What is the best approach and/or software for moving images of lead sheets to a laptop display, and organizing their files for use during rehearsal and performance?

Any thoughts you have or ecperience you care to share on this will be most appreciated.

Merrill

Merrill, do a seach on this forum and you will find info. Also search for "Music Pad Pro" or maybe string those words together.

DonM uses Word for a laptop.

If you say ANY then I have also something to say...

...why not using the traditional way of moving lead sheets? I think there's really no need to change from paper to a screen.

BTW: Sometimes it seems to me that nobody is able to do anything without a PC anymore. Sometimes I'm asking myself what our ancestors did in such situations...*lol*

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

I kinda wish I could get regular music (not lead sheet) into a laptop or something and just use like a foot peadal or something to turn pages...

I know they have something like this.. a Friend of ours was watching a show in Vegas and all the musicians in the orchestra had monitors in front of them for there music...

It would be pretty neat to be able to play songs without having to mess with page turns etc..

Hey, that's easy!!! I'm doing it since I'm playing guitar (since about 20 years). I have always formed a picture of the music sheets in my mind...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

Go to the web site music123.com and do a search for "Music Pad Pro Plus" It's a device that is pretty much what looks to me what you'd want if you have $1199. US dollars to spend. I just got a catalog from them in today's mail. It's in that catalog.

I've owned my MusicPad Pro+ for 2 months now and I don't know how I lived without it. Pricey, but 'worth every penny' to me. I've got all my essential song charts (from lyrics to leadsheets) all in ONE place now. Some special features include, intuitive touch screen (via finger or pen) a very bright EZ to read screen, maximizing the viewable dimensions of standard sheet & lead sheet charts, the ability to mark up and edit lyrics, chords, and even the idiviual notes on the staff, unlimited storage via removeable USB pen drive, custom playlists etc. Convenient 'tap the screen' page turning or via footpedal if desired, Quick recall of any song in my growing 1,000+ song library. Some initial work is required to get your music in, but thru the combined efforts of other musicpad owners here (and swapping files), as well as direct import of digital leadsheet files, its pretty quick:
http://www.music123.com/Freehand-Music-Pad-Pro-Plus-i152034.music
http://freehandsystems.com/products.html

Scott


[This message has been edited by Scottyee (edited 04-30-2005).]

Woah, a metal stand doesn't cost more than 20 $US I guess. Merill, if you do not really need this tool right now then I would advise you to wait a while until the price will be fallen. Or try to get a 'free version' maybe from your PC friends... ...nooooo, I would never suggest you to search for illegal warez...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

Hi Sheriff: I certainly understand the concern about cost, but to bring a little more perspective on this. Quite a few people seem willing to spend DOUBLE the cost of the MusicPad Pro just to upgrade their current keyboard to the latest (current) model. Considering the fact that sheet music, lead sheets, or lyrics are often an equally important element to helping us create music on our keyboard, I believe (if one's current keyboard is adequate sounding, that investing in a device such as the MusicPad Pro a worthy investment. No more having to drag a stack of fakebooks to a gig, and find the song in the OTHER fakebook which I left at home. - Scott

I've been reading this thread with some degree of fascination. I figured there must be a simple solution to the problem of placing sheet music on your desktop of laptop computer and have the ability to scroll down the page without using your hands.

Placing the sheet music on the computer was a snap using in inexpensive flatbed scanner. Lots of options here, many of which don't require a lot of expensive hardware or software. The scanner is an HP Scanjet 4300-C which I picked up at Best Buy for $69. (I'm sure someone can find it cheaper on the Internet)

I scanned a page out of one of my fake books into Microsoft Word 2000, which took less than 30 seconds. The page display was then set to the screen width, allmost all of the toolbars were removed from the view at the top of the page to add more space, and the bottom bar is dragged below the screen so it too adds to the viewable area.

Now the trick was to scroll down the page without using my hands. Piece of cake! I placed a wireless, scrolling-wheel mouse on a rubber pad on the floor in the opposite direction it would normally be held in your hand. The pad held the mouse firmly in place, but if movement were a problem, you could easily velcro the mouse to a small plywood base with rubber nubs on the bottom to prevent slippage. Now, by resting my foot on the scrolling wheel, when I slide my foot forward, the music scrolls down the screen. It's that simple. Look Mom--no hands.

Now, if I could read sheet music this would be an even better tool. For those of you that can, problem solved.

BTW: The entire file was only 135 kb, which is extremely small. After opening Micrsoft Word, the document loaded in less than a second.

Cheers from an old man,

Gary

hmm great info...expensive but man that would be sweet... we have a whole living room full of songbooks, take foreve to scan in tho I guess... can it be set up for 2 or more people to look at the same sheet of music at the same time like each one having there own computer monitor or something.. and one person controlls the main unit with a footswitch etc.. like if your had 4-5 people playing the same part they could all read the same music at the same time... or would they each have to gulp spend the $1100 to indiviual ones... I guess my question is can they be chained together ???

My Dell laptop cost me $599 after a $100 rebate. It has a network card, so I imagine that if the computers were networked together with a wireless router, there would be a way that one person could control the scrolling, but I'm not a computer wiz and I'm not sure. That's a question for the computer gurus on the forum.

As for the scanning time, it only took about 20 to 30 seconds to scan a page at fairly high resolution. I guess if you were going to scan every song in every book it would take quite a bit of time. However, I have more than a dozen fake books, and there are lots of songs in each book that I do not play at all.

One thing I forgot in the previous post. All the songs can be placed in a single folder and Windows automatically arrages them alphabetically. So search time is fast as well. Merely press the first letter of the song and then scroll to the title and press enter.

Cheers,

Gary

hmm i like your idea to travellin I guess I must have somehow skipped it in my first read...

thats something to think about to (grr I dont have a laptop) maybe Ill have to return the $300 dvd player I just bought and get a laptop which can play movies and do music too hehe

I just scanned In The Still Of The Night into MS Word and for anyone that wants to see what it looks like in that program, you can find it at Click Here save it to a file, then load it using MS Word or Notepad.

Gary

Hi,
probably not suitable for what you want, but I've just started playing round with One Man Band & Busker software.

One Man Band loads jpeg file, ( scanned sheet music) Busker you type score, chords etc in. They scroll as you play using psr styles.
http://www.1manband.nl/whatsnew.htm http://www.1manband.nl/busker/index.htm


best wishes
Rikki

There is a software called Pivot Pro
http://personalcomputing.portrait.com/us/products/pp_overview.html

that does what its name implies, namely pivots the screen....

If it works as advertised, there exists an alternative to what Scott bought, which between us I believe is "the real thing" versus "tricks", because it does many more things.

Alternatively search the internet for "tablet" PC's that look like screens with the Pc within...

Microsoft how to buy: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/howtobuy/default.mspx

Example of such product: http://mobileoffice.about.com/od/laptoptabletpcreviews/gr/fujitsu5011dc.htm

If "tricks" like this software work, you may do the same job for less money.
I hope this helps someone,
Theodore


P.S. I surely won't recognize an Asus4 even if it falls on my head, but at least I know
one or two things about technology.



[This message has been edited by trident (edited 05-01-2005).]

Well, I thought you would use it for your own home music. And therefore theres really no need for such a software. But now I see that this program you'll need is a kind of karaoke software...

I really thought that you would see the whole partiture but now I see that you're only using sheets like that we'd used as we were little children...*lol*

Sorry, I couldn't resist...
And a 2nd sorry because I thought I could help you but I couldn't...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

[This message has been edited by Sheriff (edited 05-01-2005).]

In my laptop I have a main page with all my music, both lyric pages and music notation pages.
I also and lists of songs I know without music notation, and a list of songs were no lyrics are needed.

Here is where I start to build what I need.
If it is a sing-a-long, I have a folder with just sing-a-long songs. If a want three or four songs in a set, (Normally lyrics) they are all put in word on one page. Scroll down the same page for a group of songs that I feel go well together. The same ofr my music notation program. At the top of the page there are page numbers. Load a page, click on a number and you have your songs -- no loading between songs in a set.

I have about 12 folders in my lap top for different occasions. All the songs are copied from the master list.

I do not feel you can be as effective with books, be it at home or on the job. It's not as heavy as the books -- verything can be edited easily.

JOhn C.

We have the same thread going on two forums. http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum25/HTML/003181.html
Bernie

Duh!

ok then, we here have more replies.
We win
ROFL

And I was a part of it!!!!!!!!
That's a story I could still tell my children's children...*lol*

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

Ladies and Gentlemen,
that was a perfect example of an in-topic post gone to hell....
And only Europeans are to blame, North and South combined.

Anyway, serious now , did anyone try the software I suggested, or had a look at the tablet PC's? They seem quite good.

Before finally deciding on going with the MusicPad Pro, I spent a lot of time analyzing and comparing not only the costs, but the setup work required, in going with a MusicPad Pro, vs a standard laptop PC, or even a Tablet PC. I wrote-off tablet PCs from the 'get go' because they're a lot more costly than even the MusicPad Pro is, of which is a tablet PC too.

My findings are that even though a standard laptop PC may be cheaper, a laptop's landscape mode format with flip down keyboard really interferes with viewing accessibility, on stage mounting, as well as appearance on stage. No matter how positioned on stage, it always looks (to the audience) like you're working at your computer, not creating live music. A few years back, working acoustic piano bar gigs, I used to utilize a laptop PC for lyrics & chords, as well as for occasionally running midi backing tracks. The patrons often seemed more interested in what was coming from the laptop screen than what I was playing live, In my experience, a traditional style laptop PC on stage has become more synonomous with hi-tech geek-dom then acoustically inspired LIVE keyboard-vocals. Whether it's being asian (asians & computer geekdom have become stereotypically synomomous), or something else, I've found a laptop PC on stage more a distraction giving my audiences the impression I'm a karaoke DJ rather than legitimate musician.

On the other hand, the MusicPad Pro is (on my gigs) not perceived as a computing device (even though it is) and instead, a non-distracting screen, similar to the LCD screen on my Tyros. The MusicPad Pro seamlessly integrates un-noticeably in my setup, resulting in no bulky distracting music stands, fakebooks, or loose sheets to contend with anymore either. I've got any one of many hundreds of song charts stored in my MusicPad called up (as required) by merely tapping the screen, and in under 8 seconds (or less), and because I only utilize the device for viewing charts/lyrics as a road sign reminder, it gives the desired audience impression that I'm able to play just about anything off the top of my head now.

In the rehearsal studio, all on the MusicPad alone, I'm able to arrange, make editing changes, add arranger instructions & notations to the music writing directly on the screen itself (no pencils or erasure marks) and the results look as clean as the original score because it all remains in digital format. Yes, the MusicPad is more expensive, but its superior viewability specifically designed for Music format Display & editing cabilities outpace a PC laptop in all areas of music display. . . period. In addition, the size of the notes and text of the music can often be auto resized to appear significantly larger than on the original paper version of the music because all margins are cropped to eliminate ALL wasted surrounding white area, and the bright no glare backlight screen afforeds ez view from most all angles: both close, to the side, and well as pretty far away from the screen as well, making for convenient viewing by not only the primary player, but other musicians on stage as well. With the MusicPad Pro, no screen scrolling (via having to press a key) as a PC laptop requires, as you have the option of triggering page turning via footpedal, or simply tapping the screen anywhere. I'm not knocking the laptop for its power to do many different things not music display related, but think that for the performing musician, the MusicPad Pro a far better value, for the music display/editing tasks it was specifically designed for.

My dad taught me to utilize the best tool designed for a specific task. I'm glad I listened to him.

Scott

[This message has been edited by Scottyee (edited 05-01-2005).]

Hi to everuone,
I also have been following this thread with much interest as our music is all hand written on manuscript paper (very neat) but having to carry a duplication of numerous ring binders full of paper (very heavy) for 2 individual keyboard players I've often thought there must be a better way of working.

I tried scanning a sheet of music into MS Word 2000 & the results are very good including all of the colour highlighting, except all 4 edges of the sheet are cut off/missing. If I scan the same music into Photostudio 2000 the music is reproduced exactly but only in black & white. I would be greatful if someone could tell me if i'm doing something wrong & point me in the right direction.

I've been following Scott's reports on the Music Pad Pro & while this seems like the ideal tool, in our situation we may need 2 of them with 2 keyboards sitting side by side with a space between them. (A very expensive option down here).

Yours In Music
Alan

Allen,

You must set up your flatbed scanner for documents, and then set the scanner's margin width. Most documents, lettes, etc, have one-inch margins all the way around. Most sheet music goes almost to the edge of the page on both sides and the bottom. Just set up the scanner so it has no margins and that should solve your problem.

Cheers,

Gary

This seems to be a really good and tricky idea. The only point that bugs me is the 'wireless' option because I've used a wireless mouse and I was not very impressed. After 2 short weeks the battery started to faint. I didn't realize that at first because the mouse didn't work correct on screen which is normal for track balls. I realized it the first time when the mouse receiver didn't receive a signal transmitted by the mouse anymore.
You can't imagine the joy that I had - a non-reacting windows. You can't swap the mouse while the PC is running so I couldn't shut down my PC on its normal way. Only the little switch at the back of my power supply could fix this problem...

...et cetero censeo Microsoftem esse delendam...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

A laptop isn't really lighter, I'm afraid!
Maybe a small palmtop with a clear display...or better with the option to connect an external LCD screen AND the option to connect a mouse because without a mouse Gary's trick wouldn't work fine...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

http://www.kn7000.net/fusion_forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=2&thread_id=22#70

Kind regards
Kenneth www.kn7000.net

I use a wireless mouse at the office every day, 12 to 14 hours daily, also a wireless keyboard. I only have to change the battery in the mouse about once every three months, and the one in the keyboard has not been changed in six months. Batteries will eventually fail, including those in my wireless mic system. That's why I have lots of spares with me at all times. The only think I don't have a spare for is my wife--but there have been times when it was considered for a few moments.

Cheers,

Gary

Terry Mason in the UK emailed me and reminded me of something I almost forgot about. With a scrolling wheel mouse, if you hold down the control key on your keyboard, then move the scrolling wheel, you can enlarge or shrink the screen's display.

Try it--it works great, especially for old, poor-sigted guys such as myself.

Gary

Hi Gary,
your wife , like my hubby, obviously doesn't read the forums ( haa haa)

best wishes
Rikki

Check out this automatic page turner.

Just when you thought you saw it all!!
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=2144

Jerry

Thanks Jerry--wild gadget for those still using books.

Gary