I'm a little over halfway done with this thread, and I must say this has been a gold mine of info! It's a lot to absorb, though, and that's why I'm done for the night with it. Been taking notes because I need to these days but wow, so much info...thank you all!
Got one question, though...
---You all have talked about arranging songs in order, and while most reading gigs do have an order, unless it's a play, sometimes things change. And there are more than a couple bands I sub with that just call out songs or change the list on the fly, and there's nothing you can do about it except hang in or they call someone else next time. And trust me...if the front person or whoever counts off the song is ready to start a song, they're doing it.
Now I know it can be done because the horn players in the oldies show band I used to be in were able to look up songs quickly on their iPads, which by now are pretty old, and in that band when we did gigs by ourselves, the BL never used a set list, called them out sometimes giving you no time at all to think about it, and never cared if you weren't ready to start a song.
So how is it done? And does one OS or app have an advantage over the other in that regard?
1st Samsung S7+ has built in Stylus and magnetic so it sticks to my stand for easy use at rehearsal. It is Wacom based so you can get all sorts of real look pens that are stylus including even luxury pens, mentioned only to show how widespread and un-noticeable they are to others. I have a version of a normal looking Wacom for each phone and tablet, but the built in one for the S7+ is the one I use with MobileSheets Pro, even got a backup. I use Samsung to completely replace paper note taking so a regular pen stylus is very important for long term use.
In the Song Listing, the MobileSheets Pro has the letters on the side and you can choose the size of those letters. One of the options is to select the first letter, then all the next letters that are available in your list show up in a sub display to drill down to your song. So if your looking for Sidewinder tap "S" then the available next letters show, tap "i" then the next available show tap "d" etc. At some point depending on your list size the one your looking for is a the top. For me it's usually two or three letters and I have the song for fakebook lists. The Church filter is only a few hundred songs so the first letter gets me there, and the second it's at the top. The full list is almost 4K songs.
You can also choose how it filters, ie ignore "The" or "A", you can even edit what it ignores.
The main filters are across the top, and there are sub filters available also. You can save your filters to fine tune for the situation. So for me, I might filter for Real Book, and New Real as my current with the older fakebooks not showing. You could also include the older and just remember to choose the newer version. The listing shows all the info.
I save each fakebook as an album so you could also do the filter via albums and save the filter.
The set list can be re-arranged in seconds very easily. And adding to it is very easy.
It pays to read the manual the feature list is very extensive and based on feedback from musicians using the software on gigs.
You can email the MobileSheets file for the Song or a PDF of the song to your bandmates. You can link together under the director. All sorts of stuff like that I don't need so I only skimmed those sections.
The editing and notating while in rehearsal is super easy with the stylus and is just as easy as with paper. There are so many edit features that include the different shapes, lines, text types saved in a favorite box so you can have different settings at the touch of an icon instead of constantly choosing the features. I have 3 different highlight settings depending on the size of the music so there is no fiddling. etc. I drop in the actual note symbols to indicate Rhythm choices at church. Often songs are not repeated again for 6 months, a year, and sometimes only once every 3 years, so I need to write it down to not reinvent the wheel. You could even do layers, so you could have your base annotations, and then a different layer for a different director that won't show when a different directors layer is needed. You can also copy a song for a different band or director and it's the same underlying pdf, which makes updating the pdf easy.
Someone posted a link in this thread to an expensive E-Reader that was actually two in one. With MobileSheets Pro you can do this by picking up two used 10" tablets or even used larger ones super cheap and connecting the two tablets togethers to form one "book" so both could be in portrait mode and between the two you have a two page display. I'm going to try that with my backup NotePro 12.4. But if you have two 10" tablets you could do two page view between the two and be very readable.
You can also choose the background colors, I keep it white so it's bright and I can see it better, but some other colors might reduce the shine or glare for some.
Someone posted here posted a list of the "Jazz Standards New York Ninety" that we should know. I created a setlist with just those songs.
You can edit two of the fields or change some uses for others to suit your needs. It just occurred to me that one of those fields I could mark as "I know how to Play This Song" so as I go through the NY 90 list I could see what I still need to work on. Even use a number to indicate degree so "1" is passing knowledge while "5" is I can play it in my sleep. And then set up a saved filter if need be.
You could create a category for each band or bandleader add all the songs that group "knows" and then create set lists from that collection. So If a band leader expects you to know 100 songs instead of a set list, just load his collection as pick songs from that shortened list when Live. Switching amongst collections is quick so if if calls out something new you can find it fast. You could save different versions in different keys or right the new keys in a different "layer" when annotating.
The title that shows up in the list can be customized to show artist, composer, key, etc and could include your special designed fields. So it's easy to choose amongst similar titles or same from different fakebooks.
You can choose how much of a song is displayed on the screen, ie you can adjust the margins automatically or custom for each song. The reduction of margins increases the size of the sheet music you need to see.
All the edits and annotations do not affect the underlying pdf, unless you choose to embed it, and you can un-embed it later and re-edit. When you send out the email pdf it includes everything.
If you work with a document file with Chords and words underneath, MobileSheets Pro is able to transpose those chords into a different Key. MobileSheets Pro supports Images, pdf, test, and Chord Pro file formats.
What I did was download the manuals and played with trial copies. It takes some time, but it's a long term commitment. I can only speak to Android.
The first few times live I felt awkward and clumsy but I got used to quick enough. We are creatures of habit, and while basically not much different it still is something to adjust to.
Ray
Need a Spectrum wifi hookup to get it for free but they're pretty common around here.
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) I was able to load and read a 30 page book.
