We play memorized music.  We don’t improvise.

Both

Kay

At home I use sheet music to learn tunes or maybe give me ideas for tunes to learn. On a gig I will play the tunes pretty much by ear using my own arrangements. I improvise, in that sometimes I will play things a bit differently or reharmonize the tune on the fly (if I am having a good day!) but I won’t be sitting there playing randomly, everything will be based on something that i’ve played before.

I don’t recommend relying on sheet music at gigs. Bad things can happen to sheet music, it can blow away or fall off the stand or something. Also it places a barrier between you and the audience which is not a great thing, even when doing background music gigs.

Hi Onita,

I too improvise while gigging.

I am in such total awe of anybody who can play a gig from memory.

Both! I’ve learned to my sorrow that if I don’t haul around the music for the stuff I play from memory, it goes something like this: forget to play memorized piece on gig, forget to play it again at next gig, eventually forget I know how to play that piece.

Fortunately, the ipad is very helpful for that sort of thing–just seeing a title in my song list reminds me to play it.

Also, while I’m sure others here are probably better at that sort of thing, when guests at a party want to sing something in a key I don’t normally do, I’m no good at all at transposing with nothing in front of me.