Ipad impact

[Bob_Ross]

It will be worse if there is a shortage of electricity or it will be very, very expensive.

If there is a shortage of electricity onstage we have bigger things to worry about than not being able to read the charts: keyboards, electric guitar, and electric bass, plus full PA with ~4 monitor mixes all gotta plug into something.
At least an iPad battery should last for a 3 hour gig without needing to recharge.

[joe2758]

I was at job meeting one time and an old lady said she was concerned about all the youngsters plugging in their phones and wasting company resources. My boss said "I'll send them the bill"

[Bob_Ross]

ps.
Let's imagine a large symphony orchestra and 30 tablets.

Captain Pedantic wants to point out that a "large" symphony orchestra is typically two or three times larger than "30" players.

Interestingly, I've been out to hear the Arizona Symphonic Winds in concert a couple times this month...they're probably a 40 or 50-piece ensemble...and I noted that the first chair player in every section was reading off of paper charts, but that every other player was reading off of electronic tablets. (Conductor was also on paper.)

The Classical [sic] music world has clearly already embraced tablets; I attended a chamber music concert in NYC back in April. Three different trios, and nobody had paper! All iPads.

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btw I got my iPad two days ago, bought/downloaded the forScore app, scanned and loaded all my charts for the showband. Now just trying to get familiar enough with the app that calling up the desired song on demand is intuitive. So far so good. I have a week until our next gig, and I'll need to play with it a bit before then, but I'm confident it will work out and be much more convenient than paper.

I'll let you know if it isn't!

[Christian Miller]

Sight-reading (as in immediately and correctly playing a piece you’ve never heard before) is sorcery. A chord chart is one thing but pulling complicated and unknown music from the dots…? Forget it. How people like Lee Ritenour, Steve Vai and Al di Meola can sight-read pretty much anything is a mystery to me. My brain isn’t wired like that. Even if you can read the dots well enough to play most of the tune, what happens if there’s a passage coming up that your hands can’t immediately do, something you’d need to practice, a piano chord unplayable on guitar, etc?

I can read just enough to figure it out, memorise and practice (translation: incompetent). And I absolutely need an iPad because dots on paper are too small these days.

A lot of it is honestly exposure to lots and lots of music. Most music is quite generic. You learn to recognise and ‘pre hear’ the chunks. The human mind is an amazing thing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[BBGuitar]

It's a "New Pair of Eyes" I need not an iPad, because these old eyes are getting very faulty.

These old eyes had their cataracts removed and new implants inserted 3 years ago.

It is like getting a new pair of eyes. The fixed focus of the implants takes some getting used to but is way better than what I had before.

I can read the tablet at music stand length without glasses, sharper vision I have never had.

[Cunamara]

I am a few years out from cataract surgery, according to my ophthalmologist- basically right on schedule for a 66-year-old guy. I have never been without corrective lenses since about third grade when my parents figured out I couldn't see anything more than 4 feet away. I'm actually looking forward to the idea of being able to see distance clearly without glasses, although I will need reading glasses to be sure. Although they do make bifocal lens implants, apparently.

One person I know had his lens implants gauged to be able to read sheet music without glasses, and then wears glasses for distance and up-close correction. Apparently that's a rather unusual choice.

[Webby]

I made the switch to reading from an IPad this year, and really like it so far.
I prefer reading from paper (assuming that the stage is well lit), but the struggle of browsing through several 100 arrangements to sort the sheet music for a setlist wasn't worth it any longer.
Now I only need to carry the ipad instead of a dedicated bag full of paper.
As a guitarist I'd say a footswitch for turning pages is a necessity. I put one on the pedalboard I'll use anyway and added a USB plug to it, so I always have a charger for the tablet within reach.

So far I'm really happy with that setup.

Paul

[BBGuitar]

I am a few years out from cataract surgery, according to my ophthalmologist- basically right on schedule for a 66-year-old guy. I have never been without corrective lenses since about third grade when my parents figured out I couldn't see anything more than 4 feet away. I'm actually looking forward to the idea of being able to see distance clearly without glasses, although I will need reading glasses to be sure. Although they do make bifocal lens implants, apparently.

One person I know had his lens implants gauged to be able to read sheet music without glasses, and then wears glasses for distance and up-close correction. Apparently that's a rather unusual choice.

My ophthalmologist gave me the same song and dance for years. I went to a different one and got it done.

I also had my implants gauged for the music stand. Before my implants I had 3x glasses for closeup work but not any more.

[Herbie]

Somehow, before that, people played long concerts.
Most often, musicians relied on their musical memory - maybe they were geniuses?

Yes, all were geniuses – or then there was less songs to learn?

If we talk about jazz, in ’20s there was no swing, no Ellington classics, in the ’30s there was no bebop chord changes, no Miles Davis tunes and so on.

And maybe they had more gigs to learn all the needed tunes. Experience makes the master!

[Bluedawg]

I've been using an iPad with a footswitch for a couple of years now.

I like it. I have multiple real books and lots of my band charts on it.

I'm using it in 3 bands now ... and my church gig provides an iPad of its own.

One of my bands is a big band, and they hand out traditional paper charts. Those charts would be very difficult to memorize, especially since we're all unpaid volunteers in that band.

Our last concert I stuck with paper since all of the charts fit on my stand, and I was too lazy to scan them in. If any of the concert charts get too big for my stand, I'll scan them all in, LOL.

I did have a gig where we were setting up outside in the early afternoon sun. My iPad let me know it was too hot, so I turned it off and covered it up.

If it's too hot for the iPad, it's probably too hot for the musicians, too. And too hot for you other equipment ... instruments, PA, mixing board, keyboards, etc.

[Woody Sound]

Yeah. I was doing a pit gig recently, and the trumpet and bone players sitting next to each other both had their parts on their ipads. They spent more time futzing with them and talking about them than paying attention.

[rpjazzguitar]

I'm about to find out, because no matter all the horror stories I've heard about using tablets & digital chart management apps for sightreading gigs, none of it strikes me as being worse than the crap I've been putting up with trying to use traditional paper charts.

First off, three-page charts don't fit on a conventional music stand, and the ends of the pages that overhang the stand tend to fold back, making them unreadable. And as the bass player in a pop/rock/jazz/show band, I rarely have the luxury of being able to execute a page turn mid-song, I'm pretty much playing constantly from my entrance until the fine.

Secondly, 90% of our gigs are outdoors. It's windy here. Hilarity ensues...not! I've got the giant plexiglass clothespins to hold charts to the stand, but they are cumbersome and inelegant.

Thirdly, set management is a PIA. If the bandleader calls an audible I have to go digging through an inch-thick pile of paper looking for the tune that's starting in three, two, one...

I'm done with that crap. Actually heading out later today to buy a 13" iPad Air, then I'll download the forScore app, scan all my paper charts, and then BURN THEM!
I'm entering the 21st Century come hell or high water.

For paper in the wind, I've got a heavy stand with slideable wings, so it's wide enough for 4 pages. I got two pieces of plexiglass cut to the right size at a hardware store. I think they're a little bigger than a standard page. I could have gone with one big sheet, but it's easier to pack two half-sheets. And, I clamp the plastic to the stand with binder clips. It works. I'd guess that the extended wings look like a sailboat's rigging from the point of view of the wind, but, so far, nothing has capsized.

[MarkL]

I have been using an iPad (ForScore) and a foot switch for a few years. For me, the catalyst was a full evening New Year's gig where we were responsible for having to play any of 200+ tunes (many of which I didn't know well, and some keys were changed to accommodate our vocalist) on a moment's notice. My notebook was heavy and somewhat hard to navigate, and occasionally turning pages during tunes wasn't fun. The iPad has been a big improvement, and I keep it low and off to the side since I don't always use it. This might be overkill, but I always make sure to load anything in advance that I might possibly need (in other words, avoid internet dependency) and bring a charger.

[Bob_Ross]

For paper in the wind, I've got a heavy stand with slideable wings, so it's wide enough for 4 pages. I got two pieces of plexiglass cut to the right size at a hardware store. I think they're a little bigger than a standard page. I could have gone with one big sheet, but it's easier to pack two half-sheets. And, I clamp the plastic to the stand with binder clips. It works.

^^^That's similar to what I used when I played in a cruise ship band 35 years ago, and while it does prevent the charts from getting blown away in the wind and from folding around the too-small stand if you don't have the extendable wings (I had a 2nd sheet of plexiglass behind all the paper, so two plexi sheets total), the shortcoming was still one of the shortcomings I'm currently hoping to avoid: you can't execute fast transitions from one tune to the next.

Currently I have to unclip the two giant transparent clothespins holding the paper down, pull off the top chart, put it somewhere safe, re-attach the giant transparent clothespins...lather, rinse, repeat. (And that all presumes that I've already organized the charts in the correct order so that the next tune is ready to go right behind the one we just finished playing.)
On the cruise ship it was the same, except instead of giant transparent clothespins it was that top oversized sheet of plexiglass.

With the iPad, there's none of that fucking around between songs. Tap the screen once to bring up the controls, tap it again to return to the library, find the song, tap the title, done. With my showband, since I usually know the setlist in advance of the gig, it'll be even quicker: tap the screen (or step on a footswitch) once as soon as a song ends, boom, done.

[MarkL]

Another iPad advantage (with ForScore and an Apple Pencil) is being able to quickly annotate charts in rehearsals to capture arrangement notes. The notes can easily be changed, cleaned up, sent to others, or deleted later without putting wear and tear on the charts. Especially useful for situations where an arrangement will only be used once or for a limited number of times, or where multiple arrangements will be used for the same tune.

[rpjazzguitar]

When everything goes right with the Ipad, it's great.

But, here's the list of bad things that I have seen myself or heard about from a reliable source.

1. Hitting the wrong button on a page turn and ending up on a blank screen with no idea whether to go back or forward to get to the chart you're playing.

2. Sending out a setlist with charts in pdf form and then, somehow, having my own copy changed. I just screwed that up on a gig and I don't know how it happened. My guess is that I thought I was changing some other setlist.

3. Device shuts down because of heat.

4. Screen washes out in bright sun.

5. Ipad falls off the stand onto a hard surface. Of course this shouldn't happen, but I've seen it.

6. Airdrop fails for reasons that aren't clear. Band members go into Summer Computer Camp nerd mode and forget about music. This can happen even when nothing is wrong. Somebody asks how to do something on the Ipad and life stops.

7. Because I have nearly 5000 charts on my Ipad (don't ask) and it's hard to click on the letter of the alphabet precisely enough, it can take me longer than it should to bring up a chart.

8. Ipad darkens or turns off because somebody didn't click the right button on display-time-out. And, turning it back on requires going through security.

9. You're playing a 4 page chart you've never played before and there's a DS. You click back to page 1, but the DS isn't there. It's somewhere on page 2 or 3. I know that it's possible to set a button to take you to it, but you have to have time to do that.

All that said, when it works, it's great.

[Mick-7]

There are large screen eBook readers, not cheap though - they read pdfs.

https://www.amazon.com/large-screen-ebook-reader