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

She wanted the reference. A good piano player probably knows most of the notes and remembers most of it. The music is for reference on the parts that they don’t know as well.

Someone really familiar with the music may notice that she missed a part.

From a vocalists perspective, I sang with a group that memorized Everything and probably knew a couple hundred songs. That didn’t mean that everyone knew all of them, it just meant that enough people could remember the words to keep going. From a music perspective, most people could guess the notes for their part or pitch match the people next to them well enough to fill in (for example: you forget the words or don’t know the song, but the next word is Today. You can probably join in on the Ay sound even though you missed the constants.)

Best I can compare it to outside of music is cooking. I pretty much know the recipe to a few dishes (apple pie, ratio for bread, etc.) I don’t NEED the recipe, but without it I might forget a minor ingredient or add too much of one.