David's Tip of the Day: Joining a Band - Part 3 (Song Listing)

Now that you have a detailed chart for each song, create a simple listing with text for all of your songs. You should be able to fit 20+ songs per sheet, so keep your notes brief.

Here are my suggested headers (feel free to add your own that you find useful):

Title Key Groove Intro Breaks? Hook/Focus General End

Key to the Highway, G, Slow Blues (Shuffle), From the V, (Blank), Shakes, 8 Bar: I V IV IV I V I V, Standard (m7)

There are no breaks used in this song, so "Breaks?" remains blank. There's no hook (repetitive riff) in the song, but if you wanted to create one, you could write it using simple TAB. If you choose not to, then you need to ask yourself, "What makes this song special" or "How can I make this song sound unique and exciting from the other songs in my set." This is an important question. Since no hook exists, I chose to use shakes as a theme. It doesn't mean that I use shakes every moment of the song, but it's a theme, so I try to use shakes often to help give the song something different than the other songs in my set. In "General" I placed the chord layout of the song.

Give this a try with your band set list. If you don't have a band, do this with the songs you've studied and make a set list of them.