App to display chords - iPad or other

I get a lot of my tabs from sites like ukutabs, ultimate-guitar, etc. as well as the group class here and there. Is there an app that will let me import these into it, organize and display them? It would be great if the app scrolled and/or allowed me to make notes instead.

Feedback appreciated.


Thanks

There are lots of apps that let you display music. Most of them are glorified PDF readers but have features for musicians added - set lists, scrolling, etc. I have forScore but there are lots. You can add annotations if thats what you mean by "make notes". It isn't a tab editor or notation program though.

For iPad only, check out Onsong. It uses Chordie as its main database but you can manually enter or paste songs in also.

Onsong is good for iPad I think it's about a $12-15 ap, one time charge. Watch a tutorial, but basically it pulls off Chordie and converts the files to very user-friendly formats. You can also put your current files on it, our cut and paste from other sites or make song sheets from scratch. You can edit, which is super useful for cleaning up and condensing the text and correcting wrong lyrics (really helpful..sometimes it's like in "Bull Durham", young girls get wooly) also highlight chords, chords over text or in line, show or not show chord diagrams, add your own chords shapes, scroll (adjusted to your speed), change font size, and VERY helpful...transpose at the touch of your finger(so useful when playing with others and they play in a different key or when you are fiddling and trying to figure which key to sing it in. You can also email out sheets to friends or print or send to drop box or wirelessly share with folks you are playing with. You can put sticky notes anywhere but there is nothing for tab or standard notes. You can improvise a little bit of tab w keyboard to write out a very short lick, but it is a challenge and sometimes it gets crazy. All in all an excellent ap and it has freed me from carting heavy song books around and given me a huge library. Even if I could play by ear, which I can only do to a limited extent, I do need the lyrics for many songs and chord reminders certainly don't hurt. As Jim said, there are others and many folks like forscore, I only have used onsong but I am very satisfied.

You just reminded me, Steel, with your question: I still have to take photos of the six or so pages that I use constantly from Treasury of Ukulele Chords Paperback – June 1, 1998 by Roy Sakuma (Author) with my iPad Mini so that they are right there in my photo gallery. Thanks!

Thanks! I will check those out. OnSong sounds good. I'd like to be able to add little solo and intro tabs in line as well. It sounds like it may be flexible enough to do that.



Thanks again

Actually ForScore looks pretty good. It looks like I'd have to add any intros or riffs to the doc before importing though. For example, I have a Jack Johnson Strum and Sing book which is OK, but I'd want to add the tabs for intros, solos, etc. Maybe even not strum patterns.

This is heading in the right direction though.



Thanks

I would suggest that if using Onsong you try to limit the song database to the actual Chordpro or text styles. A lot of PDFs can really bog it down from what I've read. But I have no firsthand experience as I've only got 1 PDF in mine and it's a tab sheet including the notes on the staff. Trying to learn to fingerpick Vincent.

I guess I like SongBook over OnSong because you can display the chord diagrams on the side do the song instead of the bottom

I will look at SongBook too.

For people using ForScore I have a question. I imported songs in pdf form but some have links in a little blue oval on the chord which makes it hard to see the chord. How do I get rid of the blue oval?




Thanks

Question for SongBook users

It doesn't read .pdf. Without Adobe Acrobat how do I get my pdf files to a format that works in SongBook?



Thanks

I'm pretty sure the you need text (.txt) or chordpro for SongBook.

If a PDF is made from a doc file or other text based format and not made from an original graphic file format the text should be copy/pasteable from Acrobat Reader.

Found the hyperlink fix in forScore. It's under PDF annotations. Cool.

Now I just need a simple way to add my solo tabs to the PDF documents. Probably best to do this in Preview on the Mac.

For SongBook I'm not sure if I can get the PDFs to the proper format. Will have to look into that. I like the scrolling feature of SB so it would be nice.

Vanflynn: if you go into Settings>Song Formatting, you can move that summary of the chord diagrams used in the song from the bottom to the top of the song, or even put all the chord diagrams inline, like on sheet music.

OnSong is great for sharing songs with friends live over Bluetooth. I've have also been using the link between OnSong and the iTunes music on my iPad to play the song while reading the music, which then scrolls to the timing of the recorded song, rather than having to manually set the scroll speed. I also like being able to use the Airturn pedal with OnSong, so I'm not constantly looking down and poking the screen when performing.