Can Amazon Fire tablet be used for sheet music?

ceciltguitar · #1 08-19-2018, 03:41 PM

It sounds so simple. It should be simple. Maybe it is simple. Or maybe it is impossible.

First my technophobia intro rant: Why is it that we have wrist watches that can do more than a whole building full of computers from the 1990s, and yet accomplishing simple tasks is frequently so difficult, so user-unfriendly,so veiled to the un-initiated??? So many tasks that should be technologically easy are convoluted. In fact, the simpler the task, the more convoluted and sickeningly over-priced the dedicated software tends to be.

All my wife wants to do with the new Amazon Fire that I bought her on "Amazon Day" is create pdfs, and import pdfs, and put them in alphabetical order in alphabetical file folders, such as: "church music", "old time pop music", "folk music", "sixties and seventies" ,"Hispanic" , "Patriotic".

We have already wasted hours on the device and on the internet looking for answers.........nothing works.

She can create some documents. She cannot control font size. She can create folders, then when she does the "save folder" (or "save file", I forget which), the file folder disappears.

Can anyone point to a useful, accurate, preferably user-friendly source of help?

Not to de-rail my own thread on the initial salvo, but.......

Yeah, for 10X the price of the Amazon Fire we could buy the large iPad Pro..........and probably experience the same level of frustration. I have the old iPad 2. I paid one of my sons to scan hundreds of my sheet music books into pdfs one summer and put them on the iPad 2. I loved it and I used it every day for about 5 years. Then one of the software updates wiped out the whole library. I still have the pdf files on an iMac. Getting them all back on the iPad 2 is all but impossible. I have had NUMEROUS hours of tech assists from Apple. They even forwarded me up to the top tech guru and he could not fix it.

Maybe I'm just too old or too stupid........

dspoel · #2 08-19-2018, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ceciltguitar

It sounds so simple. It should be simple. Maybe it is simple. Or maybe it is impossible.

First my technophobia intro rant: Why is it that we have wrist watches that can do more than a whole building full of computers from the 1990s, and yet accomplishing simple tasks is frequently so difficult, so user-unfriendly,so veiled to the un-initiated??? So many tasks that should be technologically easy are convoluted. In fact, the simpler the task, the more convoluted and sickeningly over-priced the dedicated software tends to be.

All my wife wants to do with the new Amazon Fire that I bought her on "Amazon Day" is create pdfs, and import pdfs, and put them in alphabetical order in alphabetical file folders, such as: "church music", "old time pop music", "folk music", "sixties and seventies" ,"Hispanic" , "Patriotic".

We have already wasted hours on the device and on the internet looking for answers.........nothing works.

She can create some documents. She cannot control font size. She can create folders, then when she does the "save folder" (or "save file", I forget which), the file folder disappears.

Can anyone point to a useful, accurate, preferably user-friendly source of help?

Not to de-rail my own thread on the initial salvo, but.......

Yeah, for 10X the price of the Amazon Fire we could buy the large iPad Pro..........and probably experience the same level of frustration. I have the old iPad 2. I paid one of my sons to scan hundreds of my sheet music books into pdfs one summer and put them on the iPad 2. I loved it and I used it every day for about 5 years. Then one of the software updates wiped out the whole library. I still have the pdf files on an iMac. Getting them all back on the iPad 2 is all but impossible. I have had NUMEROUS hours of tech assists from Apple. They even forwarded me up to the top tech guru and he could not fix it.

Maybe I'm just too old or too stupid........

Hookup the ipad to your imac, open itunes, go the apps on the ipad, and drop the pdfs in iBooks.

pjroberts · #3 08-19-2018, 04:11 PM

Not to be snarky, but the ipad or a regular Android tablet would offer you more flexibility — you get what you pay for, and especially with Apple you pay a heftier price for the more intuitive software (here comes the flame war).

But, you do have options LOTS!!!. there are a number of PDF apps available for the Fire tablets - to just read or create/edit. Check out this listing from the Amazon app store: https://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-...d-keywords=pdf.

They also have a Dropbox app — so you could store notation in Dropbox and then read on your Fire. I use both methods, but I store everything in Dropbox and highly recommend. BTW, next time back up all your pdfs to dropbox or something similar as a backup to avoid another disaster.

Also, if you want to open up a lot more options, your Fire is really an Android tablet with an Amazon UI, and with some tweaking you can get it to run apps off the Google Play store. Lots of tutorials on the web for this ..,, here’s one: https://www.lovemyfire.com/android-a...ndle-fire.html

And simple instructions on opening pdfs on fire: https://www.technipages.com/kindle-f...read-pdf-files

More on creating pdfs on fire ... like on Apple devices, you “print” to a PDF file instead of a printer, so you can store and read. Check this out: https://www.technipages.com/kindle-f...read-pdf-files

Good luck!

pjroberts · #4 08-19-2018, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dspoel

Hookup the ipad to your imac, open itunes, go the apps on the ipad, and drop the pdfs in iBooks.

Ahh, you missed the part about the Amazon Fire tablet.

ceciltguitar · #5 08-19-2018, 07:53 PM

pjroberts, Thank you for the resource link suggestions, we will check them out.

ceciltguitar · #6 08-19-2018, 07:57 PM

dspoel, that's the way it's supposed to work with the iPad, and that's the way that it worked a long time ago, but it doesn't work with my iPad 2 since I "updated" the ios. Believe me, I have been through screen-share assists with all of the Apple tech gurus. Thank you for the suggestion, though.

The only thing that works is to email pdfs to myself on the iMac, then open gmail on my iPad 2 and download them. The problem there is the size limit to email attachments with gmail means that most of the pdfs are too large.

personatech · #7 08-19-2018, 08:34 PM

I believe you can install stock Android on the Fire tablet or, if you don't want to go that far, just install Google Play so that you can access a wider range of apps for your Fire tablet. Lots of resources out there on how to do it.

M Hayden · #8 08-19-2018, 11:28 PM

I got the online Real Book for Kindle and use it all the time - works on any Kindle (Android, Fire, Kindle app, whatever). That’s a useful format.....

harpspitfire · #9 08-20-2018, 06:20 AM

i dont know if this an answer or if it would work for what you want, i bought my grandson an amazon fire and it totally sucked, i was limited most all amazon BUY ME apps- i finally got the google APK files into it, with google, google play- etc, and it works more like a usable android now

JimC1702 · #10 08-20-2018, 02:05 PM

The Amazon App Store is extremely disappointing but by downloading the four APK files and installing you have access to all the Google Play Store apps. I installed Chrome, Google Maps, YouTube, Weather Underground, and all the apps I was used to. Now I have a very nice 10" tablet for very little money.

ceciltguitar · #11 08-20-2018, 07:20 PM

Thanks, guys, for all the great suggestions!! We will give several of your suggestions a try.

PaulBob · #12 08-28-2018, 08:54 PM

Hi, first post here. Lots of information, and it is all greatly appreciated. My issue is this: All I want to do is transfer document files from my iMac which consist of lyrics, with the chords above the lyrics. And, what app could I then use on the Kindle that would work best for this simple(I hope) operation? Thanks for any input, and may I say I'm not too tech savvy.