What is the modern way to use sheet music for gigs?

[michaelm101]

Old school here and have a sets worth of material on paper sitting on a music stand.

What is the modern way to do this?

I have tech savvy and I use an ipad with a special slo-mo app for coaching tennis students.

Thanks in advance!

[shufflebeat]

If you have a scanner/printer then you can scan individual pages and present them on the iPad with any number of apps.

One way which avoids the need to buy anything new would be to save your scans as jpeg, put them into Keynote and run the PPT using a Bluetooth page turner to switch slides. It's a simple process to arrange your slide structure to reflect your preferred workflow.

There are more specialised apps and folks will have their favourites but I'd suggest they are all variations on this theme when used this way.

This is also true for lyric and chord sheets.

If you don't have existing paper scores then you put the data into the apps rather than scanned sheets then the features of music apps come into their own with transposition, format (stave vs tab, etc).

The tech is pretty mature now so reviews and ratings are fairly reliable.

[CASD57]

Your like me Ton's of paper
I moved to an Amazon Fire 8in and now have an 11in Samsung Galaxy
I use Songbook Pro it's $6.99 and worth it...

Still working out the kinks ..On paper, I would make the song fit one piece of paper...Who wants to try and turn pages in the middle of a song
Because SongBook Pro will auto move your page at your set speed, I need to go back and put chorus back in that I removed, so they fit on one page of paper...
But with Songbook Pro you might be past the chorus and only see "Chorus" and can't go back up to see the chorus lol

So there are some adjustments but well worth it...

[latentaudio]

Check out forScore. It’s great. It has a built in scanner function so you can scan your sheet music directly into the app.

[jricc]

Originally Posted by CASD57

Your like me Ton's of paper
I moved to an Amazon Fire 8in and now have an 11in Samsung Galaxy
I use Songbook Pro it's $6.99 and worth it...

Still working out the kinks ..On paper, I would make the song fit one piece of paper...Who wants to try and turn pages in the middle of a song
Because SongBook Pro will auto move your page at your set speed, I need to go back and put chorus back in that I removed, so they fit on one page of paper...
But with Songbook Pro you might be past the chorus and only see "Chorus" and can't go back up to see the chorus lol

So there are some adjustments but well worth it...

Another vote for Songbook Pro. I use it with an android phone and it'a an indispensable tool for my gigs.
Another popular app is Onsong.

[Goat Mick]

I've used OnSong on an iPad for over 10 years now and it works great. It's easy to go in and arrange songs into a setlist and to have multiple set lists to choose from. In each all you have to do is swipe to the next song and go. It is a bit labor intensive to input your current paper format songs into the program, but after that is done, it's quite easy to grab new material off the internet and import it into the program. I even write songs directly into the app at this point.

[hubcapsc]

I saw a good band where the main singer, who was also one
of the guitar players, do a great job on their large set with a
tablet. As I enjoyed the show, I wondered how the info he was
glancing at was formatted... it was not at all like he was glued
to the screen, he was up there performing well...

-Mike

[CASD57]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

I saw a good band where the main singer, who was also one

of the guitar players, do a great job on their large set with a

tablet. As I enjoyed the show, I wondered how the info he was

glancing at was formatted... it was not at all like he was glued

to the screen, he was up there performing well...



-Mike

I started/trained that music stands were okay, but I always knew that I wanted something less noticeable and I think the tablets are great and more acceptable in this computer age we are in. Plus for us old fart pickers it's easier to carry and less memory consuming if your the only singer trying to remember 30-50 or more songs [emoji16]

[tbirdman]

Originally Posted by CASD57

Your like me Ton's of paper
I moved to an Amazon Fire 8in and now have an 11in Samsung Galaxy
I use Songbook Pro it's $6.99 and worth it...

Still working out the kinks ..On paper, I would make the song fit one piece of paper...Who wants to try and turn pages in the middle of a song
Because SongBook Pro will auto move your page at your set speed, I need to go back and put chorus back in that I removed, so they fit on one page of paper...
But with Songbook Pro you might be past the chorus and only see "Chorus" and can't go back up to see the chorus lol

So there are some adjustments but well worth it...

There are Bluetooth battery powered page turner pedals available.

[tbirdman]

I've been researching this as I currently have a 9.7" screen Ipad which I wish was larger for displaying sheet music. Turns out most displays for tablets ad 2 in 1 chromebooks are overwhelmingly 16:9; Sort of a direct influence from home TVs. For notebooks used as tablets, this format is too skinny when turned vertical.

Ideal format is 4:3 used by Apple or 3:2 used by Microsoft in their Surface products and very few others manufacturers. However Ipad Pros 12.9 and Surface Pro 4 and later are very expensive even used.

I found a new, quality and “relatively” inexpensive was the Acer Spin 13. It has a 3:2 13.5” 2256 x 1504 screen. You can get an I3 powered one for $459 or a recertified one powered by I5 and more flash for $479. The Spin 13 actually got real high marks on it’s reviews as a chromebook. The screen is just about the size of a 11X8.5 sheet of paper 11.2X7.5. So if you discount the .5" margins this could work. The positive things are its a well known manufacturer with 10 hr plus battery life and quality screen (gorilla) glass.

I found some cheap $200 no names 14" 2 in 1 with detachable screens but are 16.9. This gives screen size of 12.2 X 6.9". These could also work but only have 4 hrs battery life and are cheaply made.

I hate buying used as first thing to go will be battery life. Also buying a no name product is a crapshoot.

[mattyc71]

Plus 1 for Songbook. I also bought a license ($12?) for my laptop PC, which makes it VERY easy to edit songs that you import from internet sites. You can sort your songs by title, by author (subtitle), by date or even by key. You can share them via Dropbox and even go oldschool and print them out.

[doublescale1]

The guys in the horn section of the band I'm in use scanned PDF's of the arraignments on iPads and then use a bluetooth page-turner pedal on the floor as we play through the songs.

[tbirdman]

Originally Posted by doublescale1

The guys in the horn section of the band I'm in use scanned PDF's of the arraignments on iPads and then use a bluetooth page-turner pedal on the floor as we play through the songs.

The issue I have with Ipads is unless you invest in the expensive pro with the 12.9 screen, you are stuck with a screen size of 8x6 for a 10 inch screen. The Ipad pro with a 12.9" screen can just about fit a single sheet of paper life size if you cut off the .5" margins. You can't buy a used one for for under $400 and that is one released in 2014.

[necrome]

SongSheet Pro on iPad.

[SongwriterFan]

Originally Posted by tbirdman

The issue I have with Ipads is unless you invest in the expensive pro with the 12.9 screen, you are stuck with a screen size of 8x6 for a 10 inch screen. The Ipad pro with a 12.9" screen can just about fit a single sheet of paper life size if you cut off the .5" margins.

That's what I did. I bought the largest iPad Pro that I could (right before the new one came out).

I put my lyrics (I only perform my own songs, not covers) into Word (sometimes with chords, sometimes not), and print the results to a PDF file.

Then I upload the PDF files to the iPad.

I don't use any special software . . I just pull up the PDF.

I use a separate mic stand to hold it.

I only use the iPad for songs I haven't completely learned yet . . once I've learned the songs well enough, I perform "without a net".