Hi Guy`s

Is it possible to display Lyrics & Notation ( non MIDI file ) on either the E-80 or the Pa800 ?

I know that both can import your own lyrics via .txt file , but what about notation ?

Is there a software program ( for Mac`s ) that will allow me to import notation with the lyrics , so I can make my own "music finder ~ song book".

I know they all come with a music rack !!

But it would be so convenient to have all my favorite songs right on the display.

Well , many thanks ( again ) for all your help !! ( Still looking )

Take care

Gary 

Hi,
The PA series will only display lyrics and chords embedded in a MIDI/MP3 file, or if they are just a basic ASCII text file. They are not capable of displaying notation in either case. It is even still that way on the PA2X... Its why I bought the Music Pad Pro!! Excellent bit of kit!!!

If you must read charts while you play this is the best way to go.....
http://www.freehandsystems.com/

Hi Guy`s

Thank you for your help.

Hey Donny, that is a neat gadget albeit way to pricey , I guess I`ll stick to sheet music.

That is , well you know !!

Take care, later !
Gary 

My E 80 displays Lyrics with chords or the score and you can switch back and forth with one button push.
Bebop

Quote: "Breathing new life into the keyboard market this powerful music workstation not only offers the top class efforts of programmers around the globe so that the home user can press a button and sound like a full live band but it also allows the product to have the functionality of a workstation with 16 track sequencing, notation and lyric display, colour touch screen, pattern recording, vocal harmonisation and USB file transfer - but only if you want to use it!!! The power of the E-80 lies in its astounding ease of use whilst utilizing the full benefit of its feature packed unit at the touch of one button. "

Yes Donny, the MPP is a great tool for those songs that you just can't remember because they are requested so infrequently, or for those songs that you feel like playing sometimes but couldn't be bothered learning.It is a bit pricey but a one off purchase, with years of use.
And to Bebop, if I remember correctly the E50 and E60 can also read notation/lyrics/chords.Its a pity other makers couldn't adopt a few of Rolands' very handy features.
Dennis

Hi Guy`s & BEBOP,

I know that the E-80 can display both Lyrics and Notation , from a midi file.

What I was asking is if there is a way to create my own music finder or song book. ( without the use of midi files )

Something like the importing of lyrics but the ability to import notation as well.

Anyway , thanks again for all your help !!

Take care,
Gary 

Like Miden said, you can create a songbook of text lyrics with registrations, but not notation.

The E80 will display .BMP files (a type of graphic file) linked to registrations. You can scan your charts, save as .BMP and import directly to the E80.

The E80 manual is available at roland-arranger.com if you need to get more info on how this is done...

The G70 does not have this capability (sadly!).

Hi Guy`s,

Thanks Bernie , Diki , I was thinking the same thing or I could just write cords in but because of the font limitations ( ASCI ) I think a converted .bmp is a better way to go.

The only problem is that sometimes I have to rely on reading notes. O__ well !

Still along way to go , and still taking my time.

Great help and thanks !

I have been reading the manuals on just about every KB out there !!

Once I decide , I should ( maybe LOL ) know what to do , once I get it out of the box that is !!!

Take care
Gary 

Gary
I know what you mean about the old crutch, that's why I have a Musicpad Pro. I know a lot of songs by memory, but play so many I didn't bother to sit down and really learn them. It is too easy to have the score in front of you, eventhough I try not to even glance at it because of eye contact.

Maybe before the final song is played, I will have gotten rid of this nasty habit.
Bernie

Hey Bernie, fwiw its not a nasty habit at all, just another tool to be used whenever needed. I have not met anyone yet who knows the chord progression/inversions, melody and lyrics to every song known, some try to do a bit of a hatchet job and fake their way (which even non-musician people can hear!!) through a lot of songs, but not every song!! And I am sure the few thousand users of the MPP would, PROBABLY, agree
Dennis

Hi Guy`s,

I guess I`ll have another look at the MPP , still pricey , but worth another look !

I know a few songs by memory , but for most I still need the music in front of me.

Lyrics , no problem , it`s the notation , you know , breaks, key changes , the right chords , stuff like that.

Anyway , well you know , Thanks !!

Gary 

Here is a free program for digital sheet music.
http://virtmus.com/

Of course there is an easy option that will allow you to do all this and more. Merely purchase an inexpensive laptop computer. This will allow you to create your own Music Finder, display lyrics in a font that even old eyes like mine can read, scan sheet music into a word processor such as MS Word, store huge numbers of midi and MP3 files, and access everything at the touch of a tiny, wireless mouse positioned where your audience cannot see.

The advantages of using a laptop for lyrics, sheet music, and other music related programs are endless. You can even go on the Internet, download lyrics or sheet music directly into the laptop, and display them instantly.

There are a lot of entertainers using laptops now, and that number will likely grow. You can purchase a laptop at local, used computer shows for under $300, and many of them come with a 1-year warrenty. At the current price of an MPP you could buy the best laptop around and still have lots of money left to spend on other accessories.

Good Luck on your decission,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Excactly Gary

First off let me say I have tried using a laptop in a live situation, so I have a bit of experience with a laptop and an MPP.
Laptops are good for a lot of things, and are okay if all you want to do is play midi files, MP3's or set up songlists etc all of which can be achieved using simple to use one-off programs (winamp, media player to name just 2).
But imagine trying to have all these things going at once, midi file player, a song list, a viewer for your charts,an audio file player etc etc and then getting them all to be performing the same song at the same time on one device and it gets quite "awkward" to say the least in a live setting.
Now there are programs that can accomplish this but at a very hefty price, that then must be added to the cost of the laptop.

As to the practicalities, I have found it's a bit hard to turn pages using a mouse when playing a keyboard with both hands.
Also a laptop has a much larger "footprint" and is more tricky to place in the ideal spot for viewing charts (without blocking your face) when playing live, whereas the MPP has a much neater profile, much easier to position where you can see it and the audience can see you, and is exactly the same as using a music stand and pages can be turned by use of a footswitch.

Try turning a laptop around by 90 degrees , bit hard to read hey? Or try turning pages without a keyboard or mouse?

Plus the MPP has a touch screen which does make it rather more practical for live work. Plus it will also play and store MP3's..
And for the price of an MPP yes,you will maybe get a decent "Budget" laptop, but not the "best one around with money left over" And you certainly do NOT want to buy a second hand laptop for many reasons that I will not go into here.
Also pretty much all laptops have noise issues when trying to run audio from the inbuilt soundcard (even the MPP does), so an external audio interface is required.
Plus try dropping a laptop from the height of a music stand whilst the hard drive is running and see what happens.
There are a few testimonials on the MPP forums about owners dropping their MPP, or having them knocked over by punters, and they still work perfectly.
I am not trying to tell people what they should use, just that the MPP has a vitally useful role in my live setup. A laptop is perfect if you want to only have a device for storing songs to just play without having to read anything on the screen as you can place it at your side or behind you etc etc. In my setup the keyboard stores all the data for the songs, MP3's, WAV's Midi's, and all my charts appear on the MPP. To me it is an elegant and ultimately practical setup and worth every cent.
Dennis
PS sorry for the long post!!!

Still not quite sure why the .BMP on the E80 function can't do all he needs.... No need for a laptop or MPP. If a larger display is needed, you can hook up a small LCD monitor to the E80's video out, and display the screen .BMP a bit larger...

Scan your current cheat sheets, and link them to the registration for each song - away you go!

Hi Guy`s,

Scott , thanks for the link , I`ll check it out !!

Gary , Donny & Dennis , Thank you for your input.
The lap top ( note book ) idea is something to think about. At some point I will be getting a Mac-Book or MB Pro , but not to use as just an electronic music book , although it is a great idea , but how do or would you turn the page so to speak , if you had to.

Please keep in mind , that the music stand that comes with the KB is probably what I will end up using , it just would have been neat to make up your own music finder or song book of the songs you actually play !
And on the right KB maybe free up some ram in the process.

I really appreciate all the help I have been receiving and want to thank you again for ALL the help and advice you have given me. Without a decent music store around , you guy`s have sure helped a ton !!

It seems , at least at the rate I`m going , that the Tyros 4 will be on the market before I make my mind up

But that`s cool , like Donny said in another post , "it`s the person who buy`s for home use that takes the biggest hit " ( or to that effect ) meaning that by not giging there really is no why to recoup the cost , so that is why I`m just getting as much info as possible and trying to cover all my bases and options.

So once again , you guy`s have helped BIG time , many thanks !!

Take care,
Gary 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jedi:
[B]Hi Guy`s,

Scott , thanks for the link , I`ll check it out !!

Gary , Donny , Dennis & Diki , Thank you for your input.
The lap top ( note book ) idea is something to think about. At some point I will be getting a Mac-Book or MB Pro , but not to use as just an electronic music book , although it is a great idea , but how do or would you turn the page so to speak , if you had to.

Please keep in mind , that the music stand that comes with the KB is probably what I will end up using , it just would have been neat to make up your own music finder or song book of the songs you actually play !
And on the right KB maybe free up some ram in the process.

I really appreciate all the help I have been receiving and want to thank you again for ALL the help and advice you have given me. Without a decent music store around , you guy`s have sure helped a ton !!

It seems , at least at the rate I`m going , that the Tyros 4 will be on the market before I make my mind up

But that`s cool , like Donny said in another post , "it`s the person who buy`s for home use that takes the biggest hit " ( or to that effect ) meaning that by not giging there really is no why to recoup the cost , so that is why I`m just getting as much info as possible and trying to cover all my bases and options.

So once again , you guy`s have helped BIG time , many thanks !!

Take care,
Gary 

Hi Guy`s,

Scott , thanks for the link , I`ll check it out !!

Gary , Donny , Dennis & Diki , Thank you for your input.
The lap top ( note book ) idea is something to think about. At some point I will be getting a Mac-Book or MB Pro , but not to use as just an electronic music book , although it is a great idea , but how do or would you turn the page so to speak , if you had to.

Please keep in mind , that the music stand that comes with the KB is probably what I will end up using , it just would have been neat to make up your own music finder or song book of the songs you actually play !
And on the right KB maybe free up some ram in the process.

I really appreciate all the help I have been receiving and want to thank you again for ALL the help and advice you have given me. Without a decent music store around , you guy`s have sure helped a ton !!

It seems , at least at the rate I`m going , that the Tyros 4 will be on the market before I make my mind up

But that`s cool , like Donny said in another post , "it`s the person who buy`s for home use that takes the biggest hit " ( or to that effect ) meaning that by not giging there really is no why to recoup the cost , so that is why I`m just getting as much info as possible and trying to cover all my bases and options.

So once again , you guy`s have helped BIG time , many thanks !!

Take care,
Gary 

Hi Guy`s,

Scott , thanks for the link , I`ll check it out !!

Gary , Donny , Dennis & Diki , Thank you for your input.
The lap top ( note book ) idea is something to think about. At some point I will be getting a Mac-Book or MB Pro , but not to use as just an electronic music book , although it is a great idea , but how do or would you turn the page so to speak , if you had to.

Please keep in mind , that the music stand that comes with the KB is probably what I will end up using , it just would have been neat to make up your own music finder or song book of the songs you actually play !
And on the right KB maybe free up some ram in the process.

I really appreciate all the help I have been receiving and want to thank you again for ALL the help and advice you have given me. Without a decent music store around , you guy`s have sure helped a ton !!

It seems , at least at the rate I`m going , that the Tyros 4 will be on the market before I make my mind up

But that`s cool , like Donny said in another post , "it`s the person who buy`s for home use that takes the biggest hit " ( or to that effect ) meaning that by not giging there really is no why to recoup the cost , so that is why I`m just getting as much info as possible and trying to cover all my bases and options.

So once again , you guy`s have helped BIG time , many thanks !!

Take care,
Gary 

Yeah, I agree with you Diki, It seems the tool is already there, and BMP's give very good resolution as they are uncompressed. Its certainly a method I would investigate further before buying either a laptop or an MPP. I bought the MPP simply because the G70 can't and neither can the PA2x.
Dennis

Sorry, just to add the above post..The only drawback MIGHT be the screen size available on the E80, although from what I have seen it is bigger than most.

jedi

I just scanned your posts. The thing that caught my eye was about using a laptop on it's side vs mpp etc.

If you look at the virtmus info there are footswitches for turning pages forward and backward. I don't think the MPP has that feature.

As far as using virtmus and turning a laptop on it's side using a good music stand, what's the dif between that and having a MMP on a stand? Outside of being a few inches wider. As far as playing mp3's, I have seed posts where it doesn't work the way it's supposed to and the company admits there is no fix for it.

Doing all this in the screen of your keyboard would be great, but I think it won't happen, and if it does what happens later if you want to change over to another brand that doesn't have it.

With virtmus you can do all the stuff MPP can do pretty much and you can always switch to MPP later because you'll be saving the files as jpeg or png or whatever and MPP will take those.


I personally find it hard to want to spend $900+ on MPP being that it's non-standard, what if they go the way of betamax videos?

A good laptop is able to do so many more functions such as supposing you want to start using VST's like truepianos, or any of the other software sounds that sound absolutely life like now as compared to the hardware arrangers which are pretty good, but when it comes to some of the most important sounds, it's no cigar.

Just a few ideas for thought.


t

First , how did I post the same thing 4 times

Anyway thanks for the tips !!

Later ,
Gary 

Scott,
yes the MPP has a footswitch, plus you can physically annotate scores with whatever instructions you want to place on the page,with a stylus or a finger.. you can have look ahead, which shows the start of the next page, you can have a section highlighted, just like using a highlighter pen on real paper, you can place additional notes/ markers/symbols on the staves, you can automatically return to a previous section instead of going forward, in the case of repeats/da capos etc for example. To turn a page is a simple tap on the right side of the screen with a finger anywhere, and the left for going back or use a footpedal. All of score editing tools are post scanning and allow pretty much the same freedoms you have when using a printed sheet..you can transpose a score (as long as its ins the FH format. The MPP is TOTALLY different from laptop in that you can place it on an existing music stand just like a single sheet of music.This is something a laptop cannot do.
I am not extolling the MPP over a laptop or vice-versa, I have used both so I reckon I can give a balanced view of both..They are both excellent tools doing similar things in different ways. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he already has the capability on his E80 to view notation info and turn pages etc etc. If the screen size on the E80 is an issue then there are other alternatives.

Dennis

The MPP turns pages either with a tap on the screen or a footpedal.
Bernie

Dennis,

Any laptop with a scrolling wheel mouse has the ability to slowly scroll down the page and nearly any speed you select. And, as for playing the keyboard with both hands, most of us use all the other items at our disposal on the keyboard such as the pitch bend, registration buttons, variations, fills, intros, endings, breaks, all of which require that you take a hand off the keyboard to operate. Yes, you can set up a foot pedal to do all those things, something with 10 switches that are so close together that you need wingtips to hit the right switch, and you have to constantly be looking at where your foot is positioned and not your audience.

Those of that use a laptop on a daily basis DO NOT have a problem with switching between lyrics displays, midi files, MP3s or any other feature on the fly while playing the keyboard. And, for the first two years I used a laptop in my performances I had a 5-year-old, used laptop that performed flawlessly nearly every day of the week. And, it was a relatively slow machine, small hard drive, and not much memory, but for the $300 it cost at the Computer Show at the Maryland State Fairgrounds, I think it was a bargain. My Dell cost me a whopping $499 including freight and it has all the bells and whistles. My widescreen Compaq that has a bit lower profile and more features than my desktop was $699, but then I got a $100 rebate, which brought the bottom line down to $599.

The secret to making the laptop work for you is the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen, which allows you to quickly move from one folder to another, thereby allowing you to keep the Lyrics/SheetMusic folder open along with a MIDI player and MP3 Player, yet still not adversely effect the computer's speed.

As for the touch screen V/S the mouse, if I had to reach across the keyboard to touch the screen in order to make things work it would really be noticed by my audiences. And, it would likely produce significant dead time between songs, which is something I try very hard to eliminate. With the combination of the laptop, registrations and MFD you can be ready to play the next song as soon as the first is finished.

This system works well for me and a significant number of forum members. It's by no means a panacea, but it is far more effecient than using books filled to capacity with sheet music, then having to leaf through those pages to find the right one. With the laptop, the lyrics/sheet music are in a single folder, all listed alphabetically, and it takes less than 2 seconds to select and open the pages for the next song.

Finally, using the same laptop, I just typed this message while listening to a third-party style file using a program downloaded free from Michael Bedesem. I don't think you can do that with the MPP.

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

A laptop has some nice features, Gary has done such a good selling job that if I didn't own an MPP I'd probably use a laptop. But......... knowing what I know now and having owned an MPP for 2 years I prefer the MPP.
I use a foot pedal to turn pages and never use the touch screen at a gig. IT also has a feature called "record repeats and cuts" /"play repeats and cuts" that allow you to arrange multiple sheet songs in such a way that you never have to turn back a page, but instead just keep going forward all with the use of a foot pedal, no different from a sustain pedal on a piano.

If my MPP were to fail I can still use the proprietary FreeHand software that's installed on my laptop to view sheets stored on the MPP.

Whatever

Sorry Stephen, my last post was directed at Mr Diamond post, not yours..bad timing on the commit button
**************************
I agree with you Stephen, and I've only been using mine for about 2 weeks.But that's enough to know something is a keeper!! It's a wee ripper!!!
cya
Dennis

No question the MPP must be a great little gadget. My point is just that Virtmus pretty much does what the MPP does and you can do extra stuff on a laptop.

As they say, 6 of one and half a dozen of the other

Yes Scott, I agree, its pretty much what I have been saying, or trying to say, both things are excellent tools and do different things and some similar things. Its what suits an individual that matters. I think the OP has got a good choice to investigate...the E80 with its inbuilt capacity for reading notation, a laptop using something like Virtmus, or a notation/sheet music display device like the MPP.
Dennis

How about just memorize the songs

Thanks guy`s !!



Later,
Gary 

LOL, Yeah Donny there is that too!!

Hey Donny ,

Thanks for the link , maybe memorizing is easier !!

Take care,
Gary 