Pick or type the tunes for your gig or jam session, and this free setlist cheat sheet maker puts them on one page for your music stand: the title, the key, the first chord, the form, the number of bars and the feel. Move a tune to the key it’s being called in, and the key and the first chord move with it. There’s no signup and nothing to install.
A tune that isn’t on our list still goes on the sheet, with blank lines for you to fill in. The sheet never guesses.
Build your set
Pick from the list, or type any title. Tunes that aren’t on the list get blank lines for you to fill in.
Setlist
| # | Tune | Key | First chord | Form | Bars | Feel |
|---|
Add a tune above to start your sheet.
Free setlist cheat sheet: blog.betterbasslessons.com/setlist-cheat-sheet-maker/
How to make your cheat sheet
- Add your tunes. Start typing a title and pick it from the list, or type any title and press Add.
- Set the key for each tune. The first chord changes with it, spelled the way a chart would spell it.
- Put the set in order with the arrows, and give the sheet a title, a date and a place.
- Pick US Letter or A4 and print. Up to 30 tunes fit on one page, and the type gets smaller as the set gets longer.
- Copy the link to send the same sheet to the rest of the band. Your browser also remembers your last sheet.
Why the first chord is on the sheet
When a tune gets counted off, the first thing a bass player needs is where bar one is. From Cole Davis’s lesson on how to walk a bass line over any jazz standard: “Sometimes if a tune is complicated, I’ll actually write out the starting note of each chord.” And a little later: “By picking a direction, I’m eliminating the stress of coming up with a bass line in real time.”
The sheet gives you the first chord of each tune. For the starting note of every bar, write them in by hand, the way Cole does in how to learn jazz standards on bass.
Run the set before the gig
Every tune from our list has a Play along link next to it. It opens the free jazz backing tracks with no bass on that tune, in the key on your sheet, with piano and drums and the bass part left for you. Where we have a lesson on the tune, there’s a link to that too.
Looking for somewhere to play the set? The Jazz Jam Finder lets you search a city for a jam session.
Go deeper
Walking on Electric Bass: Part 2
The full walking vocabulary working players use: the six right notes, the licks Ron Carter passed down, and the principle that makes a line move.
For teachers and bandleaders
Build the set once, press Copy link, and send it. Everyone who opens the link sees the same tunes, keys and order, and can print their own copy on US Letter or A4.
Keep going
Sources
- Cole Davis, How to Walk a Bass Line Over Any Jazz Standard, Better Bass Lessons on YouTube (the quotes, at 1:36 and 5:02).