Do You Use a Tablet, Rather than Books?

I use two apps on an Android tablet,
OpenSongApp which is free and designed by, I think, a chap in Scotland for Church/Worship use, but it works for heathens too. He runs a website and is very responsive to queries and with updates.
GuitarTapp Pro has a modest cost, (non Pro version is free), I think from Australia, infrequent updates and I've never received a reply to any queries.

Both have their pluses and minuses, I prefer OpenSong, but use GuitarTapp when I need backing tracks, because it links easier and adjusts the text scrolling to mp3s.

Either way, I think any app will only work as good as the work you put into setting it up for your usage. I see a lot of negative reviews on Google Play for example from people who seem to expect instant perfection wthout reading the manual or putting in the work.

I do not download chordsheets directly to the apps, I create .txt files and place these in the appropriate directory.
There are a number of reasons for this;
1. The internet is not always correct.
2. Different fonts from the source to the app can result in chord symbols being wrongly positioned. I always use a font with equal spacing for each letter.
3. I adjust each line of lyrics so that they will contain the same number of bars so that all song sections scroll at the same rate.
4. Probably others I can't recall.

Vintage
 
VintageGibson said:
I use two apps on an Android tablet,
1. The internet is not always correct.
Click to expand...

Yes! When it comes to chord charts, my experience is that the internet is rarely correct. And even more rarely correct and complete.

I use a large iPad Pro with the unrealbook app, and make all my charts by hand (and ear). I use PDFs, and can almost always fit a song on one page, so I don't need to scroll. (American Pie is a notable exception!) Using PDFs, I loose the ability to instantly transpose, which I know is important to some, but it's not often an issue. I mostly play with acoustic guitarists, who generally have no hang-ups about using capos. Sometimes I'll write a song up in two keys, and that plus a capo covers most vocal ranges.

I have more than 3000 song charts on my iPad--I can't imagine how many paper binders that would fill up!

- FiL

- FiL
 
i read both ebooks and paperbacks. I also mostly work on my tablet or laptop to write an essay in college, some writing, and more. I'm so comfortable. Now, by the way, I'm working on creating a speech about the importance of reforming the education sector in today's context. I dig this speech writing service. A very good platform to do both your writing and help writing speeches, presentations, and more. I strongly advise you to pay attention to this site.
 
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To me this is all comparatively new stuff I got into folk music back in late 1950's through local folk clubs where we got up an sang on the floor with no written material. We did write down the lyrics in our personal notebooks and sat at home working out guitar or banjo chords ready for the club evening. We did get some written material from the Sing Out magazine which we devoured eagerly. When I began getting interested in ukuleles and transfering the music I learnt long ago onto the ukulele I was amazed at the information and materials available out there.Until then my computer had been mainly used for my birding interests so sites like UU have opened up a whole new world for my musical interests although I still like to sit down and learn to play without my crib sheet which is usually my tablet.
 
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I use a Windows-based tablet both as an e-reader with the Kindle app and a pdf reader, but mostly I use it in conjunction with ABC files to both display music notation whilst playing the music at the same time ... I can get it to play melody whilst I strum along, (or vice-versa), even emulate a different instrument ... it's nice to have another "instrument" to play along with at home :)

If I find a piece of music in a "real" book that I can't quite get the "feel" for, I find it very useful to be able to transcribe it onto the tablet, then have it "play along" whilst I learn it ;)

However, I do have several feet of shelf space dedicated to music books, so I won't be changing over to "purely digital" anytime soon ;)

Enjoy :music:
 
FiL said:
I have more than 3000 song charts on my iPad--I can't imagine how many paper binders that would fill up!
- FiL
Click to expand...

A "standard" (approx 1 1/2" - 4cm) ring binder will hold 250-300 sheets of paper. With a song on each side of a sheet that's about 600 songs. 3,000 songs would likely need at least 5 A4 folders, rather more if, like me, you prefer the thinner folders. That's starting to get both bulky and heavy and needs a comprehensive index to be able to find anything easily!

Enjoy :music:
 
kypfer said:
A "standard" (approx 1 1/2" - 4cm) ring binder will hold 250-300 sheets of paper. With a song on each side of a sheet that's about 600 songs. 3,000 songs would likely need at least 5 A4 folders, rather more if, like me, you prefer the thinner folders. That's starting to get both bulky and heavy and needs a comprehensive index to be able to find anything easily!

Enjoy :music:
Click to expand...

It got to the point where I was wheeling a 25 lb suitcase to jam sessions - lots of books and papers. Now I have everything on a Kindle.
 
I had a couple binders, and an ever growing stack of music sitting on my home office desk. I recently cleared out a drawer in a small filing cabinet, and got my sheets of music organized. So far I've remained "old school" and resisted the tablets. I'm in desperate need of a new home computer, so I'm saving my money for that. Dyed in the wool Mac user.
 
I'm not trying to push anyone away from what they are accustomed to. If one is an Apple person, by all means stick with what's working for you. I write books and for better or worse, Amazon is my biggest distributor. So I'm pretty much tied to Kindle. A ten inch Kindle Fire sells for a hundred fifty bucks. MobileSheets pro is thirteen. The two of them do a very nice job of it. Not as many bells and whistles if one is into bells and whistles, but for a basic ukulele player headed out to the weekly hootenanny it works great. One can make it as simple or as complicated as they want. It does not have to be hard.

I'm not a high tech youngster and I struggle sometimes with it. I was one of those folks who grew up reading books, and by golly I wasn't comfortable reading anything that didn't have a cover and pages to turn. It just isn't the same, trying to read a book on a tablet. But that was before I actually read a book on a tablet. It did not take me long to make it to the dark side. The other day a friend and fellow musician was at my place to practice some stuff that we are going to do i n April at a festival. I got out the binder for some reason. I guess that I thought it would be easier for both of us to play together. It actually felt strange.
 
This has most likely already been stated, but....
I have a disability and have been told to limit my lifting to 10 pounds, ~4.5kg.

An iPad with OnSong (very powerful App) allows me to carry my ~3500 songs with me wherever my Ukulele goes.
Only issue is that my next tablet needs to be a physically larger size. Rotten aging eyes.

Nice thing about having it in the tablet is the ability to quickly change the key and choose whether or not to show fingering charts.
AND,
Have the same song, small differences, separated by each of the groups I play with.
AND,
I almost always have the song with me if a pick-up jam occurs. Or, if I have a WiFi signal, I download it.
 
Another Ukulele said:
This has most likely already been stated, but....
I have a disability and have been told to limit my lifting to 10 pounds, ~4.5kg.

An iPad with OnSong (very powerful App) allows me to carry my ~3500 songs with me wherever my Ukulele goes.
Only issue is that my next tablet needs to be a physically larger size. Rotten aging eyes.

Nice thing about having it in the tablet is the ability to quickly change the key and choose whether or not to show fingering charts.
AND,
Have the same song, small differences, separated by each of the groups I play with.
AND,
I almost always have the song with me if a pick-up jam occurs. Or, if I have a WiFi signal, I download it.
Click to expand...

Old eyes here too and along with it, a limited budget. I have Onsong on my reg sized iPad and look longingly at those with that great big ipad. It’s not something though that I’m gonna be able to afford anytime soon. What I was able to do is to increase the font size in Onsong to the max and for about $50 I got a Bluetooth page turner (since increasingly the font pushes you to more than one page). You can even go landscape mode for even bigger viewing. You could just scroll, but I need to be able to start and stop easily hands free cuz we often insert breaks of varying length into songs and the page turner works great for this.
 
Our group now has all its song in Dropbox, I download them into ForScore and view them on my 10 or 12” iPad, really works great.
 
Seven books and five binders. I'd love to put them into a tablet but my old eyes can't see the print of a tablet unless I increase the font to where flipping pages becomes an issue.
 
I prefer normal-sized books (9x12) over tablets. Otherwise, tablets are fine compared to books. Definitely, tablets are much smaller and hold a lot of music.
 
Bill1 said:
You can buy a 256Gb USB stick for AU$12. Why would you be bothering with dropbox anymore for your own stuff? Drop box style platforms are good for a shared resources, but you can now carry around 256Gb in a coin purse. ...
Click to expand...

The key is "carry around". With cloud storage, you don't have to carry around anything.
 
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