. The trick is to make sure you record enough length of a chord or drone long enough so it won't cut out even if the drummer plays a bit slower than normal. Then set all the pads to the same mute group so hitting one kills the previous. Then have one of the pads, mine was 6 set with nothing in it so it effectively worked as a "Kill all" safety switch if you fuck up. 

Overdrive on bass guitar .... if you have a little overdrive on the bass during the solo, you won't get that bottom fell out of the song when you move from chords to solo'ing but it only works on driving bass lines really and best done with 2 bass amps or a split cab. 

Creative FOH ... a pub band luxury I know because most pub band guitarists would rather drop 2K on a guitar than pay an engineer £50 to mix a gig for a year but if you do get a decent engineer then there's a lot of things that can be done from creative delays to intelligent harmony to triggering keys parts and all sorts.   

Jalapeno

fretmeister said:

Almost every song can be rearranged for a 3 piece.
The main element of a good 3 piece is whether your bassist is Adam Clayton or Jack Bruce.

Theres dozens of good power trios. Listen to more of them and pick some tunes.

I know Adam Clayton isn't exactly the successor to Jaco, but why the hate ? - he effectively plays in a 3 piece and with Edge noodling away has a lot of sonic territory to lock down,

mrkb

@Danny1969 - interesting setup! which Roland spd is it you use? Is it placed on he floor and you tap or step on the pads? The spd multipad device I’ve seen have a few raised rotary knobs on the front edge is that a problem when stepping over them?

Danny1969

mrkb said:

@Danny1969 - interesting setup! which Roland spd is it you use? Is it placed on he floor and you tap or step on the pads? The spd multipad device I’ve seen have a few raised rotary knobs on the front edge is that a problem when stepping over them?

I used a block of wood to change the angle so the knobs weren't a problem ... seeing the small display was though with my shit eyesight.  
It's an older SPD, not the SX. Interestingly the older one takes removable CF cards in the side, the newer one according to Roland has integral non upgradable storage but having repaired a few I can tell you the SX has a micro SD card in a holder on the PCB, so as prone the same problems but totally inaccessible to the user. 

You would never do this live, this is just me pissing about as proof of concept. The stuff I did live was much simpler on the SPD

mrkb

Danny1969 said:

mrkb said:

@Danny1969 - interesting setup! which Roland spd is it you use? Is it placed on he floor and you tap or step on the pads? The spd multipad device I’ve seen have a few raised rotary knobs on the front edge is that a problem when stepping over them?

I used a block of wood to change the angle so the knobs weren't a problem ... seeing the small display was though with my shit eyesight.  
It's an older SPD, not the SX. Interestingly the older one takes removable CF cards in the side, the newer one according to Roland has integral non upgradable storage but having repaired a few I can tell you the SX has a micro SD card in a holder on the PCB, so as prone the same problems but totally inaccessible to the user. 

You would never do this live, this is just me pissing about as proof of concept. The stuff I did live was much simpler on the SPD

Looks interesting, but the YouTube link has broken as they do if you edit your post- can you relink please?

Danny1969

@mrkb ;

Try it now, should work now

hollywoodrox

Roland said:

I’ve played all of these without keys or second guitar. A lot of them may not be to your choice, but you probably need a few off-the-wall ideas:

20th Century Boy - E

A Girl Like You - Cm

Addicted To Love - A

All Day And All Of The Night - G

Black Velvet - B

Breakfast At Tiffanys - D

Brown Eyed Girl

Chelsea Dagger - G

Crazy Little Thing Called Love - D

Dancing In The Street

Day Tripper - E

Design For Life - A

Disco 2000

Does Your Mother Know?

Don't You Forget About Me - Em

Don't You Want Me Baby? - Am

Dreaming Of You - Am

Faith - B

Fat Bottomed Girls - D

Feeling Good - Gm

Footloose

Friday I'm In Love - D

Get Back - G

Go Your Own Way

Good Thing - Dm

Hard To Handle - Bb

Hot Stuff - Bm

Human - Am

Hungry Like The Wolf - Em

I Am The One And Only - A

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

I Predict A Riot - Cm

I'm A Believer - G

Is She Really Going Out With Him - Eb

Kids In America

Let's Dance - Bb

Let's Stick Together - A

Living On A Prayer

Locked Outta Heaven - F#m

Long Train Running - Gm

Love Is The Drug - Am

Message In A Bottle

Money For Nothing

Mustang Bleeding Sally - C

My Generation

Play That Funky Music - E

Power Of Love - Cm

Running Down A Dream - Em

Save Tonight - Am

Sex On Fire - E

Smooth - Am

Stuck In The Middle With You - D

Substitute - D

Superstition - Eb

Sweet Child Of Mine - G

Sweet Home Alabama - G

Tainted Love - Am

Teenage Kicks - D

This Love

Valerie - Eb

Venus - Em

Walking By Myself - E

What's Up - E

Wishing Well - Em

Wouldn't It Be Good - B

Great set list ,lots of songs ,nice one 

midiman1962

Roland said:

I’ve played all of these without keys or second guitar. A lot of them may not be to your choice, but you probably need a few off-the-wall ideas:

20th Century Boy - E

A Girl Like You - Cm

Addicted To Love - A

All Day And All Of The Night - G

Black Velvet - B

Breakfast At Tiffanys - D

Brown Eyed Girl

Chelsea Dagger - G

Crazy Little Thing Called Love - D

Dancing In The Street

Day Tripper - E

Design For Life - A

Disco 2000

Does Your Mother Know?

Don't You Forget About Me - Em

Don't You Want Me Baby? - Am

Dreaming Of You - Am

Faith - B

Fat Bottomed Girls - D

Feeling Good - Gm

Footloose

Friday I'm In Love - D

Get Back - G

Go Your Own Way

Good Thing - Dm

Hard To Handle - Bb

Hot Stuff - Bm

Human - Am

Hungry Like The Wolf - Em

I Am The One And Only - A

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

I Predict A Riot - Cm

I'm A Believer - G

Is She Really Going Out With Him - Eb

Kids In America

Let's Dance - Bb

Let's Stick Together - A

Living On A Prayer

Locked Outta Heaven - F#m

Long Train Running - Gm

Love Is The Drug - Am

Message In A Bottle

Money For Nothing

Mustang Bleeding Sally - C

My Generation

Play That Funky Music - E

Power Of Love - Cm

Running Down A Dream - Em

Save Tonight - Am

Sex On Fire - E

Smooth - Am

Stuck In The Middle With You - D

Substitute - D

Superstition - Eb

Sweet Child Of Mine - G

Sweet Home Alabama - G

Tainted Love - Am

Teenage Kicks - D

This Love

Valerie - Eb

Venus - Em

Walking By Myself - E

What's Up - E

Wishing Well - Em

Wouldn't It Be Good - B

Great list and laughed at mustang sally - will rip a few myself 

PolarityMan

If your have a singing guitarist or bass player you could get some tool going.

Trude

@Emp_Fab , funnily enough I'm going through a very similar transition to a 3-piece with my main covers band.  We lost our keyboard player and 2nd guitarist, both of whom used to share the lion's share of lead vocals too.  We're finding the 3-piece life a lot easier for many reasons (especially the speed of getting news songs to giggable readiness, not to mention the pay-rise from a 3-way split!)

We've relaunched under a new name, so we're starting from scratch with the online profile, videos etc.  But here's a quick montage of bits from a recent gig to show how we're tackling things.  We're not using any samples or loops, but my secret weapons are an EHX Mel9 (for some faux strings) and a Boss SY-1, which I use for sustained organ chords, synth pads etc.  This has opened up a whole bunch of organ-heavy songs that would probably have dropped off the setlist otherwise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BQxLcEh-DE