I think you play with big bands too, Lawry? Does MR have the ability to jump back say 3 pages to go to a DS then jump ahead maybe 4-5 pages to the Coda? I also play in a big band in addition to the small jazz groups I'm mainly talking about.

Chris, you're right piano big band charts are huge. The band leader hands me two big leather folders that weigh a good 10-15 pounds and have about 400 charts each printed on heavy stock. Those folders are about 5" thick and barely fit on my solid metal music stand when they're opened up. I'm familiar with a lot of classic 40's stuff but he'll call some newer tunes I've never heard of, no idea how it sounds or what the piano part is supposed to sound like. It's a real challenge and it's cool I enjoy it because of the sound still its frustrating because I'll go home and pull it up on Youtube and go oh, THAT's how the keyboard part goes then he doesn't call that song again.

I just did a rehearsal last week and was thinking about digital PDF charts while I was playing and it seems like that would be tricky. First because even with my 12" screen those charts are much bigger than that I think they're about 15" or so and still they're hard to read sometimes, those piano parts are pretty dense. Then the DS al Coda thing too having to jump back and forth several pages. I usually have the charts spread out so I'm looking at 3 or 4 pages at once. Since I don't know a lot of this stuff I have to spend a few seconds scanning the whole thing looking for DS signs while everybody else is getting ready. I don't think a digital tablet would work for me in that case yet when I was fumbling with an 8 pager I remember thinking man, there has to be an easier way. Maybe that way is to start bringing two stands so I can spread the chart out like I could if I were playing a real grand.

Oh yeah, the vocalist has his own leather folder with about 200 charts in it but his stuff is much simpler than the instrumentals more like my regular fake book charts.

Then of course it's not my band, the leader has a lot invested in all those leather folders and charts and he may not want to release those charts to all the players to load into their computers. Some of them are his own arrangements he personally wrote.

Bob

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