Photo by Icons 8
For a few years now, I have had a staunch stance about my band not using iPads for charts or notes on stage. While I don’t expect folks to be completely off book (especially if they are subbing in, or it’s their first show with me), I would greatly prefer paper charts strewn across the floor, or lyrics on a music stand, to an iPad fixed on the microphone stand. To me, the iPad gives wedding band or Broadway covers show, not “transcendent musical experience.”
There are so many screens in our everyday life, and I associate them with constant distraction from the moment at hand. Performance should be a sacred, screen-free place, at least in terms of what the performers are putting out to the audience (there’s no stopping the myriad of phones aimed at the stage by the audience, nor do I care too much about that). But an iPad on a mic stand is immediately distracting, and builds a barrier between the player and the audience.
Recently, I was validated in my stubborn opinion when I played a gig at AmericanaFest. A friend of mine who is a fabulous musician had her charts on a small iPad fixed to the music stand, a typical situation. It wasn’t my gig, I was just the fiddle player, so I kept my mouth shut on the subject. We ended up playing in the direct sun around 2:15 p.m., and about 15 minutes into our set, her iPad overheated and turned itself off. There was an awkward break in the flow of the show when she attempted to detach the stand and move the iPad to the shade, then another awkward break where she wrestled to get it back to the chart that she really needed for the next song. Meanwhile, I started feeling panicky as the audience stared at us and kicked off the wrong song in an effort to move things along. It was an all-around meltdown. I left thinking, This is why you don’t iPad!
The next day, I went to a barbecue for a musician friend’s birthday and we started discussing the subject. He said he was planning to use an iPad for his charts on an upcoming tour for some high-profile artists. I was horrified and explained my feelings about the situation. “If you could get a music stand to hide that it’s an iPad, I feel like it would create a better ambience”, I suggested. “But the iPad is so minimal!” he said. “The music stand is huge and bulky!” The next day he texted me to inform me that the artist herself was using an iPad every night onstage for lyrics. “No!!!” I said. I am still genuinely upset about this.
Then, as life would have it, I had to face my own judgmental nature just a short while later. I was scheduled to play my cousin down the aisle for her wedding, and guess what? I forgot to bring the sheet music that I had printed out for her piece of choice (which I hadn’t memorized because I am lazy). So, Saturday morning, two hours before the wedding, I’m in a huge fight with the printer at the Airbnb that seemed to have no possible place to insert paper. I finally had to give up and … use my iPad.
After so much trash talking about it, I was convinced that karma would cause a horrible series of events: overheating, or bird poop on the screen, or files disappearing. But I found a music stand and used the iPad, and you know what? It was fine. Not ideal, but fine.
So, folks, what are we thinking about iPad use? When is it OK? When is it not?
