Thanks Bob.
Great advice, but not for me.
When I'm gigging, I'll have Windows Explorer up in alphabetical list mode. Type a couple of letters and hit enter and the song pops up. Alt+F4 and it's gone.
No mouse involved, and I can usually get a second or two of a free left hand if I'm playing sax, flute, or wind synth, and more often than not guitar.
I can even load a second song in the background, while ending the first one, Alt+F4 and the next one is up.
No mouse, no glide strip, no eraser head, means less time for my left hand if I only have a second or two.
I have well over 500 songs, so 500 tabs in Excel wouldn't work. I tried tabs in a notation app once, and that didn't work on stage for me. That's why I paste notation into WordPad.
I don't do set lists, I work the crowd, and often don't know what song I'm going to call next until the one I'm currently playing is almost over.
Especially if I'm doing up-tempo songs and the dance floor is full. I play for a baby boomer crowd most of the time, and between fast songs, if I take a second or two between songs, some people will head to their chairs and won't turn around when the next song starts. So I often run them together end-to-end like a DJ with a 'mix tape'.
I look at the faces. Do they want another? OK, I'll put another in cue (only takes typing a few letters). Do the men look tired but the women still want more? OK it's time for one of those 'dance jam' songs that the ladies like to dance to in a group. Do they all look tired, OK now it's time for one of those dances like a cha-cha or tango that the ballroom dancers live for. Everyone else can have a breather but I know the ballroom dancers will come out (you can usually tell which are the ballroom dancers by the kind of shoes they wear).
I might change my mind in the last two bars of the song.
Ok so left hand gets the next chart up on the left computer, then the right hand hits cues the next song on the right computer (while the first one is still playing in Media Player) and as soon as the song is done, right hand hits "enter" and the next one starts immediately.
My job is to study the audience, use my lifetime of experience to try to predict when the want more, what they want next, and how soon I need to get to it. I've gotten very good at playing the audience with all the practice I've had.
My goal is to give them a great time so that they have more fun than when other bands are playing, so that they stay longer and come back often.
We do a Tuesday gig in a 7 day entertainment venue (10 years now), and we draw the biggest crowd of the week - on Tuesday. Often people can't find a seat and either stand or leave. We even have a dozen or so who bring lawn chairs so that if all the seats are full, they have their own (it's outdoors at a marina, on a lagoon, with a beach past the deck). When the owners tell us we have the biggest draw of the week (including weekends) and pay us more than the other bands, it means I'm doing my job.
Of course Leilani is a great singer, I'm a decent singer, she plays guitar and synth, I play sax, flute, wind synth, guitar and synth, and the backing tracks I make myself are top-notch -- mixed for live performance so they work better than karaoke tracks.
And yes, the music is a very important part of the job, but it isn't the entire job. Performing is not a lecture, it's an emotional dialog between the band and the audience. I give to them, they give back to me, which allows me to give more to them which feeds back more to me - and so on,
Without the ability to work the crowd, and make spur of the moment decisions, the dialog wouldn't be that strong.
So what I'm looking for is something that I can mix fonts/colors on, open full screen (landscape is second choice), paste a line or two of notation (.jpg from a print screen cropped in my notation app) and open almost immediately with a couple of key strokes.
I love performing, it's the most fun I can have with my clothes on, and the more fun the audience is having, the more fun Leilani and I have.
Being on stage is not work, it's play. Sometimes I think of how lucky I am to be able to still do this past retirement age with the love of my life besides me and all that love coming from our 'extended family', the audience. And they pay me money for this (actually we play for free and charge to schlep the gear, learn new songs, and be the band salesman).
Every day we gig, I strive to give them a better experience. Every song I learn and sequence I try to do better than the last one, and I try to improve my audience skills.
I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world.
But that's drifting off topic. The tools today are different from the tools we had when I started. I used to tote a tenor in one hand, an alto in the other and a flute under my arm. As a band we lugged 400+ pound B3 organs and 'voice of the theater' speakers. Now we have lighter gear, and computers. Band-in-a-Box, a good DAW, synth modules, and WordPad (or whatever I replace it with) on the screen to jog my memory when it needs it allow the two of us to put out more music than some of the 5 or 6 piece bands I've played in.
There, did it get it back on topic?
Insights, incites and related musings by Notes
