Monday, January 26, 2015

Using an app to organize our band notes


JamCat 

I was in a few bands back in the day.  One was a wedding band that would play a gig every 2 weeks. Things were kind of a mess.   Everyone would have a different set of notes.   People would be missing certain songs in their books.   The notes themselves wound not match from band mate to band mate.   We also never had a song list for a gig, but instead the keyboard player would call out what would be the next song, and then everyone would have to remember what number it was in the book, flip to it, and then switch effects or patches on their instrument...   Sometimes we would have 2 minute breaks in between songs, resulting in audience members calling out "let's go already!!".  Super embarrassing.  I was not able to change how things were done in that band.  But after that experience I became very conscious about having a good way to organize stuff.

I found this site JamCatApp.com thats actually free, that allows creating set lists, and sharing them in our band.  Everyone in the band can edit them at the same time.   We would put the notes for all the songs there, and then post comments on each song, if we had to change something.  Pretty handy.
They also have a nice iOS app that i'm using, which works together with the site.
http://JamCatApp.com

My favorite feature so far has to be the set list creator where you can put notes on everything, and put in fillers in between the sets.

Some iPad screens:






























The website:


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