How a setlist is made.
1. I start by reviewing the Master List of about 150 songs. I mark the ones that I think would fit the occasion. In this particular case, I'm looking for New Orleans-sounding pieces. There's about 50, which is plenty to choose from.
2. Looking ahead a bit, I've know which songs we're going to be playing in future gigs, so I give them extra consideration. Of these 35 songs, 16 happen to fit, so I throw them in as well.
3. Conversely, there were two hymns that we played in the last sunday service (This Little Light of Mine and Amazing Grace) that I thought went well. I've included them in the list as well.
4. Ok, so now I've got 58 songs (there was some overlap) to choose from.
5. I sort out the ones we haven't done before. I always like to include some new pieces to expand our song list, but we've only got two rehearsals before this gig, so this is a good place to start culling down the list. I'm down to 45 pieces.
At this point, I'm wondering if I am including the right pieces. I know what I think of as Dixieland standards, but I'd like a second opinion. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dixieland_standards
Ok, that shows I'm on the right track. Added "St. Louis Blues".
6. Now I'll take another look through this list and remove some that don't really fit the theme. Down to 36 (13 new-ish).
7. Let's see how they break out by type (latin, slow, blues, and "ballad" - which is sort of a catch-all category). Half are ballad, which is fine, 6 blues, 7 latin/up-tempo songs, and 5 slow songs. A good mix.
8. As a final step, I'll mark all of the new pieces (in bold) so we can easily pick them out in rehearsal, and put these pieces into 3-song "blocks" (with a variety of tempos within each block). Along the way, some pieces will naturally filter down to the bottom of the list, and I'll remove them. Now we've got 30 songs (10 new), which is more than enough. This will break down into 8 sets that we'll plan on doing, and 2 extra sets if we have time.