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
Bands usually only play a very small amount of music — their own songs. And those songs are typically short and relatively simple with a lot of internal repetition (chorus, bridge, etc.). They’ve played those songs a million times, it’s all memorized. But even then, those people will spend time refreshing their memory for every live tour even if they’ve been doing the same songs for decades, and when they don’t you can tell, hah.
Orchestras play a much larger variety of music that is both longer (some classical pieces can go on for hours!) and much, much more complex. They also often learn and play new pieces with only a bare minimum of time and preparation.
Artists of all varieties memorize various pieces though. Soloists, for example, will almost always memorize whatever piece they are playing as well as memorize pieces that they perform often. See for example: Yoyo Ma who has memorized all umpteen hours of the Bach cello suites.
Lastly: A lot of band musicians have to memorize their work because, well, they don’t read music (standard notation, tabs, or whatever)! This includes some of the very, very best musicians you have ever heard and is not a knock.
Latest Answers