Quote from Scott:
>Hi Nigel. Yes, the Music Pad's includes dedicated music note & symbol annotation & editing, and it's larger screen size makes it significantly easier to read full piano score music, and to play classical piano pieces (multiple page works with various repeats, codas, etc). The iPad supports multiple page turns with a simple finger swipe/tap right (page forward), swipe/tap left (page back), but the MPP goes farther in being able to 'memorize & store' each successive page turn, allowing you to automatically go from ie: page 1 to 3, back to 2, and then to page 4. I don't know of an iPad app that supports this (yet)<

Scott you really should look at Music Reader for iPad....It does ALL those things you want to do, plus playlists.

In the current version, it has a sister program called Music Convert which automatically converts your PDF's, Tiffs, BMP's whatever into the MRS format.

However version 4, about to be released ( I am testing the BETA at the moment) will have native PDF support.

I really recommend you check it.. http://www.musicreader.net/software/musicreader.html

Dennis



[This message has been edited by miden (edited 11-06-2010).]

Scott: This looks like an excellent tool for when you are stumped on a song.

I could see myself using using the iPad in just this way.

Beakybird

Dennis/Scott I find the Unreal Book, unreal ( no pun intended). It was designed by a musician by the name of Aron Nelson. The guy is great and responds to e-mail questions almost immediately. I had originally stored most of my pdf fake books in the Good Reader App. Good reader allows the user to manage the files and send any pdf directly to unreal book.

Aron Nelson Site

Jerry thanks for posting the link for the iKlip.

Stephen, I agree with everything you said about the unRealbook app & Aron Nelson. I've been using it for a few months & I couldn't be more pleased with it and the excellent support and free Updates from Aron.
Wally

Hi Dennis, I've seen Music Reader advertised but lost interest in it because it only supports their proprietary MRS format. I'm encouraged to learn now that Music Reader will be soon supporting native PDF. I hope they directly support (no conversion required), as GoodReader already does, other file types (ei: png, txt, jpg, etc) too.

How much does the iPad version cost? Also, will I also need to purchase the desktop version to benefit from the features you described above? If so, how much does the desktop version cost? thanks. - Scott


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Steve & Wally: Interestingly enough, Unrealbook was the 1st iPhone music app I purchased when I first got my iPad. Firstly, what I like about this app is its 'songs: list-search' function, allowing one to see & scroll (in alphabetical order) a list of all the songs in the database, and the ability to 'search' by title (the PDF file name). The other thing I like is UnrealBook's 'setlist' & 'hotspot'feature which lets you create a hot spot to any portion of a page (repeat signs, coda,etc), making it easy to jump down to a specified section within the song.

Here's what I don't like about UnRealBook:

1) Unless I'm missing something, it's not possible to create 'multiple' folders to sort your songs into different custom categories ei: country, pop, latin, gershwin, beatles, etc. Instead, all songs (1,500 +) must all reside in one single directory, and the only way to search for or call one up is by the PDF file name (usually the song's 'title'). This is far too limiting. On the other hand, with the GoodReader app, you're able to create as many different named folders & subfolders as you want to organize and store your PDF song library. In fact, GoodReader supports not only PDF format files, but many different file types (.txt, png, jpg, etc)

2) Unfortunately, in UnrealBook, it's not possible to save your custom cropped setting for an individual song. Most all song sheets have a white border around the music which, unless cropped, reduce the size of the actual music displayed. Though it's possible to use your 2 fingers to expand the size of a page sheet, and effectively crop out the white border, unfortunately this crop setting effects all other songs in the entire song database library as well. Because every song typically has different margin widths, when you call up another song, part of the music may be partially hidden, or opposite: it's margin area width extremely excessive.

On the other hand, GoodReader includes a feature which stores your custom cropped setting for 'each and every' song individually, eliminating the UnRealBook universal (all songs) cropped the same dilemma. In addition, GoodReader goes farther and allows you, when cropping a single page, to select from the following:

a) Crop only that page
b) Crop 'every other' page in that same PDF document
c) Crop 'all pages' in that PDF document

The 'every other page' option is great for large song/fakebooks PDFS where there are many pages (100-800+) pages to crop, and for when the margins differ on 'even' and 'odd' pages.

That said, though UnrealBook has some nice features, unless they address the 2 issues I've outlined above, I'm happier with GoodReader. When I initially purchased UnRealBook, I contacted Aaron Nelson about my concerns and he appeared to acknowledge them, promising to address them in an update. So far though, unless I'm missing something, this hasn't happened yet. Your added comments addressing my concerns are much appreciated - Scott

Hi Scott,

AFAIK, the iPad version is identical in price to the PC version. It has pretty much the same tool and option set. It provides free within version upgrades as well.

And you can have as many "genre" folders as you like. Just as you can have as many playlists as you like....

Dennis

Oh an Marco Leone runs a really good forum linked to the web page...any questions posted is answered within about 2 hours when he is awake!!

Plus Scott there are a growing number of iPad users, so it might be worth the time to register and ask the relevant iPad questions of those using it and Music Reader

Dennis

Scott, good points. Unreal book does now have a feature that can be set globally, it's called "Individual file zoom" It allows you to resize the sheet, then next time you open the same sheet it defaults to the size you reset it at. Was that available when you tried unreal book?

Also how about turning on the set list feature then adding any genre you need to a set list named after the genre?

Scott have you tried the vga connector ? For increasing size of the iPad's display?

Apple VGA Connector

Hi Scott - great post and great looking setup. Very informative for those of us who are not up to speed on the utility of these neat new devices. Congrats to you and thanks to all who are adding more insight on the use of these cool new toys!

Randy

Nope. Bill, the chords were all included on the original songsheet.



Hi Dennis, it states on the Music Reader website that 'MusicReader for iPad' does NOT support any of the advanced features of Music Reader Mac/Windows, but may be considered in future. Any idea what these specific missing features are?

The 'MusicReader for iPad' app itself is FREE, but you're required to purchase the Mac or Windows version of "MusicReader" (basic: $35.40; Pro version: $59.40) in order to convert and transfer files, and these prices are far higher than either of the aforementioned programs I currently use ($.99 and $4.99). That said, I'm going to wait till "MusicReader" 4 is released to see if there might be some kind of price restructuring before I make a decision on MusicReader.



Unfortunately, the crop (individual vs globally) settings feature had not yet been implemented when I first purchased unreal book so thanks for the heads up about that. Though I appreciate this, I still think Good Readers implementation of this far better as it provides far more powerful options. Thanks also for pointing out the setlist feature for creating genres.



No. Unfortunately, the ** out of ***** star customer feedback review doesn't look very encouraging.



Hi Randy, great to hear from you.