Gig Logic's Gig-O-Rama 2.0 software promises to be the "ultimate musician's companion," offering contract and letter-writing features, booking info for gigs, fee and expense tracking, set lists, and the ability to share gig information with fellow musicians via e-mail. The fact that I received the software while booking the March madness associated with Saint Patrick's Day seemed providential; Gig-O-Rama sounded like the answer to an overworked, underorganized musician's prayers. Of course, sometimes the answer to a prayer turns out to be less than you had in mind.

Smart Setup My experience with the program started out fine. I installed Gig-O-Rama on both my desktop PC (a 500 MHz Pentium III with 128 MB of RAM and Windows 98) and my laptop (a Toshiba 133 MHz with 32 MB of RAM and Windows 98). Gig-O-Rama uses Microsoft Data Access 2.1 Setup; I was rather impressed that during the laptop installation, it gave me an error message stating, "Setup cannot continue because some system files are out of date on your system." It updated these files for me.

As you launch the program, a splash screen and a music clip greet you. Click on this window and you come to the main screen. Across the top of the main screen you see four drop-down menus: File, Databases, Data Sync, and Help. A calendar with a list of gigs for the selected date appears across the bottom and a Date & Earnings window shows up on the right. An icon showing a clutched fistful of dollars appears on the bottom right, along with windows showing Earnings for This Month and Year to Date.

An icon that looks like a little guitarist stands on the current date. Since I didn't receive a manual, I consulted the Help menu, which offered little guidance. The following message was my first clue that perhaps the program didn't have all its features completely in place: "Full help is not yet available, the Gig-O-Rama Quick Start will now be activated." Adobe Acrobat opened a series of six screens that struck me as more of an attractive marketing tool than a help file. I got what information I could and soldiered on.

Covering Your Databases The Databases menu contains features designed to help a working musician stay organized; it's where you'll spend most of your time in Gig-O-Rama. Using the data you enter into these databases, the program then creates entries for gigs. Clicking on any of the first five items in the Databases menu takes you to a separate window with five tabs across the top: Clubs & Restaurants, Musicians, Musician's Payroll, Song List, and Equipment List. Let's examine them individually.

Clubs & Restaurants. As the name suggests, this is a place to record performance venues. It has fields for such pertinent information as business name, phone, street address, e-mail address, and Web address.

Musicians. This is where you enter personal information about the musicians with whom you work. This tab has fields for name, Social Security number, and primary and secondary instrument. As with the previous tab, when you click on an Add button, you're adding the information to a scrollable list at the bottom of the window.

Musician's Payroll. This is the wrong term-the IRS gets very picky about the distinction between independent contractors and employees, and most musicians fall into the former category. Opening this tab allows you to designate a musician and a time cycle. It then calculates how much you've paid him or her during that period. This could really help in printing 1099s, a feature that would make a good addition to the program.

Song List. This feature streamlines the often tedious job of making set lists. It allows entry of song titles in customizable categories, which you can then drag to four small Set buttons. Double-clicking on any of these buttons brings up a little text editor showing the four sets of songs. You can select the individual songs, then drag them to different spots within the same set or to a different set altogether.

The Print Option button allows you to choose whether to print Song Categories, Set Lists, or both. Although this is a good idea in theory, every time I tried to print the set list, I got a run-time error and the program crashed. The text editor has a Save function, but trying to save the set list as a file cleared the window, and reopening the saved file brought up an empty window. According to Gig Logic, the next version of the software will fix these known bugs.

Equipment List. Intended for keeping track of equipment purchases, this feature could also prove helpful for both tax and insurance purposes. It has fields for Item/Make/Model, Purchase Date, List Price, Your Cost, and Serial Number, among other items. When you click on the Add button, the program asks if it should add the item to the Expenses category located farther down the Databases menu. That prompt is misleading, however, because it actually adds the items to the Gross Expenses category of the Musician's Payroll section instead. According to Gig Logic, the next revision will clear up this confusion.

You can enter items such as transportation, lodging, or meals in the Expenses database or from the Enter a New Gig window (also called the Edit a Gig window; see Fig. 1). On the downside, once you're in the window you can't change the date, add expense types, or print. However, all the expenses in this window, as with the data from the Equipment List, will appear in the Musician's Payroll window if you select your name (the user name for the program), then the Refresh button. You can then choose your expenses by date and print them.

Gigs and Contracts Once you have entered the basic information in the databases, you can use it to organize your gigs. To create a gig, drag the guitarist icon to the appropriate date, and the Enter a New Gig window will open up. From here, choose Type of Gig from the drop-down menu. You are then presented with empty fields for entering information such as Start Time, Finish Time, and Fee Amount. (When you reopen this window once you've entered a gig, it becomes the Edit a Gig window.) The date turns green and the gigs appear below. Once you've started the entry process, you cannot move the gig to another date, but you can drag and drop the gig date (not the little guitarist) to a new date and delete the old entry. You can access a button called Long Term-a potentially helpful tool that lets you enter repeating gigs-only at the beginning of the entry process.

The entry fields at the bottom allow you to choose musicians, their primary or secondary instrument (the fields provide somewhat limited instrument categories), and their fees. You'll also see fields for sound system and equipment rental, but you can't enter anything into them (another intended fix for the next version). Clicking on the More Info box next to the Business Name or Street Address field brings up an empty Clubs & Restaurants tab from the Databases menu. Reselecting the name in this field and then clicking on this button will bring up the information, but if you click Book the Gig, then OK, a run-time error occurs and the program consistently crashes.

Once you've saved the gig (a cash register sound plays), you can right-click on it in the list at the bottom of the screen, select Print Contract, and create a nice, simple contract with all your information included.

Exchanging Data The Create Data Sync function is a great feature that allows you to create and e-mail files containing program data to other musicians in your band (or to any musician, for that matter). Once you've entered the gigs that include a particular musician, you can e-mail that person a file with the information he or she needs about particular gigs, including place, time, fees, and so forth. Although the recipients must also own the program to take advantage of this function, Gig Logic offers a reduced price of $49 apiece when more than one person registers at the same time.

I tried creating a data sync file in Gig-O-Rama on my laptop with another user name and registration number (Gig Logic helped out here), e-mailed it to myself at a different address, then opened the message on my desktop PC. The program received the file and updated the gig with all the essential info. Gig Logic says the next version may include the ability to send set lists as well.

Additional Features The Help menu includes an appropriately named Cool Stuff category, which contains (among other goodies) Adobe Acrobat files that discuss pricing your band, as well as copyright information. The feature also provides some sample music-related business letters you can use as templates for your own correspondence.

The Logic Links feature opens your default Internet browser and connects you to helpful Web sites such as those for BMI, MP3.com, and the U.S. Copyright Office. The links in the program, however, function only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, not with Netscape's Navigator.

Final Impression So what does all this mean? While Gig-O-Rama implements some really good ideas-in particular the organizational databases, links to more information, and data sync and contract features-the program seems rather unfinished and should have undergone more rigorous beta testing. Gig Logic will soon add a set of FAQs to its Web page; these should help, and if the company works all the kinks out, musicians should find a very useful organizational tool in the next version of Gig-O-Rama. If you're interested in checking out Gig-O-Rama, you can get a free trial download from www.giglogic.com.

Pentium; 32 MB RAM; Windows 95, 98, or NT; CD-ROM drive, 45 or better; 12 MB of free hard drive space

Gig Logic Gig-O-Rama 2.0 (Win) $69.95

Overall Rating (1 through 5): 2

PROS: Good ideas with some good implementation.

CONS: Incomplete, buggy, aimed at a limited user group.

Contact: Gig Logic; tel. (405) 722-5490; fax (405) 720-7904; e-mail seeyou2@juno.com; Web www.giglogic.com