Why can bands play for hours often utilizing different instruments without ever looking at sheet music, but orchestra musicians always read from sheet music?

Question

I saw a clip where a pianist was playing and someone was turning her pages for her, but they fumbled and dropped the sheet music. The pianist kept on playing, but it got me wondering why have the sheet music if she knows the song anyway. Do they really need it? Why can’t they just learn the songs like all bands do?

In: 5311

Answer 1

Popular music acts likely don’t use sheet music because they’ve never *created* sheet music to begin with. They write down the lyrics, they might also write down the chords they are using on their guitars, but the songs themselves are in their minds through rote performance.

A lot of professional bands *don’t even know how to read and write music to begin with.* They literally compose the music they create on the instruments as they go.

Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, and Bob Dylan never learned how to read musical notation, for example.