What is a setlist, and how to make one for your gig
A setlist is the list of songs a band is going to play at a show, in the order it is going to play them. That is all. A set is one block of a show, so a night with an interval has two sets and, quite often, two setlists taped to the floor side by side.
The definition fits on one line. Making one that holds up on the night does not. You are standing on a dim stage, the sound engineer has just asked you to lose ten minutes, and the bass player cannot remember whether the next one is the song with the capo.
What goes on a setlist (and what does not)
The bare minimum is a numbered column of titles. For a rehearsal that will do. For a gig it is nearly always missing something.
A setlist that actually gets used tends to carry:
- The title, short. "Slow one", "the new one" or a nickname will do if the whole band recognises it. On stage you do not read a sentence, you read a word.
- The running number, so that "we're on six" makes sense without glancing at the sheet by somebody else's feet.
- The tempo, if the drummer counts the songs in or one of them has a habit of running away. The BPM figure is enough.
- The length, even a rough one. It is what tells you whether the show fits the slot you have been given.
- Change notes: "drop D", "switch to acoustic", "capo 3". Just enough that the gap between songs does not catch anyone out.
What it should not carry: lyrics, chords, song structures. Those belong on the sheet music or the song's own page. A setlist with too much on it stops being readable at a glance, and being readable at a glance is the whole job.
How to order the songs
There is no formula. There are a handful of rules that almost every band works out for itself, one gig at a time.
Open with something you can play even if the sound is not right yet. The first song happens while the engineer is still adjusting the mix and while your nerves are still up. It is not the moment for the one with the a cappella intro.
Hardest song third or fourth. By then you are warm and not yet tired. Towards the end of the night, hands and voice do not respond the same way.
Watch which keys and tempos you chain together. Three songs in a row in the same key, or at the same tempo, sound like one very long song. Alternate fast and slow, and if two songs share a key, split them up.
Group the changes. If three songs need the acoustic, put them next to each other. Every instrument swap or retune is a silence, and a show with six long silences drags even when the songs themselves are short.
Have two endings. One for the night when everything runs to plan and one for the night you are twenty minutes behind. Knowing in advance which two songs get dropped saves an argument in the middle of the stage.
Keep a floater. A song you can put in or take out without breaking anything around it. If the crowd wants one more, you already know which.
How long a setlist really runs
This is where people get it most wrong. Adding up the lengths of the recordings gives you a number that never matches the gig.
What happens live:
- Between songs there is anything from 20 seconds to a minute: applause, a line to the audience, a drink of water, the count-in.
- Each instrument change or retune adds a minute or two on top.
- Songs tend to go a little faster live than at rehearsal (nerves push the tempo), but the endings stretch.
A rule that works: add up the song lengths, then add a minute per song. A setlist of 12 four-minute songs is 48 minutes of music, but it takes close to an hour of stage time. If you have been given 45 minutes, three songs have to go, not one.
To do that sum you need to know how long each song is. If nobody has ever written it down, the first setlist is hard work. The second one is not, because the figure stays saved with the song.
Paper, screen or both
The stage setlist is nearly always paper, and that makes sense. A sheet taped to the floor does not switch itself off, does not run out of battery and reads from a couple of metres away if the type is big. Properly big: bigger than seems sensible when you are printing it at home.
What does not make sense is the paper being the source. If the running order lives on a sheet, in a message in the group chat and in somebody's phone notes, within a week there are three different orders. The good version has to be in one place, and the paper has to come out of that place on the day of the gig.
Sheet music is a different story: many pages, page turns in the middle of a song and annotations that pile up over months. There a tablet on the stand usually does beat paper, which is covered in how to read PDF sheet music on a tablet or phone.
How to make a setlist in Band Companion
In Band Companion a setlist is not a separate document. It is a list of songs from the band's repertoire, in an order.
- You create the setlist with a name (and a description, if you want one) and add songs from the repertoire using a search box. You can tick several at once and add them all in one go.
- On the phone, you reorder by dragging songs into place. If you remove one, you can undo it and it goes back to the same position.
- Under the title sits a one-line summary: how many songs there are, how long they run in total, how many have no length entered yet and the average BPM. The length and the BPM come from each song's details, where you enter them once. The BPM can also be saved from the metronome.
- You export the setlist to PDF: a black-and-white A4 sheet in large type, every song numbered, with its BPM and length beside it. That is the paper that goes on the floor.
- When the setlist is for a specific date, you promote it to a gig, which adds the date, the venue, the call time and the show time. The original setlist stays as it was, in case you want to use it again.
- On stage, Live mode works through the setlist song by song with the score, the lyrics or the drum sheet, and the metronome loads each song's tempo.
A setlist with no date is just as useful for rehearsal. Four songs in a set order turn a "so, what shall we play?" evening into a plan. There is more on that in keeping the setlist and the gig calendar in one place.
An example, start to finish
A covers band with a 50-minute slot in a pub.
They have 14 songs ready. They enter the length of each one in its details (taken from the last rehearsal recording, rounded) and the summary says 52 minutes. With the minute-per-song rule that comes to well over an hour, so three songs go: two that sound too much like others on the list, and one that still does not come out clean.
They order the eleven that are left. They open with a fast one they know by heart, put the hard one fourth, pair the two acoustic songs in the middle and save the best-known for last. The second-to-last is the floater: if they are running late, it goes.
On the day they export the PDF, print it twice (one for the floor, one spare) and load the van. If someone asks on the way what comes after the slow one, the answer is on everyone's phone, and it is the same answer.
Frequently asked questions
What does setlist mean?
It is the list of songs in a show, in the order they are played. A set is one block of a show, and the setlist is the running order for that block. You will also see it written as two words, set list. Same thing.
How many songs go on a setlist?
It depends on how much time you have. As a guide, allow about five minutes per song once you count the music and what happens between songs: 45 minutes holds nine or ten songs of normal length, not twelve.
What is the difference between a setlist and a repertoire?
The repertoire is every song the band can play. A setlist is a selection from the repertoire, in an order, for a particular gig or rehearsal. A band has one repertoire and many setlists.
How do you work out how long a gig will last?
Add up how long each song lasts, then add roughly a minute per song for applause, talking and instrument changes. The result is far closer to what happens on stage than the total of the recordings.
Is it better to have the setlist on paper or on a phone?
On stage, paper: it does not switch off or run out of battery, and it reads at a glance if the type is big enough. But that paper should come from a single shared version, printed on the day, so nobody plays from an old running order.