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Luck's Music Library is a crappy business run by people who have no interest in their product. Since it is not for sale the avenue for making complaints is a dead end. If you want to play any of the garbage they rent you *must* cope with the fact that you will waste rehearsal time due to the extremely low quality of the printed parts. They charge a high fee and absolutely do not care that they give you a loaded diaper in return. Don't like it? Don't rent it.

Pretty much 100% of the rental parts from Lucks Music Library that have come across my stand over the last 38 years have been in physically terrible condition, rife with mistakes, missing important bits of information, and CRAMPED into half the page space needed to create a readable part. Add to this the awful, spidery manuscript that in many places is absolutely unreadable, and Luck's looks like a huge waste of money.

If all the orchestras around the US would stop renting from Luck's for just ONE SEASON and TELL THOSE HAT RACKS *WHY* THEY ARE BOYCOTTING THE COMPANY then *perhaps* some things might improve.

But for the time being, if you rent from Luck's Music Library you are taking a huge crap on the players in your ensemble. But, alas, the orchestra world is populated with weaklings who cannot budget money and who are largely out of touch with reality.

The solution is to DOCUMENT all player complaints about readability issues in every part. EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM. Take photos. Send these in with a demand for a partial refund of the rental fee. If everyone would do this consistently then perhaps these jerkoffs would waddle off the golf course, sit down at a desktop computer, learn to use Finale, and then ENGRAVE THE ENTIRE LIBRARY so that all the millions of collected mistakes, unreadable (or MISSING) text expressions and asinine page turns could be corrected. Then all of this could be printed on paper that can stand many, many erasures (that would not be needed if there were not so many freaking mistakes in the parts — hint, hint) and that are not so dark with age that they are almost the same color as the ink. Also, I expect something that costs hundreds of dollars to rent to arrive on paper of a higher quality than that which is used to wipe oneself.

• Document the nonsense.
• Demand pro-rated refunds.
• Stop renting from them.

Just my opinion, after 38 years of having to cope with these sh¡tty parts, with occasional phone conversations with employees at "Luck's Attitude Central".

To "profit" from something can mean quite a few different types of things. By the same token, can't "non-profit" mean quite a few different things?
When entities continue to engage in activities and business when there's no good outcome, isn't that another form of "non-profit"?

Luck's Music Library can create an oral vacuum around my genitalia. I am sick and tired of having to ask questions in rehearsal because my part is missing important information or contains information that is unreadable. I have a marking in last night's part that I swear reads Grimableishotz ma non tropic fastidious shornk.

I have a movement that starts IN THE MIDDLE OF A MULTIMEASURE REST, with TIME, TEMPO, and KEY changes that simply are not in the part. SOMEWHERE in the middle of 67 measures of rest, this movement change happens. The conductor kept asking me to play my part there.

"Where?"

"At the top of the new section, 'In Holy Turboencabulator Lies Sweetest Pain'."

"Where?"

"The key change. Where it changes to 17/8 time."

"Where?"

You have a solo there. I need to hear you play that. You did not come in when I cued you."

"WHAT? WHERE? I don't have *anything* like that at all."

<super-spendy time is now wasted as the stick swinger and tuba player get together to solve this issue>

"Oh, I don't have that in my part at all, anywhere. I have the measures, but there are no indications of a key, time, or tempo change, or even that a new major section has begun. And I don't have a solo; I do not play at all in that spot."

[It turned out that the solo was in the bass clarinet part.]

"Oh, well Mister Bass Clarinet, can YOU play that solo for me, please?"

"Wait. What? Where?"

________________________________________

On this program, this freelance group is performing two rentals from those sweeties at Luck's. I have at least 30 misprints between the two parts.

My job is easy all the time, too.

Curse the copyright gods for creating monopolies.



"You'll get NOTHING and LIKE it!" - Caddyshack

We used to refer to it as "Good Luck!'s"

Gee, um, tell us how you REALLY feel, elephant!

I have little experience with rented orchestra music, so can’t comment on that. But I had a great deal of experience purchasing music from Luck’s as a school orchestra director. The Luck’s educational catalog is the Bible for school orchestra teachers. Back in the day, I even had several compositions and arrangements for middle school string orchestra published. Not by one of the mega publishers, but a small- potatoes one. And most of the big retail outlets that sell sheet music to schools would never list small publisher’s pieces in their catalogs. Oh, if someone asked them for one of my pieces, they would special order it from the publisher. But no one would ever know my pieces existed, going by the catalogs. But when Luck’s published their catalog, they always tried to be as complete as possible, regardless of the size of the publisher. Thus, my pieces were in there where other directors could see them. That made Luck’s unique in my opinion, and I always appreciated their support.

The rental world is not the retail sales world, as far as sheet music goes. Rental places have no quality standards at all, whatsoever, beyond those of the (sometimes quite disinterested) owner. When you sell stuff it has to be of decent quality for the money. Or your business dies. As it should. Rental places just hang around forever like toadstools and mushrooms.

Some rental agencies offer service and music catalogs are top-notch; some offer "famous titles" that are insipid twaddle served up on parts better used as a replacement to the "Monkey Wards" catalog in an outhouse.

...and why the h_ _ _ does anyone question these "secret" dropbox sites - with all the rental stuff uploaded to them...

...Peeps need to see that $h!t in ADVANCE, so they can figure out what the hell it's actually supposed to be.

the elephant wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 8:57 am Luck's Music Library can create an oral vacuum around my genitalia. I am sick and tired of having to ask questions in rehearsal because my part is missing important information or contains information that is unreadable. I have a marking in last night's part that I swear reads Grimableishotz ma non tropic fastidious shornk.

I have a movement that starts IN THE MIDDLE OF A MULTIMEASURE REST, with TIME, TEMPO, and KEY changes that simply are not in the part. SOMEWHERE in the middle of 67 measures of rest, this movement change happens. The conductor kept asking me to play my part there.

"Where?"

"At the top of the new section, 'In Holy Turboencabulator Lies Sweetest Pain'."

"Where?"

"The key change. Where it changes to 17/8 time."

"Where?"

You have a solo there. I need to hear you play that. You did not come in when I cued you."

"WHAT? WHERE? I don't have *anything* like that at all."

<super-spendy time is now wasted as the stick swinger and tuba player get together to solve this issue>

"Oh, I don't have that in my part at all, anywhere. I have the measures, but there are no indications of a key, time, or tempo change, or even that a new major section has begun. And I don't have a solo; I do not play at all in that spot."

[It turned out that the solo was in the bass clarinet part.]

"Oh, well Mister Bass Clarinet, can YOU play that solo for me, please?"

"Wait. What? Where?"

________________________________________

On this program, this freelance group is performing two rentals from those sweeties at Luck's. I have at least 30 misprints between the two parts.

Sorry to revel in your pain but, I am extremely exhausted from a very long, very difficult past two weeks. This rant was just what my dark sense of humor needed right now. Your well constructed prose would have made Hemmingway jealous. Wishing he had used those same words to describe Santiago's thoughts while battling that huge Marlin and subsequent, futile attempts to fend the sharks away from his prize. Sorry for the headache this caused you but bravo for your most excellent description. I shall be using that first line in a future rant. Tuba god activated. Sorry to derail the thread.

Hemingway was da shiznit, baby. Bona fide…

I played in an amateur orchestra years ago in Austin, and we used a lot of stuff from Luck’s.

Rant confirmed.

Rick “suspecting Wade has read music off the same sheets of paper, but with 30 years more wear and tear” Denney

HAHAHA!!!

I'm just reading this thread. Do I understand correctly that Wade may not think highly of Lucks?

Join the club!

If you can't read the music because it's all messed up, just sit there quietly. The tuba tacets often enough so as no one will suspect anything.

If you're playing a pops concert and the librarian fails to print off tuba parts to a couple of the pieces, just consider those "bonus tacets". The basses and bassoons are covering what you would have played, anyway.

You're paid to be there at certain times and wear certain clothes. You're not necessarily paid to play anything.

Non-profits are rarely about the thing which they are labeled.

truth:
The big band was strings concert not long ago...
They finally handed me parts to two or three of the charts after the last rehearsal.
I actually got one of them right before the show, and read it off of someone's tablet. That was actually the first time I've read a chart off a tablet.

bloke wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 6:09 pmYou're paid to be there at certain times and wear certain clothes. You're not necessarily paid to play anything.

An incorrect assumption. My contract is very specific, and it includes playing all the notes, every time, and (within reason, which is also quite clearly spelled out) can include hand-written "inserts" at the MD's whim. I am paid to PLAY MUSIC, not to BE PRESENT. It is an orchestra, not Congress.

"Representative Rackley, how do you vote: yea or nay?"

"Present."

Nope. There are no "abstentions" or you get fired.

Luck’s is just one source. Most of their library that I ever saw is public-domain music published prior to 1923, and (quickly and carelessly) hand-copied from urtext originals, so that they don’t have to pay copyright royalties to later “edition” editors.

Robert King did the same for brass music, with parts that appear to me to have been printed by first-graders from carved potato blocks.

Groups like NYPO already have those urtext originals in their library.

Poor quality exists because customers put up with it, believing they cannot afford or don’t deserve better.

Rick “creating quality copies is part of what a publisher is paid for” Denney

These business models are quickly dying out anyway, and I can't see why many orchestras wouldn't just download PD parts from IMSLP. Luck's has probably been making lower profit every year for the last decade or two, when you consider the shrinking professional orchestra market, and the growth of digital products and more accessible public domain resources.

Semi-related rants:

Broadway rental services haven't and likely won't fix the quality of their parts, but the "rental" is now disposable music that you don't need to return. Worse for trees, but nobody's going to be charged because you forgot to erase a corrected mistake in the part.

More and more often I see fellow musicians choosing tablets over paper. I really love my $100 Android tablet because it has every fake book, every etude book, every gig book I'd ever need, and it weighs about a pound. If you have a concert in the future using the same publication, you can easily pull up the file on the tablet with all of your corrections so you don't have to waste time doing it every time.

I don't worry so much about trees that are specifically grown for pulpwood. Also, if I don't sell the really nice hardwood trees out of my own woods, they're just going to die, fall over, rot, and spew poisonous carbon into the atmosphere...
... so by selling my trees off to make them into beautiful furniture and such things, I'm actually saving the earth from burning up into a cinder.