There's something to be said for no stands, if you knock them over, if the music blows over, you'd better be able to wing it. A few train wrecks over those sorts of issues might make someone gun shy about having someone who absolutely relies on one. And wasting time between songs flipping through pages if set list changes, or you have request is awkward, should be avoided. That's the sort of thing that made me give up reading music when I was playing trumpet in a wedding band. Just found after a few hundred times playing these songs, I really didn't need it, was just glancing at it for confirmation. And easy to memorize a few new songs at a time as you add them. Would be tough to join a new band, memorize all that without music for a while. Although I routinely do that now for fill in gigs. The difference is now I'm a great ear player, so I remember hearing the song and play it by ear. I have much more trouble remembering songs that I'm not familiar with, for them, I'll write cheat sheets to remind me which bass part goes with what song. Not full fledged scores, a few notes to remind me of the
style or a specific line to jog my memory.
First full time bass gig, we had sheet music. Wasn't a problem. Keyboardist gave me funny look when I asked if she was going to write me any more charts to write them in treble clef...
All my other bar bands since then have consisted mainly of people that couldn't read a sheet of music to save their lives, with keyboard players the exception to that rule. So, no music stands. Current singer uses one for words, but playing rhythm/lead guitar while singing lead takes a lot of brainpower, momentary brain fart to lose words without them in front of him is more likely than problems with music stands.
On the other hand, music stands are for musicians. Wouldn't want to be mistaken for one of
those!
Randy
