My, the music industry has changed on so many fronts. These new musicians will never know the struggle! Like walking to gigs with our gear strapped to our bags trudging through 3 feet of snow, uphill, both ways! Just kidding, Los Angeles didn't have snow, just hills. Both ways.
When I first started my musical journey, there was no Internet. When I wanted to learn a new song (usually something I heard on the radio) I had to find the album, and look for sheet music. There were only a handful of music stores in Los Angeles that carried a wide selection of sheet music so that was not always a great option.
Sometimes I would have to find a songbook that had the song. Beatles Greatest Hits for example. A bit more expensive (around $20 and more back then) but it also had other songs from the same artist. And I could be sure that the music would be accurate. I still have shelves full of these song books.
But carrying around a bunch of song books was just not feasible for a gigging musician looking to be able to take requests. So for those of us who were professional musicians, there were fake books. These were nothing more than copies of sheet music all bound in a spiral book. Since they were copies of the published sheet music and not legitimate, they were illegal. But they would often have hundreds of songs in them so musicians that played on a regular basis would often have a few of these with them. I can neither confirm or deny having any fake books.
Because they were illegal, you wouldn't find these at your local music store. Only a few stores that catered to professional musicians would have them under the counter and would only sell to us if they knew who we were. And they would cost a pretty penny of $50 back then, but well worth the money when you think of the content.
Then came the Internet. Suddenly, we could find music online! And then YouTube, where we could search on an artist and listen to their music (legally, so the musicians actually got royalties for their work!). This has helped me personally a bunch, as I can go to an artists YouTube site and listen to their versions of their songs over and over again. I will still buy albums (or CDs) to play in the studio when fooling around though.
Guitar tablature sites started popping up making it so much easier to learn new songs. Unfortunately these sites depend on interpretations from individuals and so are not always accurate, but they at least give us a baseline to start from. I usually pull down the lyrics and tab (a simple form of music that does not require reading actual music) and transpose from there.
Fortunate for me, I was a music major in college (too bad I didn't finish that out) and so I understand music theory. This has helped me tremendously in writing and transposing arrangements. Just about everything I play is my own version of a song and not played verbatim from the original artists album or recording. I always make the music my own putting my own spin on songs.
Since all of this is electronic, I can now easily move it all to my iPad instead of carrying around binders of sheet music. It wasn't that long ago that I had three big binders of music that I carried around. Hundreds of songs now stored on my iPad.
There are some great programs for musicians out there, like OnSong (the one I use these days). They not only allow us to create a set list, but I can also organize my music anyway I like (by Author or genre for example). As I play, I can use a page turner to flip pages on the iPad, making it hands free. There are many other tools available in these programs, and they have revolutionized the way we play today!
Unfortunately, all this technology has also made it easier to pirate music, both written and recorded. When musicians are struggling to make a buck, their only source of true income is what they record and write. But when that too is getting ripped off, it makes it even harder to make a living in music.
So with all the good comes all the bad, and we as professional musicians have to navigate our way around all the bad to still be able to do what we love - bring our music to you, our fans! Thank you for supporting local musicians and the venues that hire us to play!