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Been thinking about picking up an iPad and storing all my charts in PDF form on it, as well as a Real Book App like the one I have on my iPhone. I'm doing 2 gigs that involve a lot of charts and the thought of carrying them all on one tablet really appeals to me. My question is this - does anyone know of an alternative method of doing this that doesn't involve forking out $500 for an iPad? I've seen electronic music stands but they are practically as expensive.
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Check out the filing system first and see if it's what you want. I have the Music Pad Pro and can scroll to any of 3000+ tunes in 2 or 3 seconds. There's no USB input on the I Pad either. I have over 3000 charts on a USB flash drive which I plug right into the Music Pad. Later, Ray
Asus Q500A i7 Win 10 64 bit 8GB ram 750 HD 15.5" touch screen, BIAB 2017, Casio PX 5s, Xw P1, Center Point Stereo SS V3 and EWI 4000s.
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Thanks Ray! I will check it out.
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John Conley
Musica est vita
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"Wow" is right. Pretty hefty price tag. The one that Ray mentioned goes for about $899, still pricey, but more than that pretty bulky compared to an iPad. On one of my gigs I work with a pianist and she keeps all her stuff on her iPad. I'm wondering how she puts all of her files onto the iPad. Guess I'll ask her. I'm guessing that she has to email the files to herself and save the attachments on the iPad.
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Guitar player at church last week had all of his charts on his iPad. I think he's just using either .pdf or other graphic format. They're just chord/lyric sheets.
-Scott
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That's what I had intended to do. Convert all charts to PDF. Just have to figure out how to get the pdf's onto the iPad.
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TIP: When scanning charts for .pdf conversion and use onstage, take the time to figure out how to INDEX and find them quickly onstage beforehand.
I started a text file that lists all my songs in alphabetical order by songtitle and keep that open but minimized on the desktop. When someone calls a song, I have but a few seconds to bop over to that file, hit ctrl-F and type in the beginning of the songname. When the Find (Search) action locates the song, I have a reference there to the page number in the actual .pdf file.
After awhile, one loooong .pdf file was too cumbersome, so I've broken it up into separate files and again, have entered which one of those separate files in my text "INDEX" file along with the page number.
So I have something like this in the Index now:
Songtitle - A113
Where the "A" indicates the .pdf file (named the same, as in "A - Realbook1" and the 113 identifies the actual .pdf file page where that song is located. Note that this is going to be different from the actual page number in the RealBook unless you've spent the time to edit things to fit. I don't. But knowing the actual .pdf page number is what you want in order to be able to type that in rapidly within the .pdf file and "get there" before the rest of the band starts the song.
Don't know how that might work with an iPad, I use the laptop for this.
For guitar player, the laptop can be opened up flat and placed on a sturdy music stand, held there by a couple black bungee cords. This still allows access to the qwerty keyboard and touchpad for doing all of the above.
Whatever you do, it is wise to still lug the paper books along to the first few gigs just in case, until you have a good shakedown run with your computer setup that actually works for you.
--Mac
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