Not sure if this is right spot for this...

[DandyZ629]

I have a German band gig, that I literally just picked up an hour ago. I've been sent most of the music, except for this book. Which is what most of the gig is comprised of. Rehearsal is Wednesday, and gig is Saturday. If anyone has one of these books they can lend me, or at least point me in the direction of where I can acquire it before then, I would be forever grateful.

[DandyZ629]

Anyone? Any help at all is appreciated.

[bloke]

Posts – such as this one, which do not respond to the question asked - are annoying, but here it is anyway:

Let not your heart be troubled.
If you are capable of reading easy marches like “Our Director”, “The Billboard March”, “Americans, We”, etc…or stuff like the “Tennessee Waltz”…

I PROMISE you that you can read a polka band book.
You will have tons of stress-free fun!

[tofu]

.

[hubert]

You can order, most of them in PDF as well as in paper, from Stretta Music.
Hubert

[DandyZ629]

I appreciate the comments so far, but I may not have been clear...there is NO book. It's missing. So I'm essentially flying blind. At this point, I'll be pulling from lead sheets and I,IV,V will be the name of the game

[iiipopes]

From my limited polka band experience, the only thing I have to add to bloke is that the phrases are not always 4 or 8 measure phrases, and sometimes the roadmaps jump around a bit with extended second endings, break strains, and codas. Bring a pencil to rehearsal. Good luck with the making it up as you go along.

If you can wait on postage from Germany, and can convince the band to purchase a replacement:
https://halter.de/de/noten-katalog/samm ... t-1-tuba-b

[donn]

At this point, I think the thing to do is ask how it went?

[DandyZ629]

At this point, I think the thing to do is ask how it went?

It went pretty well! They booked me for some more in the next few months.

[hrender]

Glad the gig went well. I got curious about the book, and Hickey's sells copies along with various stores in Europe already mentioned. It looks like Halter (the publisher) does digital downloads, but their website is confusing, so I'm not sure all the parts are available that way. Anyway, it's gettable if you still want or need a copy.

[bloke]

Mostly, I have a couple of friends who know the same 300-or-so European traditional tunes as I do - and we don't have "books"...
(We had an every-night-a-week German gig at a bar together, several decades ago. There was a stack of wrinkled lead sheets (from where we took the melodies and chord changes off old lp's), but that stack of paper stayed in a box in the accordion player's van. Something that I LIKED was that - when a tune was in E-major, (gull-dern-it) we PLAYED it in E-major...and not in F or E-flat (etc.)
It was accordion, tuba/bass, a multi-horn woodwind guy, a trumpet (sometimes), a drummer, and a very statuesque (hailed from Germany, and had been in the cast of the ABC network "Hootenanny" TV show: 1963 - 1964...Jack Linkletter, host) German singer-lady. We played other music (ALL SORTS of other music). Her specialty (yes: really, yes: with accordion) was Janis Joplin, and we would do a couple of Janis Joplin tunes towards midnight - each night, which made customers stick around and continue to buy drinks.
Something else that I LIKED about that gig was that we played several Strauss waltzes...all the strains...(yes...after the first week of that gig...) for memory...not "arrangements", but (same as everything else) lead sheets that we scratched out...from a combination of recordings and scores. Bass lines to those waltzes are basically "right" or "wrong". There's always only ONE note that sounds right (rather than one of two or three). It's just a matter of hearing it ahead of time (and the accordion player - playing everything right - did a good job of "reminding me ahead of time").
...but there are a couple of other local people - who don't have any of that music committed to memory - who DO have "books"...
...so - when I play gigs with them - I read, and those tunes are some that I'm not particularly familiar with (other than reading them out of those little books).
Yes...I do watch for DC's DS's, repeats, and occasional goofy codas, in those little books.