[rhysonsax]

I play saxes in a 7 piece covers band. The band has male and female vocalists and does as close to original versions as we can manage of lots of very well known songs from the 60s - 90s. We play mainly for parties, dinner-dances, weddings etc.

The band's female singer had an idea that we could do a fund-raising gig for the school where her children and my daughter go. Something along the lines of the band playing for free and inviting the audience to bid to come up on stage and do a song of their choosing from our song list (currently about 100).

Presumably if the atmosphere is right, then the sort of person who would do karaoke might want to give it a go.

I can foresee all sorts of problems, including the band playing in the wrong key for the singer's range and also not getting enough volunteers ! But the main difficulties might be about the words and timing. We could hand out song sheets and the band's singer could try to keep the guest vocalist in time, but I don't know whether that would work. Maybe we could do something clever with a computer displaying the lyrics and highlighting the current word.

Have any of you SOTWers ever done anything like karaoke with a live band and have you got any tips ?

As well as the musical side, it would be interesting to hear ideas on the "business model" of how to make money for the school from this. Should volunteers pay a set fee (in advance or on the night); should songs be auctioned off - basically can it be made to work financially ?

Thanks in advance

Rhys

 

[rhysonsax]

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and anecdotes.

I think our singer's original idea came out of some "guest" vocalists who have invited themselves on stage. Sometimes they are good and sometimes awful, but either way, it can go down really well with the crowd. It helps if they know the singer and are in the right frame of mind.

I think it's a good idea to stick with the original keys and if the guest singer can't hack it, then our vocalist would help and eventually take over. Or maybe the "gong show" idea to cut them short !

Probably the best idea is to make the "live karaoke" just part of our set, so we play a few numbers, mixed in with a few guest numbers. It could be quite good marketing for us and a way of getting more (paid) gigs in the future.

It also seems like it would work best as part of a bigger fundraising function. And sales of alchohol should be an important part of making sure we get enough volunteers !

I'll let you know if it happens and how it went.

Rhys