Music software for tablets

[joppo]

About a year ago I decided to go digital for all my music, rather than have piles of chord charts/sheet music littering my house. It has involved a bit of work getting everything scanned in or formatted, but really loving it now. There appears to be a heap of software for doing this, so thought I would post what I am using, and others can chip in if there is something they are using to make a bit of a resource. I would prefer to know everything off by heart and not have to use a tablet, but I don't get to perform very often, and it seems it's almost never the same thing twice, so this works really well.

I am using MobileSheets Pro which is an Android app. I chose it because a) I had an Android tablet and b) it seemed to have the most usable features. Once you have your music in (I'll cover that below), it is really easy to use. I have a list of all my music which is searchable on title, author, key, genre etc. I create a set list, drag the songs I'm going to play into the setlist, move them around into the right order and then it is all good to go. Once I'm playing, I just tap the right side of the screen to go to the next page, or left side to go back a page (you can get wifi foot switches so you don't need to use your hands). There are some more advanced features like being able to automatically scroll through a sheet at the right speed so you don't have to flip to a second page, but I haven't used that.

Getting the music in is pretty easy. I started off scanning everything (sheet music and chord charts, depending on what I had) in. During the import process, you enter all the details you want (title, artist, album, key, genre, date etc... as much as you can be bothered), and you can search on these fields later. I now import chord charts in chord pro format. It is a bit more work getting them ready to import because you have to insert the chord in square brackets where the change should occur, but the advantage is that if you want to transpose to a different key, you just tell it the key you want it in and it is done. Easy!

There is a companion program that runs on my PC that I use for all the importing. My tablet connects through wifi, and then I set up set lists using the computer, import new songs etc.

That's pretty much it. It has made my life much easier and the house much tidier! For the iPad users, OnSong is the App I found that seems to do all the same stuff, and I would have used it if I had an iPad.

Any others using similar software that works well for them?

[beagle]

That's sweet, thanks Nev. I've been wanting to do this myself with my Galaxy Tab.
Most the musos I know use ipads but I can't remember what app they use for it.... I think it might be called 'gigbook'. Has some pretty handy features... much like you've described.
I think there is an android version of that available although I haven't tried it.

[mickeyj4j]

I also have an android tablet. I have several apps downloaded but I just use the Ultimate Guitar app. This is great app with tons of songs, all user uploaded. Songs can be download for off line use. If the song is not available need to go on line to the website to upload them yourself. It's a great app.
I mainly do this as lost of songs are already there. I don't have to create them.plus easy transpose option built in. One dowe side to the app is that with the playlist feature you can't re order the song I n the order you are playing them.

I may convert to mobile sheets or one other apps I have especially as I am hopefully going to get a foot page turner one day. To let you know foot turners are Bluetooth not wifi.

Are you willing to do a tutorial on how to import, convert songs with an example or poinot to any othere you hAve used. Thanks.

[joppo]

A short update to my old thread. I have been really happy with MobileSheets and just keep importing anything I need to play that I haven't memorised. I have been wanting to get a bluetooth page turner for it for a while, and finally bought one. I got the iRig BlueTurn

BlueTurn.jpg (28.2 KiB) Viewed 3663 times

Super simple - two buttons, one to go forward and one to go back. Turn it on, pair it to the tablet, open MobileSheets, load a setlist, and you're away. Works with Android and iPad. Its made of plastic but seems to be build really well. Powered by 2 AAA batteries, which should last ages give the amount of work it has to do. I should have gotten one ages ago. Highly recommended.

[beagle]

That switch looks great Nev... they look to cost around $130 in nz.
I went down the MobileSheets route on my Android galaxy tab and it's been great.
I had the dbase corrupt once about 8 months ago but as it's easy to backup to Google drive / dropbox restoring is easy.
Since then the developer has been making some good regular updates which has made it very reliable.

[foal30]

Definitly something I need to look into
Cheers for the heads up.

[beagle]

All good

Here's some links to Google playstore;

Mobile sheets Free - https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... free&hl=en

Mobile sheets Pro - https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... spro&hl=en