e-Repertoire ?

Joli Gadjo

With the development of the new technologies, I was wondering if some of you have substituted your traditional music sheets, or gig book to one of those tablet, playbook, ipad, kindle... ??
And how it worked for you ?
I am not talking about the i-RealBook which doesn't have lead sheets, but of an actual tablet that has some kind of pdf-reader built-in for example.

Stackabones

I'd like to hear about this, too. I'm still relying on memory and have about four hours of music with lyrics by heart, but it'd be cool to find something digital. I also still use fake books on stands at gigs (if & when needed).

Jim Kaznosky

Bass player does have a number of the fakebooks on his kindle and has used them on some other jazz gigs. He says that it works well. Our band leaders (and space) forbid music stands on the gigs.
Also, the singer has found an adapter to the mike stand that will allow him to attach his iphone, which will help him with lyrics.

redblues

Nothing i hate more than a jazz group with music stands. Stilts the music completely.
On the other hand I have scanned all books i own and converted them into downloadable size attachments, which view quite nicely on the Kindle. Sony e-reader won't accept non sony approved file types, and iphone way to small but ipad is perfect for viewing music sheets.
Verdict - Kindle all the way

Joli Gadjo

Thanks for your answers.
Having often, if not always, guests and friends playing with us, definitely requires me to drag printed music and music stands.

Craig Bumgarner

I meet someone at Django in June, sorry, I can't remember your name, who had grilles on his iPhone. He was using DropBox to snyc his grille files to his phone. I believe the grilles were JPGs and he said had spent some time maximizing them to fit the screen nicely. The grilles were quite readable while playing and on one song, we easily shared the grille. The file selection screen also worked well.

If you are that someone and happen to be reading this board, could you please PM or email me? Thanks.

Otherwise, I'm working on this variety of solution for portable grilles on my own. I post here when I've worked through it.

CB

HotTinRoof

Hi Craig - I saw two guys hunkered over an iPhone during a Jam at one point! There seemed to be a handful of iPads there. I was wondering the same thing. I need an iPad like a hole in my head at this point, but found the grilles being displayed a very cool thing to see.

Next year we should have a DjangoBooks active users get together.

HCQ

My son has the IPhone App. With these Grilles he can transpose to any key. He also has a play along feature that plays chords audibly in any key and tempo he selects. I have also seen an IPhone accessory that can clip the phone to a guitar's headstock.

Craig Bumgarner

HotTinRoof wrote:

.... I need an iPad like a hole in my head at this point, but found the grilles being displayed a very cool thing to see.

Yeah, I'd like to get it to work on an iPhone. The iPad is cool and surely better for this kind of thing, but I have a hard time justifying yet another data plan expense. Already have the iPhone and the iPad doesn't make a very good phone, so hard to justify. ANYWAY......

Setting up DropBox took about 5 minutes. I downloaded it (free) on my PC. Dropbox sets up a Dropbox folder. Drop a copy of a file in there and it is available to your other sycn'd devices. So I downloaded the iPhone app (free), logged into the account I set up on the PC (free up to 2GB). Files dropped in to Dropbox folder on PC appear almost instantly on the iPhone. So far, Dropbox on my iPhone opens gif, jpg, pdf and excel files with no trouble. The excel files are not perfect, there is some offset for subdivided cells, but not bad.

In general, this just could not have been any easier. I'll have to see how it works under fire, but I'm thinking it will be okay. Most of the time, I play without referencing charts, but there are always times when it is handy.

Dropbox says you can share folders with others too. I haven't looked into it, but it seems this would be useful.

HCQ: Are your referring to iRealBook? If so, yes that is a good one and there are a number of GJ charts available. I have it and use it. My only complaints are 1)it shows four measures to the line and I think 8 measures to the line. 2) It makes heavy use of return symbols and frankly I have a hard time with those under fire. Personally, I prefer the 8 x 4 layout of the grille system. Plus, I have a ton of my own grills already written the way I like 'um that I can now just dump into Dropbox and it can display them, apparently without much regard for file format. I try not to use charts on gigs when possible and succeed most of the time, but it would be nice to have a reference like this without having to carry a pile of chart books. Not sure yet if Dropbox is the ultimate answer, but so far so good.

CB

HotTinRoof

I can confirm that dropbox is just as easy to link up between users as it is to setup.

Jim Kaznosky

Dropbox is the way to go, for me. I've loaded it up with a few fakebooks and sheets and it's good to go, provided you have service. If you have Acrobat writer, you can reduce the size of files and it makes storing many fakebooks less memory intensive.