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

The kind of music bands play does not need to be as precise as the kind of music orchestras play. A guitar player will learn the 4-5 chords that a song uses and remember the order that they have to play them in. However, a violinist has to play *exactly* what is written in order not to mess up the rest of the orchestra.

Bands also kind of just learn music aurally, they don’t write it down in sheet music because they don’t expect anyone else to have to perform their music with super high fidelity.

Sheet music however is a relatively effective method of communicating what the music should sound like to a musician.

Lastly, orchestra musicians are often playing stuff in front of people after one or 2 rehearsals, so there really isn’t time to memorize it. Their concert cycles are pretty short and the music completely changes from one to the other. As opposed to bands where they’ll play the same 20 songs for years and years.