I'm spoiled. Most bands I played in had no charts. Then I played a lot in a band for years that had charts that were a suggestion, no one played what was they, it would be cruel to call it an approximation, I spent a lot of time sort of fixing them so they were close.

For 5 years now I've played in a "British Style" Brass Band. But we play Sousa and Opera stuff, and you name it. Often we get our parts, and they are 'proper' parts, but an Italian March has like 12 repeats so we do none of them, or some of them. We get photocopied parts, which are often too small, because the original was printed to save paper a hundred years ago, and my Bombardini part needs to be 'blown up'. Then you put in the new repeats, change this dynamic, drop these notes, add breath marks here and there, the thing can have 12 or 15 pencil corrections, notations, etc.

Once in a while we get the whole thing on bass clef. Makes it slow learning for old John.

So when I get lead sheets out of Band in a Box, they are pretty good. The wife and I printed 20 of them for Christmas music to be played last night, but we've got about 100 cm (3 feet) of new snow and it's still falling so they canceled that party....


John Conley
Musica est vita