Voop,
What did I leave out?
You're gonna wish you hadn't asked.
Imagine today's symphony orchestra, chorus and soloists. Right now they use clunky stands that hold pages and pages of music, all printed in black ink on white paper. Musicians in the pit have lights on their stands so they can see the music. Musicians take pencils to every rehearsal. They mark up pages with the pencil, making some notations serve as reminders about their own performance, making others about specific issues the conductor wants done a particular way. After a few performances with different conductors asking different things of the musicians, the music is laden with erasure marks and re-writes galore. Managing the storage space and other resources of the music library for a performing arts organization is a massive undertaking.
Now imagine the future that e-books brings to those musicians. Their stand might have a built-in e-book, eliminating the need for lights and preventing music and pencils from falling on the floor making noises at the most inappropriate times. Particularly important musical issues are no longer underlined or circled in pencil; instead, they're highlighted in color. Sight reading is done with more efficiency because tempo changes are in red, something not economically feasible in the world of printed music on paper. A "clear" button erases all the notations that are specific to a certain conductor, not to be used by the next conductor. Everything remains nice and neet in digital form, lasting forever. The music library is now in digital form, allowing musician's e-books to be downloaded instantly. And oh by the way, when Bruce doesn't like the key for his performance of the Gorilla Game Theme Song at our 20th annual reunion again at San Diego Symphony Hall, he merely asks all the musicians to push the little "up arrow" twice so the music is instantly transposed up a whole step -- something not possible in the black ink-on-paper world.
Like I said, I knew you'd be sorry you asked. Feel free to put this in the other folder and make them suffer through it too. :)
--Mike Buckley |
