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Repertoire restaurant3/13/2023 ![]() All the pieces in these books make for good "restaurant background music" if I may say so. His first book was "The Philippine Guitar" ("a collection of music for the solo guitar based on Philippine traditional songs"). He has over the last few years published some books for enthusiasts who like to get away from the classical repertoire ("Arrangements of Familiar Tunes for the Classical Guitar", two volumes and "Piano Masterpieces for Classical Guitar", three volumes). Here in the Philippines, one of the great guitar players (and teacher), Jose Valdez, when not teaching plays at the Intercontinental Hotel a few nights a week. Mario Abril put out a book called "Popular Songs for Classical Guitar." You might search the internet to track down where you might find these. Laurindo Almeida has a book on Broadway songs "Broadway Solo Guitar" (he recorded the pieces on LP decades ago but I have never found a CD version). Generally light classical pieces (e.g., the simpler, more common Bach preludes) and Broadway. I don't play in public but I know what I like to hear when I am in a resto. But as long as you've got a good 45 minutes of pieces, put in some studies and other small pieces and you should be good. Obviously, not everyone is going to have 2 concert programs worth of music. I know I'm definitely going to be looking into learning some of that stuff as well (I've been putting it off WAY too long). Perhaps even some Andrew York pieces would be great. Also, the 'latin' sounding stuff is great because when people think 'classical guitar' they think of that. So Romance, Cavatina, things like that are going to want to be piece that you know. There's always the obvious, people are going to like 'pretty sounding' things. Also gives me a break from a 2 concert program set (it hurts). So I've got a few sight readable pieces that I can play to fluff up my sets with. But with gigs that are longer then 2 hours, you need filler. So usually a complete performance of 2 programs does it for me. This isn't 2 completely different programs, but rather one main program with the ability to switch out pieces here and there. At any give time, I have about 2 full concert programs worth of music. For me that usually take out about 15 minutes worth of music, which isn't bad. Then after looking at that, taking out anything that would be 'offensive' to the audience, mainly the contemporary, modern, weird sounding stuff. If someone asks you to play something you don't know, make a note of it and add it to your rep.Īctually, if I were doing that stuff nowadays, I think I'd probably plug a laptop into my PA and use it like a karaoke - what you lose in good taste, you gain in versatility, and I've seen really good musicians adapt to a less-than-cultured audience like that and get away with it.įor me, whenever I play a restaurant gig and putting together music the first thing is listing out what I have available in my own concert program repertoire. Silence is your worst enemy, so don't stop and wait for the applause, run the tunes into each other, build medleys. If you make a mistake the first time round a tune, make the same mistake on the repeat, they'll think that's how it's supposed to sound. And learn to cheat: play everything a tiny bit faster than you would normally, if you can't reach the note leave it out, upbeat is good, downbeat is too tough to put across. "Angie" (the Bert Jansch one, not the Stones), "Classical Gas," "Girl from Ipanema," and someone almost always asks for "As Time Goes By." Learning to sightread a busker's score is a good practice timesaver. If you're not sticking to the classical, it's easier - elevator music, standards: Beatles songs (almost all of them), Cole Porter, Gershwin, Rogers and Hammerstein. If you're playing a classical repertoire, you'll be asked to play "Romance," "Cavatina," "Asturias," until you're sick of them, and if no-one asks you, it's probably a good idea to play them anyway. Think musical theatre, you aren't there to make great music, you're wallpaper, but you want to "reach" as many people as possible, including one or two who might even resent your presence. Restaurant gigs are deceptively tough, and it's twenty-five years since I did them, but I did quite a lot of them and it must still work like that. ![]() Not as in "Top of the Pops," but more like in the original "Boston Pops," easy listening, easy to ignore, you have to let the punters make the choice, you mustn't force yourself on them. Rileyward wrote:hi would somebody please be able to give me a list of the pieces they play at a restaurant gig so i have some idea of what to work on
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