Use case: a cover band's Saturday night, from Monday to last call

Let's put the whole series together. Meet a five-piece cover band: Dave on guitar and vocals (the band leader), a bass player, a drummer, a keys player, and a fiddle player who reads from sheet music. They have a Saturday night at the Legion: three sets, two breaks, about forty songs.

Monday: build the gig

Dave opens Gigs → New gig: "Legion, Saturday". He attaches the band's Opener set list to Set 1, adds the Country set to Set 2, and types the rest of the songs into the search boxes. A quick Check duplicates catches "Wagon Wheel" in two sets. He moves it, adds two breaks, and saves.

Two songs are new to the band. Dave adds them to his songbook by pasting the charts he found, fixes one chord, and adds a tutorial and a backing track to each.

He clicks Share and sets the gig to the whole band.

Tuesday to Thursday: learning

The bass player makes a study set, "New for the Legion", with the two new songs. She works through the tutorial, then the backing track, and marks each one Got it by Wednesday.

The fiddle player opens the gig, clicks My sheet music, and drops in her PDFs. Most match by file name; she picks the right file for the other two.

The singer transposes one new song down a step on her own screen, so it sits in her range. Nobody else's view changes.

Friday: rehearsal

At rehearsal they run the gig in Present mode. Dave taps Lead. Everyone taps Follow. When Dave swipes, every tablet moves to the same song: chords for the guitar and keys, the fiddle player's own sheet music, a lyrics-only view for the singer.

The drummer swipes ahead to check a tempo. Following pauses, and he taps Back to Dave when he's ready.

Saturday: the show

Before load-in, Dave prints the set list with numbers and keys for the drum riser, and names only, extra large, for the monitor wedge.

On stage, Dave leads from his tablet with a Bluetooth foot pedal. When the crowd asks for a song that isn't on the list, he presses /, finds it in the songbook, and plays it. Between sets, the title slide shows everyone what's next.

Sunday: tidy up

Dave saves the Saturday Set 3 as a new set list, "Late night", because it worked. The bass player starts a study set for next month's wedding.

What made it work

• One songbook, private to the band, with every chart in the way they actually play it.
• Study sets that turned a pile of new songs into a plan.
• One gig, shared, with everyone seeing their own key, capo and music.
• Live follow, so nobody called out song numbers all night.

That's the series. Questions, or something you'd like to see in SongChute? We'd love to hear it.

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