one larger songbook or several smaller songbooks?

Uncle Rod Higuchi

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STRUM is in the process of creating vol 2, when, out of the blue, I had the thought, why not simply update and enlarge our current Songbook (about 200 songs) by deleting the songs we don't generally select for our song circle, and add our Holiday songs, beef up our Hawaiian section, and add the songs we've recently been using both at song circles and for our occasional gigs?

So I need your input. Would you rather carry around 2 or 3, 200-song songbooks, or have one, updated and enlarged edition of say 350 to 400 songs in one volume?

Some of our ukulele groups in Seattle have been working out of several songbooks and it's always confusing both to the person making the selection of a song and for those looking to find where that song is (ie, which songbook it's in).

What are your experiences with multiple songbook gatherings, and what would your preference be, per the primary question above?

Mahalo, and keep uke'in',
 
Definitely just one volume if possible! In my instrumental uke ensemble, I'm probably the worst offender when it comes to neglecting to bring things that are in additional volumes - but even when the offender isn't me, it seems as if there's always someone who doesn't have the song in question or the most up-to-date version of it. Having everything pre-selected, all in one place, would be great.
 
Just another piece of info, one of the wonders of STRUM is what we affectionately call Franken-screen and Franken-file. One of our founders, Eric Klobas, created Frankenscreen out of plastic tubing, when he discovered the need for a vertically-oriented projection screen to better display songsheets, vs the horizontally-oriented screens that are commercially available.

At our weekly Wed meetings, Eric sets up Frankenscreen and with his Projector and Frankenfile, we literally play from the same page. Now, it sounds like we don't really need a songbook... and when Frankenscreen and Frankenfile are available, we don't. However, at gigs and occasional meet ups, it's good to have printed copies available, hence the thread.

keep uke'in',
 
...However, at gigs and occasional meet ups, it's good to have printed copies available, hence the thread.

keep uke'in',

That's where electronic wizardry comes in handy. Everything on a tablet - but you still have the problem of not everybody having uploaded all the songs. Although I like to have my songs on my iPad I will regularly find one I haven't up loaded.

You can't win :(
 
That's where electronic wizardry comes in handy. Everything on a tablet - but you still have the problem of not everybody having uploaded all the songs. Although I like to have my songs on my iPad I will regularly find one I haven't up loaded.

You can't win :(

+1 for the iPad! In my weekly acoustic music group (mostly guitars, but a munch of ukes, too), we basically went all-electronic a few years ago: iPads, tablets, and a few laptops. We use Dropbox to share our virtual songbook among more than 200 members, and it now contains more than 2000 songs. No need for bulky paper songbooks! The combination of Dropbox + iPad (or other tablet) has been a game-changer for us, although I did have to pony up for the paid version of Dropbox ($100/year) so I could restrict most of our users to read-only access because people kept accidentally deleting stuff from Dropbox.

Making the cultural shift from paper to tablet isn't easy if you have a big group, especially if it is full of technophobes, but we found that once people saw how well it worked, they pretty much all willingly bought into it.

- FiL
 
400 songs would be 200+ sheets of paper if printed double sided, that's quite a big book to lug around and would require a stout music stand. Santa Cruz has 3 books now and they have 200 songs per book, nice size.
 
I also think that a single humongous songbook would be a detriment.

It would be costly to reproduce each time it is updated. It would be harder to have held solidly when playing, and if it fell, it would be a sever distraction, possibly taking down other items around.

While it is tough if a certain person does not have all of the different smaller songbooks, that would affect one or 2, and not burden the whole group with a huge monstrous songbook.

I also am a HUGE fan of digital songbooks. I purchased the 808UkeJam songbooks while in Maui, but have also downloaded the digital versions and use that on my pc/tablets/etc. It is also easier to share with others when digital.
 
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