After a lot of searching and experimentation I finally found my perfect tab library manager: MobileSheets (I’m in no way affiliated with the developer). It’s available for iOS (I’m using it on an 13” iPad Pro), Android and Windows. It really hits all my marks and is a no-brainer at a $15 one-time purchase price (though I’d happily pay that much annually if that’s what it took to ensure its perpetual development). I thought I’d share my experience here for others’ benefit.
I create my tabs in .txt format using a monospaced font for consistency but it also supports ChordPro, PDF, and images.
The settings options are vast. It allows me to back up my library to Dropbox. You can add overlay layers to each song file (for lyrics, notes, etc.) and add audio files for in-tab playback with metronome functionality for practice.
One of my wishlist items is a count-in feature that would add a one-bar click track (matching the designated song time signature and tempo) before automatically playing the audio files. The developer told me that feature is on his to-do list. He’s extremely responsive. I reported a bug I stumbled across in my first day or two of use and he immediately fixed it for the next software update (which arrived on my iPad this week). NICE!
You can organize your tabs into collections and/or setlists. It has a ton of additional features/functions I’ve yet to experiment with (some of which I never will because I’ll never need). It also supports sending MIDI commands specific to each song and also supports page-turner pedals and facial gestures for page turning/scrolling (I’ve not yet tried that). It also supports multi-device sync, something else I’ve not yet tried. I appreciate that it stores each of my songs as individual .txt files in my Dropbox backup so I’m not forever locked into a single app with a proprietary file format.
Check out MobileSheets if you’re looking for a good tablature/sheet music manager. Great stuff.
I create my tabs in .txt format using a monospaced font for consistency but it also supports ChordPro, PDF, and images.
The settings options are vast. It allows me to back up my library to Dropbox. You can add overlay layers to each song file (for lyrics, notes, etc.) and add audio files for in-tab playback with metronome functionality for practice.
One of my wishlist items is a count-in feature that would add a one-bar click track (matching the designated song time signature and tempo) before automatically playing the audio files. The developer told me that feature is on his to-do list. He’s extremely responsive. I reported a bug I stumbled across in my first day or two of use and he immediately fixed it for the next software update (which arrived on my iPad this week). NICE!
You can organize your tabs into collections and/or setlists. It has a ton of additional features/functions I’ve yet to experiment with (some of which I never will because I’ll never need). It also supports sending MIDI commands specific to each song and also supports page-turner pedals and facial gestures for page turning/scrolling (I’ve not yet tried that). It also supports multi-device sync, something else I’ve not yet tried. I appreciate that it stores each of my songs as individual .txt files in my Dropbox backup so I’m not forever locked into a single app with a proprietary file format.
Check out MobileSheets if you’re looking for a good tablature/sheet music manager. Great stuff.
