Medleys. Anyone a fan?

[PowerBob]

Anyone on the thread a fan of when bands due medleys to try and give the most bang for your buck at a concert ala Dream Theater and Rush. Ive yet to see Opeth live yet but I noticed they rarely get to an "Evening With" type of show, well at least in the US. I think that they could weave some parts of of a few songs to make a bad ass medley would be awesome, and its always cool to see how a band crafts the pieces to connect together smoothly.

So with that said. If you could pick parts from 5 different Opeth songs to squeeze into lets say a 20 minute time frame, what parts of songs would you pick?

 

[leprecon]

I would fit shit in teh thread.

 

[dwoakee]

If you could pick parts from 5 different Opeth songs to squeeze into lets say a 20 minute time frame, what parts of songs would you pick?

That's more or less what I asked that tribute band (Lamentations: A Tribute to Opeth) to do only recently. I'ld also find that quite interesting but it would require some time to pick some pieces that would make a good medley. Well, maybe my focus is a little different.

A medley imo is a song put together from the most popular songs of a band and mostly it's the choruses that are strung together. So in that sense doing a medley of Opeth songs is not really possible since the list of available choruses is pretty short. Also it's hard to pick most popular songs since every fan has his/her own favourites.

My focus would be to try and make up a convincing "new" song put together from existing pieces. That should be possible since there are so many pieces available but it would take a while to pick the right pieces to make it convincing. Also I'ld rather have a tribute band or other fan do that than Opeth themselves. They should carry on doing the original stuff.

 

[PowerBob]

Actually your response in that thread is what got me to thinking. I dont think chrouses of the songs is really the most necessary part in a medley , I think its more the memorable sections of a song, and it doesnt have to be the most popular songs either. Dream Theater has done medleys soley out of bits and pieces of different instrumentals "The Instrumedley" and they pulled it off quite nicely. Another example from DT is their most recent tour in the US, they had two opening acts , so in order to give the fans a taste of more songs, they did a medley for the encore, featuring various sections of songs from their body of work. I think what makes a good medley work though is the transistions from song to song, and ending with a section that the crowd can get really into. I think a perfect closing bit for an Opeth song would be the last part of Demon of the fall, from the Run Away bit to the acoustic end piece. Its a popular song, and a concert standard , so they could give the fans that little piece of it so maybe they could focus more time in the regular set to songs that dont play as often while still giving the fans who want to hear Demon of the Fall at least a taste of it.

 

[dwoakee]

I dont think chrouses of the songs is really the most necessary part in a medley , I think its more the memorable sections of a song, and it doesnt have to be the most popular songs either.

You're right. Probably it's because I mostly know medleys from standard pop/rock. In this case memorable section = chorus mostly .

 

[soundave]

I really hate medleys. I was in a singing group in college, and we did a Queen medley, and it was just horrendous. Imagine performing only the middle "opera section" of Bohemian Rhapsody, and not getting to the head-banging part at the end, instead moving on to We Are the Champions or something. In my college band, we did a medley of an original song, Phish's Tweezer Reprise, and the theme from Peter Gunn. That was a bit better, but it still felt kind of cheap. The songs, not having a lot to them worked better than using something like Bohemian Rhapsody. The question becomes "What part of the song do you use?", and with Opeth, I don'tthink there are a lot of stand-alone parts that lend themselves to a medley. Some people may enjoy the, "What's coming next?" aspect of a medley, but I prefer hearing the song as it was written (or an expansion of it, perhaps, a la Led Zeppelin).

 

[PowerBob]

I think one of the main reason I like medleys is the challenge of combining the parts to make on cohesive unit.

 

[antipunx13]

I'm not sure I would like an Opeth medley. I do like the Dream Theater Instrumedley, probably because of the transitions and the fact that there are no vocals. If there were vocals, it would be difficult enough to combine the parts together cohesively, let alone trying to make the lyrics for the different parts make sense together (which sounds pretty much impossible to me).

 

[soundave]

I think one of the main reason I like medleys is the challenge of combining the parts to make on cohesive unit.

True. I now remember that my band did what was sort of a medley of Jefferson Airplane tunes. I say "sort of" because it was merely one song leading to the next, but we discovered that we could end "Someone to Love" and have that sustaining last note carry into "White Rabbit", and it was in the same key. Sounded cool. STL was a fun song to play, and we rocked it out with an organ, too. Wicked good times...

 

[themaster]

medleys should be shot at birth
terrable cop out

opeth are way better than that, leave it to burned out 70s bands Genisis Marillion cant believe rush do one as they still rock but there funnier things happen.

 

[prowlergrig]

the songs on the first 2 opeth albums are all medleys

 

[biggsy]

...leave it to burned out 70s bands Genisis...

die pls thx

 

[dwoakee]

the songs on the first 2 opeth albums are all medleys

Yeah, you can look at it like this, too. But then why only the first two albums? In that sense nearly all Opeth songs are medleys, except for some mellow ones like Harvest, Death whispered a lullaby, Isolation Years, and some others that have a regular verse/chorus song structure.

 

[soundave]

the songs on the first 2 opeth albums are all medleys

Nah... Just songs ideas that flow into one another. There aren't other parts that they cut out to paste together those ideas, if you know what I mean.

 

[Kenneth R.]

I really hate medleys. Same as soundave, it just isn't cohesive.

 

[biggsy]

but thats the challenge of making a medley... to create a cohesive whole out of singular bits. bad medleys are the ones that dont flow.

 

[soundave]

I suppose a medley could be cohesive. But ultimately satisfying? Not for me.

 

[Sheckles14]

See, if you were going to make a cohesive medley, why not just write a real song?

 

[wwallinga]

See, if you were going to make a cohesive medley, why not just write a real song?

Many of Opeth's songs - especially the earlier ones - basically are cohesive medleys.

 

[biggsy]

is it still considered a medley if you take parts from other songs but connect them with original music to make them flow?