Double Bass Tablet device for reading music

[fdeck]

I'd like to get some input on a tablet device for reading music. I'm accumulating a lot of paper, to the point where it's a pain to carry around and actually find things when needed. Much of this stuff is unique scribblings from band mates, but I've scanned most of it. Some bands will also send out PDFs before a gig.

Do any of you use tablets or screens now? What type? What size display? Do you use the little pedal for flipping pages?

I actually own a Windows tablet, but it's relatively small, and has the problems familiar to anybody who knows and loves Windows:

* It takes some time to turn it on, and turns on in different ways depending on what state it's in (rebooting versus waking up from sleep). The same button turns it on or off depending.

* Fumbling with files and software in "real time" is of course a pain.

Are Apple or Android tablets really any better in this regard? I miss my PalmPilot, which never needed to be rebooted, and just worked.

 

[CaseyVancouver]

I use an iPad. It comes in handy when told of an upcoming piece but I don’t have the paper copy yet. I just download to ‘books’ and practice away. I prefer paper but using either is not a big deal.

Some in my orchestra prefer the iPad and use a pedal to change pages and can make notes on the screen. Every concert they have the paper copy under the chair just in case.

During the summer an Alberta pro symphony was playing an outdoor concert in the sun. The heat of the sun caused some iPads to shut down. To even things out, it was so windy some paper pages flew off music stands.

 

[fdeck]

I use an iPad. It comes in handy when told of an upcoming piece but I don’t have the paper copy yet. I just download to ‘books’ and practice away. I prefer paper but using either is not a big deal.

Some in my orchestra prefer the iPad and use a pedal to change pages and can make notes on the screen. Every concert they have the paper copy under the chair just in case.

During the summer an Alberta pro symphony was playing an outdoor concert in the sun. The heat of the sun caused some iPads to shut down. To even things out, it was so windy some paper pages flew off music stands.

Which size is it? I admit that I haven't used an Apple product since my PowerMac 6100. How does it behave in terms of "just turn it on and use it"?

I might be able to get away with a smaller one, since I'm mainly playing "just jazz," but the 12" one sure looks slick.

 

[CaseyVancouver]

The viewing screen is 7 3/4” by 5 3/4”. The case is 9 1/2” by 6 3/4”.

Some of my younger jazz friends show up at gigs with all the chords to obscure tunes available on their phone. They can actually get away with seeing the phone screen on the music stand. And bringing up the tune in the 30 seconds between tunes. Me, I just play by ear

The iPad turns on instantly and you can use it right away. Battery life is good for rehearsals. I’ve had it about a year.
I know it can do much more than I use it for musically. I have not bothered downloading any music related editing programs but probably should. IPads are rather expensive. A protective case is a good idea.

It is awesome for zoom meetings and recording myself. I also have an older iPad that I use to view YouTube videos while I follow the downloaded orchestral chart on my current iPad.

 

[Dabndug]

An aside - when using tablets, ensure that whatever software you are using is robust and any subscription is fully paid up. Our tech-guru sax player was proudly showing off his ipad system at a gig when the free trial period for the music software expired. With no wifi handy to enable him to pay up for a full subscription, he had to resort to paper.

Oh, and making sure your tablet is fully charged is rather important.

 

[CryingBass]

For primarily reading sheet music, I say "what size is sheet music usually on?".

8 x 11 paper size, or darn close. So get one of those 10"+ iPads, best one you can afford.

The battery life is great, great readability ( crisp text and notes ), and ease of use is good.
Tons of available accessories/mounts. I personally got one that lets me mount one on my toaster.

You can't cheat Physics. Smaller screens = smaller fonts or less content on the screen. No other options.
If you are not a 20-something with 20/20 vision, size matters.

AND, you can start using it for ( starting ) Garage Band but then all of the thousands of cool music creation/production/device control apps that are available. Android? I am not a fan.

Good luck Deck! TGIF

 

[fdeck]

Ah, good. Casey, that's the model with the nominally 10 inch screen. I have a 10 inch Windows notebook, might re-install the OS so it has nothing but what I want on it, just to see if I can tolerate the screen size. But I know the Apple stuff is more robust, and I like that.

I've got the phone thing, called iRealPro. There are also PDF's of the old fake books in circulation. But I prefer to play by ear too. More than a decade ago, I decided to go cold turkey and leave all of my fake books at home. It was a good learning experience, and there's a lot to be said by not being encumbered by the books.

I've been in gigs where half of the players have their phones on their stands, or on top of the electric piano, and they're bend over and squinting at them. Not cool.

The sad flip side is that this is made easier by the local bands hewing to the same damn repertoire. I was thinking of running for Mayor on the platform of banning the Real Book for 1 year, to bring some variety to the local music scene.

But a lot of my stuff is original, either compositions, arrangements, or "original to me" transcriptions. A couple of band mates have been fairly prolific in this regard, and I just love to play completely new material. I wish that I could compose tunes.

 

[BarfanyShart]

I have a Windows Surface and use Acrobat Pro and One Note (One Note is pretty brilliant for everything in life) for sheet music, but it wouldn't be ideal for performance situations - start up time and battery life. I think either the iPad or Galaxy tablets would work great. You probably want to get the one that uses the same OS (Android or IOS) as your phone so that you don't double pay for various apps, and for ease of sharing docs other people send you - and your phone can also be your backup. Heck, you can run full DAWs on these mobile devices now, so it can record and mix while you're reading sheet music.

 

[fdeck]

Naturally whatever I try, might involve experimenting with my own software ideas. I already have a utility that will take a PDF full of individual tunes, and break it up into multiple files so that each file is named after the tune. That way you can use the built in file chooser of the OS to find a tune, rather than the search features inside application software such as PDF readers. It's really simple, just a few lines of code, but I plan on open-sourcing it.

 

[delta7fred]

When I need song sheets for sub gigs I use Setlist Helper (free version) previously on an Elderly 7" Android tablet and now on my Android phone (big screen for old eyes) with a mount that clips on the boom of my mic stand where even I can read them no problem.

I store the song sheets on Dropbox (usually as PDFs) and sync them onto my phone before the gig so I don't have to rely on having mobile data. You can load them direct to your phone/tablet but it is more convenient for me to use Dropbox.

Being crib sheets I have everything I need on one page so don't need a page turner but have thought about making an Arduino Bluetooth page turner if I ever need one.

 

[Tom Lane]

Hi Francis, there have been two or more threads discussing this so you might want to take a look at those for more perspective, but, as a summary: I've been using Android tablets instead of paper for a few years and have never considered going back. That said, I think that the Apple tablets work better because the software seems more convenient. For instance, my Samsung 12-inch tablets are great for reading charts, but to load them into my sheet music reader, MobileSheetsPro, I had to print every tune of the Real Books I use to a separate PDF. It was as ugly as it sounds, but in a week, I had all three volumes of both the legal and illegal Real Books, plus my own charts. Adding new charts is very simple. But, I gather that the software for the iPad doesn't require individual PDFs, so that's something to consider.

When I go to gigs, I bring two - a primary and a backup. I no longer keep my paper charts in the back of my car because I've never had a failure.

The 12-inch tablet gives me almost exactly the same size as a piece of 8 x 11 sheet paper. I still place it on music stand so I can have my setlist, pencil and other things near me, including my bow.

I use MusicSheetsPro to read sheet music, charts, almost all jazz charts. I can make notes on the charts and the note will remain permantly with the chart. iRealPro for backing, practice tracks when I'm not using the Aebersold recordings. Sometimes I play it through my Alexa speaker with woofer for extra volume, especially when I'm bowing. TheAmazingSlowDowner for transcribing. Amazon Music or YouTube for playback of tunes I'm learning or studying. Perfect Piano as a fake piano. And NotateMe for composing.

Hope that helps!

 

[G Aichele]

I've used a 10" Android tablet running the MobileSheets app for years. Works great.

 

[kkenda11]

ForScore on iOS is great. I’ve used it for a couple of years now. Rock solid and easy to use.

I have several real books, lots of scanned hard copies (just take a picture with the camera) and all my bass technique books always available on one device.

The iPad Pro with the big screen is certainly expensive, but approximately the same size as a sheet of music and the backlight is helpful in less well lit situations.

 

[s van order]

Watching my teacher’s success convinced me to make the switch from paper. To lower my outlays, I got a refurbished iPad Pro (an earlier generation) off newegg and added the ForScore ios app which is pdf-file based, an Apple pencil, and a Butterfly Flip page turner pedal. It all works smoothly, is reliable, and was worth the investment. I use it in orchestra section and in smaller pop/standards duo/trio settings. I also use Finale for score/part editing but am looking at Musescore to tap into all of the uploaded work from that community.

 

[s van order]

ForScore on iOS is great. I’ve used it for a couple of years now. Rock solid and easy to use.

I have several real books, lots of scanned hard copies (just take a picture with the camera) and all my bass technique books always available on one device.

The iPad Pro with the big screen is certainly expensive, but approximately the same size as a sheet of music and the backlight is helpful in less well lit situations.

+1 on ForScore

 

[BobbyT]

Used a standard iPad with the forScore app for several years with an active wedding band. Great for those gigs where the couple requests 12 obscure tunes that you’ll never play again, and eliminates the ugly encyclopedic-looking 3-ring binder. I also have used the iPad for Sunday church services to avoid lots of printing and/or fumbling around with hymnals. Never got the Bluetooth pedal myself but if I ever started using it for musicals or really anything with tricky page turns I would consider it.

I still write everything out with pencil and paper; now I just take a photo on the iPad, save it as a PDF in Google Drive, and leave the binder at home. It’s of course possible to write directly on the iPad with the stylus, I just haven’t got the hang of it yet.

I’d recommend the largest iPad you can afford, especially if your vision is less than 20/20.

Let us know what you get! We expect an fdeck iPad app once you’ve had a chance to tinker with it

 

[oldNewbie]

I was thinking of running for Mayor on the platform of banning the Real Book for 1 year, to bring some variety to the local music scene.

Be careful for what you wish , or say you wish in public. Less than this might get you elected, you know ;-) (Yes I voted for our present mayor) .
I use MuseScore but have the standard iPad , which is not big enough. I end up printing out everything, and look askance at the wife's iPad pro. Or more like, suggest that she needs to upgrade . Glad to see people are happy with Androids.I thought the general consensus is iPads rule, a refurb is a good way to go.

 

[Steven Ayres]

I bought an older RCA 12" Android tablet earlier this year. It's relatively slow, but the display is big enough for me (I couldn't deal with the many 9" offerings), looks good, and it was cheap. I put MobileSheets Pro on it based on recs here, and it now holds all my loose lead sheets, lyric sheets and fakebooks, probably something over 13,000 pages in all. I took a fair amount of effort and built a spreadsheet indexing everything so I can look up a title and key and access it out of a book if I don't already have it in memory or my regular group of about 700 tunes. If I'm playing someone else's book and there's time, I can scan it into the tablet in the afternoon and setlist it ahead of the gig. Assuming gigs come back sometime before I'm too old to care, I'm done with hauling paper around that doesn't get used, just in case. (As long as the machine doesn't drop dead on me, anyway.)

 

[Neon Scribe]

The 12.9" iPad Pro is great for this. You can use it in portrait mode for a large single page display, or landscape mode for two smaller but still legible pages. I use the iGigBook app. It's an older application, it's a little clumsy to set up and the user interface is not polished, but it is very stable and if you depend on fake books it is great. I know a few people who use forScore. I've used it a little. It's much newer, the UI is prettier, and it is clearly better if you are a classical player, or really anyone who needs to navigate multiple pages in a single work. Both applications work well for any collection of PDF files that you might be using. They also support paging through files using a Bluetooth pedal, something I haven't found the need for so far. They both let you create and edit set lists and make it easy to go through them in order or skip around in them. I tend to just keep all my sheets loaded always and just use the search function to find the one I need, at least in rehearsals, and just make set lists for gigs. I also use iRealPro, an awesome and incredibly simple chord chart app, for jam sessions. Every piece of paper I need gets scanned and loaded onto the iPad, but honestly, most "paper" comes to me in the first place as PDF files. You'll also probably find that you want to set up your own network-based file storage, such as Dropbox or Google Drive or iCloud.

 

[notabene]

I use a regular sized IPAD. With 4score. I have crappy vision, but have no problem reading the ipad, in any light. It has replaced 4 huge notebooks of music which must have weighed over 20 pounds. An extension cord, and/or external small battery are recommended too. If I were using it for "orchestral" music I would definately want the larger ipad. For jazz gigs (remember when these were real?) the small ipad is more than sufficient.Steven