Laura and Jonathan ... nice job ... it must be great that you both have the passion for music and entertaining ... it is no wonder that you are successful ...



... maybe because sheet music might cost less than two laptops ???

This is not a criticism, but I was more surprised by the lack of a vocal processor - which obviously is not needed when they sing together - but might have enhanced Laura's back up singing by adding a couple of harmony voices ...

Tony, I just purchased a backup laptop for $195, which translates to about 75 songs in sheet music form, and that's if you find that cheap. The average sheet here goes for anywhere from $2.99 to $4.99 in the music stores, and not much less from online sources. However, there are still lots of great sites where you can download the sheets for free and you can easily learn a song by listening to it on YouTube. I do that a lot these days. The laptop is a great tool for working pros.

Gary

... obviously it is, Gary ... that's why I had the wink at the end of the sentence ...

Johnathan, just curious. I thought I remembered you having a VP770. Did you get rid of it in favor of the VP7? I love my VP770 as it had a lot of features ie. Audio Key, Supernatural Brass, etc., long before they showed up on the BK9.

chas

As for the vocal processor... We still have the Roland VP770 and the VP7. We only use them for bigger shows. My wife and I have been doing a few smaller gigs and some non-pay gigs. The Bologna Fest was a non-pay show without much set-up time built in... no extra harmonizer for them!!

We use mostly lyric sheets or chord charts that we create. I have the sheets in front of me in the order of the show that we planned out. BUT we are currently turning those sheets into PDF files in order to load them into our iPads. We play in church every Sunday for a contemporary service but our gigs only number 8-14 per year without advertising. So, paper is fine for us right now and will always be our backup.

I must admit, I'm kind of leaning a bit towards using .WAV's a lot more for my shows...

Then I can run my SMF's through ALL my gear at home for the best sound (including VSTi's, the K2500S and Triton's etc.), and simply take the .WAV to the gig.

About the only thing I would miss is the Mark/Jump capability, and I think I have a workaround for that using the Audio Keys feature, so I can add extra sections to the song if the floor packs late or wants to dance longer than the regular structure...

Even when I'm working with WS's, I usually like to START with an arranger 'capture' as an SMF, primarily to get the drums and any guitar parts down first. I can create those from scratch, but I usually find, if there's a style that works well for the song, getting the drums down with the BK saves me a bunch of time, and I can still edit it afterwards in a DAW to add little change-ups and mess with the fills so they aren't always the same, stuff like that. Then I'll replace out the bassline, and anything else that lacks good voice leading.

But for WS only SMF's, sounds like you haver a great handle on it all, Johnathan. That little BK-9 is a sleeper, isn't it? LOL