why all the ipads and iphones on stage??
 

SO 2 years ago I had a business conference in Nashville...and I was at tons of bars during the nighttime with all the awesome musicians....my question

all of them had an iphone or ipad (insert smartphone or tablet if you wish) attached to their mic stand....

what is it for? i was very curious!

thanks

B

To read the music?

...and here I thought MY memory was going! Whatever happened to actually learning lyrics and improvising?

ok if so...do they have an app that scrolls through it? and what if it scrolls too fast or slow?

If it is just the lyrics and chord progression that would not be a problem. I still use paper but a good friend of mine who busks regularly uses an iPad.

Apparently it's a new and accepted thing now. For me, cheat sheets are for the house. If I need them for a gig, it ain't ready to be played out yet (IMO).

Then again we only know about 120 songs and I'm 55. If I was 65 and needed access to 300-400 songs I might get over my prejudice. ;) ;)

You get can a bluetooth controller from companies like Airturn.

I have mixed feelings about it. When I played and sang lead in my last band, I practiced continuously before a gig and had all of my songs down perfect. Now that we've adopted 3 kids and taken in 2 more full-time, I don't have the time to practice like I should and give my kids the attention they need and deserve, so I used an ipad at my last gig and was ok with it. The crowd enjoyed my set and gave me great feedback and my Ipad was never mentioned. I think tablets and smartphones are such a normal part of our everyday lives, they'll be accepted as necessary equipment. In fact, I got a song request for a song I knew and had never played. I looked up the chords and went at it! That's a positive in my book.

I'm a solo musician that plays bars and restaurants and the reason I keep getting booked is because I can usually play anything anyone wants to hear. Also playing requests brings in a LOT of tip money. There's no way I could keep 400-500 songs in memory and be able to play them at the drop of a hat. Some songs only get requested once or twice a year. I use an iPad to keep all these songs at my fingertips so I can play requests, get return bookings and make good money in tips.

ooh whats it called?

It's called "Airturn." I know, big surprise! :D

You can also do what I did, and that's copy and paste the terms "Bluetooth" and "airturn" into the Google search engine, and voila! ;)

Doesn't like every single professional philharmonic player work from sheet music? I wouldn't tell them to stay home.