I am a full time dentist with my own practice, Capati Dental. Capati Dental is open Monday through Thursday for 8 hours each day. In addition to Fun DMC, I sing and play percussion for Take 10, and I sing and sometimes play guitar for Novocaine. People who find out that I do all of this almost always ask me one thing: How do you have time for all of this?

My quick answer is this: I’m single with no kids.

The real answer is Google calendar. I have two shared calendars for each band (one for gigs and one for blackout dates) plus one for my personal use. When scheduling a gig, someone can quickly look at the shared blackout calendar and see what dates are unavailable. Each band member is responsible for keeping their blackout dates updated. For example, if I plan a vacation, I can enter in the dates for the each blackout calendar. Since those calendars are shared, other band members can instantly see that I’m busy on those dates; therefore, we cannot schedule a gig that day (in the case of Fun DMC, we could still schedule a gig, but we would have to make sure that there is an available sub for me). Planning my vacation is also easier because I can see all my upcoming gigs from all three bands in one centralized location.

The problem with this is that everyone needs to have a Google account in order to edit the calendar (one does not need a Google account to view the calendar, though). Plus everyone needs to be diligent in updating their calendar whenever something new comes up. For a band of 4 like Novocaine or a band of 5 like Fun DMC, this is relatively easy. For a band like Take 10 which is comprised of ten members who are not used to keeping an online calendar, it’s nearly impossible without someone cracking the whip.

We usually communicate through Facebook messenger and use Facebook secret group pages to post material that we might have to refer back to later.

Fun DMC uses Dropbox also to store lyrics and mp3s of our mashups and songs we cover.

If there were one application that would do all of this – calendar, file storage, communication – I’d buy it up in a minute.

If you know of any useful apps or websites for bands please email me at albert@fundmc.net.