An Electronic Filk Book
Feb. 7th, 2024 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billroperThis has been a longish endeavor, mostly due to the fact that I'm stubborn. But I finally (I think!) have an electronic filk book that I can work with happily. We'll see how it does when I take it to a convention.
While many of my friends have been using their tablets as devices to hold their fake books for a while, the systems that they are using all require some extensive reformatting of the existing music into a format that scrolls the music in time with about how fast the music is actually played. This system annoys me for reasons that I can't quite put a finger on -- ok, the finger lands on the amount of setup time that all of this is going to take when I have over 200 songs that are going to need to be extensively altered to work with the system. And then I will wait for timing glitches.
What I have really *wanted* is to have a system that is big enough to display two pages of music, just the way that I can do it with two sheets of paper in my analog filk book. There are professional music management systems that will do this. They are ungodly expensive -- that is to say, I could buy a very nice guitar for that amount of money.
Recently, I became aware of some software for the iPad called Forscore. It's designed for music management and is clever enough to allow you to link *two* iPads together and use them as a single music book. All you need are two iPads.
I have *one* iPad and the cost of a second iPad is high enough that this just seemed like a bad idea for me. And iPads are not getting that much cheaper that fast. You can buy *older* iPads, but they are on badly obsolete versions of the operating system, which also seemed like a bad idea.
Yesterday, one of my friends from GT was asking for Android tablet recommendations and John Ridley suggested a 10 inch Android tablet that you could get on Amazon for a bit over $100. I checked this out and it looked to be a nice enough tablet. If only I could get Forscore to run on it. But Forscore is only on iPads.
But I turned up my Google-fu and typed in "Forscore for Android" and found an app called MobileSheets which is available both on Android and iPad tablets. It will import your PDF files. It will manage playlists. It has a scrolling mode. It will link via Bluetooth with a second tablet so that you have a two-page view like a book...
Excuse me? What was that?
I had to try this. So I ordered two tablets from Amazon (the ones that John had recommended) and this morning they arrived. I loaded the trial version of the software onto one of them, determined that it could import my PDF files in a very satisfactory fashion, and then ponied up the $15 for the full version of the software. This is now installed on both of my new tablets, 200+ songs have been converted for use with it, and the tablets successfully linked together, happily scrolling through my Chambanacon playlist (which I used for testing).
The software will also reverse your display so that you can have white text on a black background, which seems easier on the eyes, and it will scale your music to use a larger font if the converted PDF will fit on the page that way. This last feature will require me to do a minor edit and move the songwriter and copyright information from the right margin to the left so that I get the best scaling, but that's a trivial operation.
I have to do it 200+ times, but it's a trivial operation. :)
I will do that *after* I finish the taxes...
While many of my friends have been using their tablets as devices to hold their fake books for a while, the systems that they are using all require some extensive reformatting of the existing music into a format that scrolls the music in time with about how fast the music is actually played. This system annoys me for reasons that I can't quite put a finger on -- ok, the finger lands on the amount of setup time that all of this is going to take when I have over 200 songs that are going to need to be extensively altered to work with the system. And then I will wait for timing glitches.
What I have really *wanted* is to have a system that is big enough to display two pages of music, just the way that I can do it with two sheets of paper in my analog filk book. There are professional music management systems that will do this. They are ungodly expensive -- that is to say, I could buy a very nice guitar for that amount of money.
Recently, I became aware of some software for the iPad called Forscore. It's designed for music management and is clever enough to allow you to link *two* iPads together and use them as a single music book. All you need are two iPads.
I have *one* iPad and the cost of a second iPad is high enough that this just seemed like a bad idea for me. And iPads are not getting that much cheaper that fast. You can buy *older* iPads, but they are on badly obsolete versions of the operating system, which also seemed like a bad idea.
Yesterday, one of my friends from GT was asking for Android tablet recommendations and John Ridley suggested a 10 inch Android tablet that you could get on Amazon for a bit over $100. I checked this out and it looked to be a nice enough tablet. If only I could get Forscore to run on it. But Forscore is only on iPads.
But I turned up my Google-fu and typed in "Forscore for Android" and found an app called MobileSheets which is available both on Android and iPad tablets. It will import your PDF files. It will manage playlists. It has a scrolling mode. It will link via Bluetooth with a second tablet so that you have a two-page view like a book...
Excuse me? What was that?
I had to try this. So I ordered two tablets from Amazon (the ones that John had recommended) and this morning they arrived. I loaded the trial version of the software onto one of them, determined that it could import my PDF files in a very satisfactory fashion, and then ponied up the $15 for the full version of the software. This is now installed on both of my new tablets, 200+ songs have been converted for use with it, and the tablets successfully linked together, happily scrolling through my Chambanacon playlist (which I used for testing).
The software will also reverse your display so that you can have white text on a black background, which seems easier on the eyes, and it will scale your music to use a larger font if the converted PDF will fit on the page that way. This last feature will require me to do a minor edit and move the songwriter and copyright information from the right margin to the left so that I get the best scaling, but that's a trivial operation.
I have to do it 200+ times, but it's a trivial operation. :)
I will do that *after* I finish the taxes...
no subject
Date: 2024-02-08 11:07 am (UTC)One of the iPads is over a decade old, though, and doesn't get software updates anymore, so it may not work, but I'll look into it. Having that ability in time for my Boskone set would be nice.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-09 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-09 03:56 pm (UTC)But I have often thought it would be nice to have two pages visible at once—each with their own screen.
Jodi got an inexpensive tablet like you described specifically for music. And I’ve been tempted too—especially since our car was burglarized on the way home from GAFIlk when we stopped to lunch. (Two car window busted out and no more backpack with iPad.) I’ve replaced the iPad since—but ouch!
Let me know how the two screen combo works out, please!
no subject
Date: 2024-02-09 07:53 pm (UTC)I will keep you posted about the two screen solution. I expect to try it out at Thing the first weekend of March.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-09 07:57 pm (UTC)I’ll see you at Thing!
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