PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Looking for ideas on how to set up a tablet laptop for chart reading on a gig.

After reading a lot about things like iRealbook for Apple stuff and similar apps for Android I decided to jump into the pool. But I need a large display and don't like the idea of these new tablets like Ipads or the Android ones because they're not full computers. They do some cool stuff but for me too much money for limited functionality. I just bought for $190 a used Fujitsu Lifebook convertable tablet PC. It's got Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit, 2 gigs ram and is a full blown computer with a 12" display. It looks like a regular laptop but the screen rotates to lay flat against the keyboard and the screen is touch activated using a digital graphics pen plus it has physical functions buttons along the side when it's in tablet mode. Pretty cool.

I started by loading in my PDF realbooks that are already indexed. When I rotate the display I can read the charts perfectly but a regular PDF reader like Adobe doesn't have proper song list, page turning and search functions that software designed for musicians has.

My questions are who is doing this, what aoftware do you like, what's your favorite stand mount etc. Remember I'm asking about regular PC software, not apps for phones or tablets. I've been on the Music Reader website and that looks nice, any others to recommend?

I would love to have wireless access to something like iRealbook but that's an app only accessable through cell networks (I think) but if someone knows about something like that through a regular Windows laptop great, let me know because even though I have pretty much all the charts I need and can create new ones in Biab the one thing I'm missing is the almost instant ability of iRealbook to transpose. Just last week we had a lady vocalist sit in and she did Green Dolphin in Ab. The bass player pulled it up on his iPhone but I was stuck with the C chart. Yes Mac I know I should be able to do that just fine off the C chart but even though I got though it it wasn't graceful or fluid and I didn't solo. I've been doing that tune in mostly C and sometimes in Eb for like, forever if not longer.

Bob

Well, I realize you wrote off iPads, but keep in mind that there's a whole community of app writers that are thinking music use of these devices.

The worship leader at our church uses OnSong http://www.onsongapp.com/manage/

I have used his iPad with it. It's great. If I had an iPad, (for which I am slowly saving) this would be in the top 2 or 3 apps that I would buy for it straight out of the gate, no questions asked.

You enter the tempo at which the song is supposed to be played and it slowly scrolls the chord chart to match the chart/tempo combination.

You can make set lists, etc. It has a flashing metronome if you want to use it, foot pedal controls, etc.

So, while the iPad/iPhone in some respects has limited functionality, in terms of music applications it actually rocks pretty hard. For example, how many music apps are there for Android? Almost none for two reasons; there isn't a standard API for music use (like core audio on iOS - which is a very low level functioning code set from my understanding) which means that someone like the original MIDI team need to step up and write out the standard.

I would write to the OnSong folks and ask if there is a recommended app for PCs that does similar function as OnSong.

It is text based only for quite a bit of the functionality - like how to arrange the played song order for scrolling (called 'flow' in the app).

There likely is a PC equivalent (if not there should be) but I can speak from personal experience that the iPad implementation of this app is a dream come true for a 3-ring binder user for worship team playing. Worship team playing is kind of a unique 'gigging'. You play 4-5 songs max per week. You have about 1.5-3 hours to learn how to play off each other (our overall team is probably 20 people, with 5 or 6 together at one time) and set mic/signal levels, and you are not expected to repeat songs that much - maybe one 'theme' song that you do for a few weeks in a row. With our team, we try to keep the song list fresh; very little recycling goes on. The 'standards' get re-arranged and orchestrated and quite honestly end up being new songs - different than jazz and rock standards that are expected to be played in a certain way and are played in a 15-20 song set, rather than the very short set I mentioned above.

The time crunch almost demands 3 ring binder use. It's one reason OnSong is so cool for this.

iRealbook looks very similar and it runs on Android - You might be able to get a cheap Android tablet to do something very similar. Keep in mind that you don't need a full chart with OnSong, a couple lines is all that's necessary if you trust the flow control. I can't tell if that's an iRealbook feature or not - it's not highlighted on the website.

Oops, I was on the iRealB site, not the realbook software site. That runs on windows. I see that it doesn't really have a 'performance' mode like the iRealB software does.

Best wishes. I see an iPad in my future, and I never would have imagined saying that when they came out. The deluge of great music apps for it is changing my mind.

-Scott

My .pdf fakebooks, realbooks etc. came with an Index file that has all the songs from all the books in it.

So when I use them on a gig, the first thing I open is that Master Index -- and I leave it opened and minimized with the Search feature or Find feature already invoked.

When somebody calls a song and I need a chart, I maximize that Master Index ("Mastrnx.pdf") type in the name or partial for that song, the Index tells me which book to look in. I keep at least Realbooks 1,2, and 3 also opened but only one on top at a time.

With a little practice at it, I can generally find a song and get it up on the screen before the other guys start playin'...


--Mac

I hear you Scott, I just can't justify that expense right now. It makes more sense to have something that's a full computer to go along with the chart reading. I know MusicReader looks and works great, I've seen videos of it and it's pretty cool. But it's just displaying preloaded charts, no ability to change anything or pull something online live. The other reason I didn't mention above is when I spilled my drink onto my desktop box a couple weeks ago I thought I at least had my laptop to go online with until I got it fixed. Completely unrelated to that incident, now my 5 year old Acer laptop won't power up even though it was fine just a few weeks ago. I'm told it's either the mobo or the power recepticle. It's not the power supply itself, we tested that so all of a sudden out of the blue, no lappy either. That's the other reason I bought this Fujitsu.

Bob

Bob:

I just went through a similar scenario that you're experiencing.
I too wanted something bigger that an iPAD (which we have) as I wanted to replace the 3-ring binder with pages of a similar size.

I had looked at the Fujitsu convertibles but at the time (if I remember rightly), they were stylus pen-based and I wanted a "finger touch" screen. I ended up with an older, used ASUS 12" tablet running Windows 7, that works great for me.

Not sure what you mean when you say "PDF realbooks". Is that like a "fakebook" where you have a staff with a melody line, a lyrics line and chords, either just the names or the names and the guitar chord symbols?

My needs were fairly simple.
I just wanted the lyrics, interspersed (somewhat busker-syle) with the chord names.
I had to take ALL my original .doc files (over 600) and convert them to a new "format", as the tablet (in portrait mode) has a display area of about 6.5" x 10.25".

I ended up developing my own "program" to access the songs.
When it boots up, I see a menu like:

- songs by alpha
- songs by artist
- songs by dance type etc.
(OK, I don't have all those done yet, only the "songs by alpha"

When I touch that "alpha" box on the screen it takes me to a "page" that shows the alphabet, each letter in a box. I then touch the letter for the first word in the title. That takes me to an index of every song that begins with that letter. Then touch the song name and it displays.

I timed it just for fun.
Once the program is up and running, I can get to any song in under 10 seconds, and usually only 6.

Sorry about the long post.
PM me if you want more details.

Thanks!
LLOYD S

I use a product called "MusicReaderPDF"
http://www.musicreader.net/

Works best when each song is in its own PDF. The library function is very good. You can easily create set lists which can be saved and even shared with others. The PDF rendering engine is not as fast as Adobe, but if you have a reasonable CPU it's not a problem.

The screen layout is setup to enable page turns by touching the screen - the right hand 2/3 turns forward, the leftmost 1/3 turns back. I also use a double foot pedal programmed to <Page-Up> on the left pedal and <Page-Down> on the right pedal - left pedal = back, right pedal = forward.

I was originally using it on an Atom powered 11.7" slate which simply wasn't good enough for me - too small a screen and a bit slow doing page turns. Upgraded to an i5 powered Acer Iconia 6120 (dual screens, Win7 x64, doesn't like being turned portrait but will do it), pur MR into a window and stretch it over both screens and voila, the best electronic music stand available.

Only real downside of the Acer is battery life - driving 2*14" screens only gives 2 to 2.5 hours but I'm working on a solution for that: just need a 12V DC to 19V DC converter that will handle about 3.5A. Will probably have to make it - that way I simplify things a lot by not needing a full 240V inverter.

In the meantime, there's almost always power around, you know, for those new fangled electrywockel thingies, umm, I think they're called "electrickery guitars" or somethin'.

Lloyd, yes the pdf realbooks are fakebook style charts like Biab produces, most are one line of staff with the melody and chord symbols written above.

Mac, I think we have the same realbook pdf file. It's got 12 books in it with a master index. You're right I may not need anything else. I just met again with the guy I bought the Fujitsu from because the battery was bad and he had another one for me. The guy is a total geek who knows way more about these things than I ever will. I showed him that file and he showed me how using the stylus I can swipe the screen to land pretty close to where I need to be in that index. Example, he swiped it fast bottom to top and almost instantly it scrolled all the way to the last page, swipe it slower and/or not the whole screen and it's less. He said with a little practice I can control it pretty good. Just messing around I found specific songs in a few seconds. This the entire index, not just specific books. That may be good enough and for page turns the screen has physical page up/down buttons right on it. Just reach to the screen with either hand and push the button. I do that anyway with paper, no big deal.

Here's something else he showed me that may or may not be old hat to some of you guys. I asked about editing a particular chart, the pc has Onenote on it that can layer stuff over top of whatever you have up and save it but when he asked me exactly what I was trying to do (good question, one we ask here all the time) he said why not use the Snip tool. I never heard of it. What it is is a screen pixel capture thing. Whatever is on the screen can be captured but the beauty of it is not the whole screen if you don't want that. Just put the stylus anywhere and swipe and it creates a box so I found one chart that was smaller than the others so I swiped it, made a nice box around the parts I needed and pasted it into Paint. There he showed me how to completely mess with it like placing the stylus on an empty space next to one of the chord symbols clicking on "match background" and using the pen to "erase" by painting over it, then switching back to writing in black and simply writing by hand the new chord symbol. Or, you can just write whatever you want anywhere you want on that page in any color. You can blow the image up to write on it and when it's back to the regular size the new chord looked perfect. He also said want to copy something, just draw a box around it and use the normal copy/paste. So, want to tag the last 4 bars? Draw a box around them and paste it to the bottom of the chart and write the word Tag. This happened much faster than me writing about it right now and that's much faster than messing around in Biab creating a tag ending. I had no idea we could do that with a locked pdf file. He explained the original source doc doesn't matter, Snip is grabbing pixels from the screen not the original doc. Sort of like us recording "what you hear". And once those pixels are in Paint you can do absolutely anything graphically with it. Snip is apparently a Win 7 thing, I don't think XP has that.

This just blew me away, this is a much faster and easier way to edit Biab charts that didn't quite print the way we wanted. No need to first print it out, make our marks by hand, rescan it to send to somebody or store it. Snip and Paint does it all digitally and I just save it as normal and do whatever with it. You have to have a graphics digital pen to do this but those are available via USB for a desktop if somebody doesn't have a graphics tablet already. Man, the things I learn just by talking to somebody who really knows this stuff.

Bob

Bob, if you have or are stuck with XP, while you don't have snip, you do have alt-printscreen, which captures just the 'active' window to the clipboard. Go to any image editor (like Paint) and paste it in, then you can do the 'box' thing in the image editing software.

I've also used a tool called 'snagit' which is basically the snip tool, but as an add-on application into the windows XP environment. This allowed me to grab images from specific areas on my screen of anything that showed up on my screen, with precision and drop them into powerpoints, word docs, etc. with little fuss. http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-whats-new.html

I used it extensively when I taught courses for GM University at General Motors.

Ny laptop does have Win 7 so I have snip, I just mentioned XP as an fyi. Those other tools look interesting as well. So many things to know about PC's, I've been mainly focused on just music stuff.

Bob

I am the music librarian for a big band. We have nearly 300 arrangements in the 'current issued pad'. Since we often play outdoor gigs, these tend to be kept in 4 ring binders in plastic wallets (thats 2 x 2 1/2" A4 binders weighing in at about 5 kg)... am I glad that I play Saxophone & not Keyboard which has at least double the pages!!!

All the music happens to sit on my laptop as PDF files - but I am reluctant to put a £2k laptop sideways on a music stand 4 foot off the ground in a typical British summer. I can read / play the music off the laptop easily enough using Acrobat Reader - but page turning is awkward. Also, switching the laptop from landscape to portrait mode is a pain (thanks Dell)- so that is not suitable for gigs.

Several in the band have switched to iPad using the Forescore or GigBook apps. These both seem to have fixed the page turning problem (you just flick the page over like turning a book page). One even has a foot pedal connected so can turn pages whilst keeping fingers on the instrument. iPad cases also have the advantage of being magnetic - so they stick to the stand. Cheap apps - pricy iPad - but so much lighter.

My only issue with iPad is the screen size - too small and the rumours are that the next generation may go smaller to 'compete' with kindle.....

I would say that the functions you need would be:

Start with PDF files (it would be nice if you could shuffle pages & rotate if necessary too)
Easy page turning
Easy way to skip back to a DS mark - or on to a coda (could be several pages)
Index system
Setlist capability (select a list from the index to play in a defined order)
Ability to add mark-ups (highlight the places where you forget the accidentals, etc)

(I have not yet found one product that supports all of that)

For the last few months, I have been using iGigbook on my iPad.
I loaded all of my pdf real books AND my original songs.
I use it for jazz trio gigs, praise team, and solo vocal/piano gigs.
Its $15.
iGigbook site


I also have iRealBook, which is very useful because it has changes for hundreds of songs (downloadable from their forums), but it does not have melodies or lyrics.

-rob

I think you play with big bands too, Lawry? Does MR have the ability to jump back say 3 pages to go to a DS then jump ahead maybe 4-5 pages to the Coda? I also play in a big band in addition to the small jazz groups I'm mainly talking about.

Chris, you're right piano big band charts are huge. The band leader hands me two big leather folders that weigh a good 10-15 pounds and have about 400 charts each printed on heavy stock. Those folders are about 5" thick and barely fit on my solid metal music stand when they're opened up. I'm familiar with a lot of classic 40's stuff but he'll call some newer tunes I've never heard of, no idea how it sounds or what the piano part is supposed to sound like. It's a real challenge and it's cool I enjoy it because of the sound still its frustrating because I'll go home and pull it up on Youtube and go oh, THAT's how the keyboard part goes then he doesn't call that song again.

I just did a rehearsal last week and was thinking about digital PDF charts while I was playing and it seems like that would be tricky. First because even with my 12" screen those charts are much bigger than that I think they're about 15" or so and still they're hard to read sometimes, those piano parts are pretty dense. Then the DS al Coda thing too having to jump back and forth several pages. I usually have the charts spread out so I'm looking at 3 or 4 pages at once. Since I don't know a lot of this stuff I have to spend a few seconds scanning the whole thing looking for DS signs while everybody else is getting ready. I don't think a digital tablet would work for me in that case yet when I was fumbling with an 8 pager I remember thinking man, there has to be an easier way. Maybe that way is to start bringing two stands so I can spread the chart out like I could if I were playing a real grand.

Oh yeah, the vocalist has his own leather folder with about 200 charts in it but his stuff is much simpler than the instrumentals more like my regular fake book charts.

Then of course it's not my band, the leader has a lot invested in all those leather folders and charts and he may not want to release those charts to all the players to load into their computers. Some of them are his own arrangements he personally wrote.

Bob

JazzMammal,
You know, the more I think about what your stating - to have a screen full of notes and have the screen go back and forth across DS all codas and repeats, the more I think there is a BIG HOLE in the market for a free app. I would add the ability to always see at least four bars ahead would be required. I don't know of any program that can handle this, perhaps Sibelius Scorch should do this (though I fear it can't) - maybe post on the forum.

What you ask seems so logical, any note reading musician would find such a thing useful, we need somthing like a pdf reader for music that can handle all this. The market is there staring developers in the face.

Why not try posting around? KVR, The piano forum etc..

Wow, great first post. Thank you very much.

It's funny though that the one song I used as an example Green Dolphin Street, isn't on the list but that's ok, there's a lot of good stuff here. The other thing about this site is many times I don't need even the whole fake chart, all I need is the chords and when I scribble my own notes that's all I do is exactly what these charts are, bar lines and chords, that's it. I just did a right click "save image as" and Windows grabbed the chart just fine. This is a cool site.

Bob

It's in there as "On Green Dolphin St". Later, Ray

Say, that is a cool site, thanks for the tip.

And I could swear that those are the PGMusic Jazx Fonts...



--Mac