Tablet for Sheet Music?

the.ronin

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Anyone use a table for storing their sheet music? I was thinking of getting an 8" Asus zenpad cos the price is decent and it looks like a decent tablet. But I'm wondering if the backlight and contrast are enough to make up for the smaller screen versus an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.
 
A couple of years ago I used my iPad 9.7" when I couldn't lug around my notebook full of music sheets anymore, but the screen was not large enough. I heard even back then that Apple was going to come out with a 13" but even though I'm a total Apple fanboy, I knew I didn't want to spend close to $1000 on a tablet that I was only going to use for music.

I checked out Android apps and found MobileSheets that looked as good as what I was using on the iPad. I then found a Hannspree 13.3" 800x1280 tablet on sale at Amazon for $150 so I bought two (just in case one went out) and I've been very happy since. I'm a graphic designer and the software I use lends itself very well to custom size pdfs for the tablet. I will not go back to using paper again.
 
......I checked out Android apps and found MobileSheets that looked as good as what I was using on the iPad. I then found a Hannspree 13.3" 800x1280 tablet on sale at Amazon for $150 so I bought two (just in case one went out) and I've been very happy since. I'm a graphic designer and the software I use lends itself very well to custom size pdfs for the tablet. I will not go back to using paper again.

Unfortunately not available on Amazon any longer. Thanks for the tip though.
 
I sold my mini IPAd for the full size IPAD Air for this very purpose - so I can see better. I just want to point out two apps that I purchased.
ONSong and AUTOFLAP.
OnSong has a lot of features that I don't need . The 'continuous scroll' hurt my eyes.
AutoFlap is very basic , you can't even turn the screen to landscape mode but program flap time according to your skill. It works very very well with arrangements that are done in super large format e.g. Mike Lynch. It doesn't have zoom feature so it will be a struggle for 80% of the sheet music.
The backlight can be adjusted in the tablet if it is too bright for your eyes.
I too am thinking of a large size tablet for the same reason you have. Just not sure if they work as well with these two apps ?
 
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I would get something larger than 8" myself. Look for a 10" or 11" at least. I use paper books a lot, but also use my 11" laptop 2 in 1 that converts to a tablet.
 
Thanks everyone for the helpful replies. Yes, I was asking more about the size rather than the apps. Should I be aware of specific aspect ratios to best display am 8.5x11 size pdf file? I'm still leaning towards an 8" even if its not the best size for reading sheet music because of the extreme portability and price. But I plan to go to a Bestbuy just to see the different sizes in general.

Thanks again.
 
I had the iPad Air but now that I'm getting older I find my eyes are not what they used to be so I sold it and switched to the iPad Pro. The big screen is wonderful and I couldn't be happier. It was more money than I wanted to pay but worth it since I read a lot of newspapers, magazines and the sheet music on it.
 
Hey Ronin,
I play over at Island Bazaar in Huntington Beach (greatest place ever) and we've all pretty much switched over to tablets. When you start carrying two 5" ring binders full of music, it's time to switch.

I really only need a tablet for sheet music, so I use an iPad 1 and I prefer "Goodreader" as an app. The people who make Goodreader stopped supporting the first iPad, so it's now unavail for iPad 1.

I recently found another iPad 1 pretty cheap, so I picked it up and decided on the "PDF Connect" app. It works just fine and has a scroll feature. I think it's $5.99 on the iTunes store. But there are a bunch of apps for managing PDFs that I'm sure would work just as well.

Shirley Orlando, the owner of Island Bazaar, just bought (or I guess we bought it for her :) ) an iPad Pro with the 8.5x11 screen. It is a sheet music dream! But, it's like $900 and that is a lot to shell out for a sheet music book.

There's a CD floating around with about 1 million ukulele pdfs we use to load up the iPads. I see you're in Long Beach, come to the jam on Sunday at 2pm and we'll hook ya up! :)
 
I have the iPad, and would like to upgrade to the iPad pro if they come down in price a little. I might have to wait until my old iPad wears out, before I can justify such a big purchase. If I was only reading lyric sheets with chords, the iPad size can work out fine, especially if you use the OnSong format. I usually copy and paste lyrics from the web, and insert the chord names in the onSong ap. You can control the font size and transpose at this point and scroll or jump to the bottom of the song when needed. Reading tabs on an iPad "regular" can be a bit difficult, unless you make the fret numbers bold and large in an app like Guitar Pro. For performances, I like to keep things simple and switch to paper (or have it handy), just because the app might decide to crash at just the wrong time. We had one summer performance where an overheated iPad just turned itself off. The tablet is superior in low light situations, and you can turn down the brightness to a comfortable level. In direct sunlight, paper is better.

–Lori
 
iPad Air 2.
I use Set List Maker to store the PDFs on the iPad and display them for playing.
Airturn PED lets me use my foot to scroll up and down so I can put the iPad in landscape mode and scroll through the page.
MuseScore2 on my PC lets me create pretty good PDFs of the music I want. A bit labor intensive, but I get exactly what I want.
 
Well, if you really want a larger tablet, Samsung makes a 18.9" one that stands up by itself. :p

I had a Galaxy Note 8" and was not particularly thrilled with the size of PDFs displayed on it. If I had the funds, I'd be looking into the 12.2" Galaxy Pro (yes, I love Samsung's tablets and phones).
 
Here's what I did: I found the specs for several tablets and copied down their screen dimensions. Then I took some of my uke tab PDF files and printed them out, scaled to fit the screens. The printer dialog box lets you scale the printout by a percentage -- you could calculate the exact percentage you need to make an 8.5x11 PDF fit the screen -- or you could simply make printouts at 90%, 80%, 70%... and see what fits.

Set the printouts on a music stand, or wherever you put tab when you play it, and see if you can read it under good lighting. Now you have an idea of what size screen you'll need.

I can read chord/lyric sheets on an 8.9" screen, but I wouldn't like to read sheet music on a screen that small. My son plays piano from fakebook lead sheets on a 10" Lenovo tablet, usually in landscape position, and he is happy, but he has young eyes!

Maybe if we all bombard the tablet makers with emails, they'll finally make a tablet with a screen that's 8.5x11 (or A4 I'd still be happy).
 
I see the benefits of having your music at all time, but I tried and just didn't care for it. Most of my music is multiple pages and I didn't care of for having to turn pages or using a page turning device. Guess with this I'm just old fashioned -- I like good ole' paper in a protective sleeve, kept in 3-ring binder. No, I don't keep ALL my music in there. Just stuff "in rotation."
 
I have found the DragonTouch 10" tablet to be a great value for the money. It is an Android Tablet that I got from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0... touch&qid=1457216597&ref_=sr_1_4&s=pc&sr=1-4

It is $119.

I use Ultimate Guitar Tabs & Chords for Android. This has a bunch of tabs, including Ukulele tabs. One feature is that it will "crawl" up the screen at a user set speed, so you do not have to turn pages. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ultimateguitar.tabs&hl=en

I do not have a large collection of my own tabs, so this works well for me. I believe you can upload your own if you have them in a compatible format.
 
I do all of my own tabs on my Mac with Guitar Pro. I also use an ipad air, with Guitar Pro's tablet app for viewing my own arrangements, and Goodreader to view PDFs of mine and other people's arrangements. Usually I download straight from UU posters into Goodreader on my tablet, which currently has Wilfried Welti's ebooks, and dozens of classical and celtic tunes from Uke Val, Campbell, Jonathan Lewis, and all of the other great tabbers working out there. I play out of a few published books but mostly everything is on my tablet. Maybe someday I'll get a Ipad Pro for some more screen space...
 
I've got an HP Notebook which "doubles" as a tablet as the screen swings around and folds down to the keyboard. With it's 12" diagonal screen it's as easy to read as an A4 sheet of paper if the ambient light isn't too bright ... not practical outdoors on a sunny day. I've tried it on my music stand at home, but I got so paranoid about knocking it onto the floor that I gave that idea a miss. Overall, a ring-binder (or several) full of sheets of paper is a lot cheaper to replace in the event of catastrophe and is easier to use in a wider range of situations :)

Obviously YMMV ;)
 
I use an iPad Air 2 as my main PDF reader (and sometimes for epubs, too, but I prefer the smaller Nexus 7 for plain text books). When I get around to picking up Guitar Pro (don't see the need for myself yet, but it's on the list), their iOS app will be a go-to app, too.

The iPad Pro is interesting, but I shy away from Apple's first gen hardware, and actually find it too large for a general purpose tablet -- and too costly for a PDF reader. Plus, I'm still amazed at the Air 2, even after over a year of grabbing it. Huge step up from the iPad 2 (non-Air) I had before. If the second gen of the Pro comes with breakthrough features such as Force Touch or an unlikely hybrid iOS/OSX solution, I'll probably yield. :)
 
I use a Nook reader. Barnes & Noble sell new ones for $129 so you can get a used reader for much less.
I side load PDFs from my home computer usually into files for that meeting or jam.
I don't have to depend on WiFi, passwords, funny formats at the site as I've already worked it out before hand.
Now I show up with ukulele in one hand and the nook mounted on a stand in the other. I used to show up with everything in a wheeled backpack that was like scaled down carry on luggage. Now it is "give me the simple life".
I can't make changes on the fly like adding flavor chords or strum patterns that presenters suggest at sessions and some use a continuous PDF and don't have a page break between songs, these are the only glitches I've come across so far.
 
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