After a gig today, someone commented to me how they were really impressed that I don’t use sheet music. I accepted the compliment graciously but I don’t think it’s neither rare or especially impressive. Is it common for pianists to bring a book with them on a gig? I mean, if you’re doing this for money, you should have enough tunes in your head for at least two hours of music…?
I am not fishing for compliments. I just don’t need music, and it surprises me that some pianists would. Please tell me most do not!
Two hours of piano music is quite a bit to remember. I can see why you get compliments.
Guitar is easier because we get away with strumming chords and short picking breaks. I still sometimes get my chord changes mixed up if they are different in the chorus and verse. I’m better at remembering the words to songs. Words often help me remember the chords attached to them. I know quite a few songs but not two full hours.
I guess some people have better memories than others.
Like anything else, I guess you work up to 2 hour sets? start with 30 mins, then start adding new material. Before long you’ve got an hour. Then keep adding.
Still, I’m not sure that I could ever retain that much material without a lead sheet to refer too.
I only play for my own enjoyment, and usually just once or twice a week.
That being said, there are just a handful of songs (10-15) that I could play without the music. And if I haven’t played one of them in a while, I have to pull out the music to refresh my memory.
However, if I played pretty much every day I’m sure I could fill a couple of hours eventually.
mmm
Memorization is not something I do. Not like I memorize the notes on the page. All I worry about is the chords and improvising on them. For a song like Misty, you have Bb7 Eb Bbm7 Eb7 Ab, etc. I would think it is standard operating procedure to know the chords in a tune. The improvising on them is how you make the song last more than a minute.
So a fakebook should only be necessary if you haven’t heard a particular song and have to “fake” your way through it. But if you’re only asked to provide background cocktail music, I think you should know three hours of chords by heart.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to bring a fakebook, I just don’t think it should be used unless in case of emergency.
Most cocktail pianists, a group of which I once was, know all the popular tunes by heart. They didn’t sit down, read the music, and memorize as you might cram before a college exam. They just absorbed each tune over a lifetime.
If a new tune enters the public repertoire, we’ve heard it on the radio or from some other source, and picked it up from there. Or we might buy a compilation book (“Forty tunes from the Forties!”), thumb through it, and learn the important tunes just by playing them a few times.
To paraphrase what Cleavon Little once said in The Gig, “Tin Pan Alley changes go down easy, like baby food.”
Yeah, fake books can be valuable, as they were to me at high school age, but the old adage, “hum a few bars and I’ll fake it” is the way we often handled requests.
If a cocktail pianist does pull out a fake book or a piece of sheet music, he’s not playing what’s written, but using the chords, melody and lyrics as a guide (which is all a fake book is), arranging it on the fly. The actual written piano/vocal arrangement is never played verbatim.
And the more of those gigs you do, the more you retain. As Musicat suggests, many jazz standards of a certain era follow a familiar form, so it’s kind of like memorizing variations on a theme.
I don’t do much ‘cocktail party’ playing these days, so when I do I bring a binder with lead sheets (I’m in the process of transitioning to digital). I’ve got a lot of “A” sections of tunes still memorized, but it’s the “B” sections I fall down on, and definitely need the music for.
If I were doing those kinds of gigs regularly, it’d be pretty simple to have enough tunes in my head to cover a 2 hour gig and handle a few requests.
Different people have different memorization abilities, and it doesn’t necessarily correspond with musical talent. There’s also the difference between sheet music, fake books, and lead sheets, which the commenter mentioned in the OP likely didn’t realize.
ETA: Also, the likelihood of needing any of these aids will vary with the nature of the gig. Provide background music from your repertoire? Play through a list provided by the client? Take requests on the spot?
My mother, who grew up in the Great Depression, had the ability to play music “by ear” - she could play any of the big band tunes, for example. Her playing was graceful and fluid. I have no doubt she could play two hours without any music in front of her.
She would be the accompanist for the children’s Christmas program at church, and her “cheat sheet” was a hand-written list of the songs in order. No sheet music, although sometimes she’d write the key so it matched what’s in the hymnal.
She could read sheet music, but not sight-read, and even after lots of practice her playing was mechanical at best until she incorporated the song mentally. Then if she would put away the sheet music she would do better.
My dad plays keyboard for a couple bars and has played for events. He has random books but the last time I watched him play he had lots of songs memorized and if someone requested something he would think about it, play a few chords, then start.
I’ve been a couple of times to a piano bar where two or more players do all requests from the audience, prioritized by how much money you give them. I didn’t see any sheet music but in one case one of the players used his cell phone to find the music.
Perhaps you feel that way because you think a performer memorizes each note and chord in exactly the same position as on a piano/vocal sheet. He does not. Memorization of a typical Tin Pay Alley tune is only the melody and chord sequence. A performer makes up the arrangement on the spot, and it may change drastically according to the desired mood. Up-tempo? Ballad? Heavy rock beat? Latin? Nobody performs the work the exact same way every time.
Scanning thread titles, I misread this one as “How common is it for cocktail pianists to shoot music?” and all I could think was “Damn, I’d give good money to watch that.” lol
Yes, I thought pianists played note for note what is written. Much like my classmates and I did in school orchestra. That’s why I was so puzzled how anybody could memorize 2 hours of material. I’d guess most casual fans think the same thing.
Thank you for the explanation. It’s similar to what I’ve been taught on guitar to focus on the chord progressions and sing the melody.
On a cruise a months or so ago I had a chance to hear a cocktail pianist play each night. Interestingly, he had a tablet on his piano that scrolled the music for the songs he was playing. So he had access to the full sheet music or a cheat sheet as desired. Interesting application of technology, there.
Not any more than guitarists do. Why would you think that? It’s pretty much the same as with any other instrument. Some music, like classical forms, will be mostly written out (minus cadenzas or other places you are encouraged to improvise and things like that), but with popular forms, it’s generally just chords and a melody line, you make up the rest. ETA: I mean, you can buy sheet music that has cocktail arrangements of various songs, if you want but, even then, I would think most pianists just kind of use it to get the general idea of an arrangement and play around with it from there.