cheat sheets / setlist software for ipad

[hazerkeys]

hello - I currently have a loose leaf binder of pages of cheat sheets (lyrics and chords), etc for songs that I don't have memorized and/or need to lyrics for singning, etc (classic rock band) - thinking of going hi-tech (LOL) with my ipad for this - would just just need the ability to put them in setlist order, but also be able to jump around if we do some out of order, etc - any input on some good basic software to do this? (don't need anything too fancy) - probably won't do the footswitch thing, just advance by hand/finger - thanks in advance ... will also search here for past posts

[miden]

I use and recommend Unrealbook. I have bought and used a lot of them and I keep coming back to it as it is a pretty straighforward app, without a lot of the extra baggage of others. But stil with pretty major MIDI capability as well.

As tip, and as (from how I read your OP) you have paper sheets, get an app called Turbo Scan...makes creating your pdf charts really easy and accurately. Again I have tried others, but I come back to this one.

[RABid]

I used index cards. You could do the same thing with iPad and Pages. Just wrote out the set list, and next to each song title I wrote the chord progression for verse and course. About all I needed. You could do this on Pages and adjust print size as needed. Warning, the iPad would be a target for theft.

[nadroj]

OnSong. I use it, and almost every musician with an iPad I know in the circles I play in uses it. I got it when it was free years ago, but since the developers clicked onto how successful it was it now costs a pretty penny, I believe.

 

I have loads of different setlists for my different bands stored on it, and can quickly pick and choose if the singer skips or calls a wildcard song out of the blue.

[analogika]

I've been using Set List Maker for seven or eight years now.

[stillearning]

I"ve been happy with ForScore. Like you, I used a looseleaf binder with plastic inserts to hold hand written chord and/or lyric pages and have since scanned them to pdf, and ForScore keeps a master list alphabetically. Takes just a few minutes to create a setlist. And if the bandleader calls out changes on the fly, there"s the alphabetical list at your fingertips.

[analogika]

Set List Maker allows you to create separate databases for each project. The actual PDFs and scanned JPGs live in a central repository, but every database has its own set of songs that may or may not include the PDFs, have different text notations (arrangement), different keys, visual metronomes, and their own on-screen layouts.

[AnotherScott]

Set List Maker works pretty well, despite some interface irritations. For your purposes, one nice feature is that, for each song you enter, you can take a picture of your current note page and attach it, right from within the app. No need to scan or generate separate PDFs or use any other app to have it display your current cheat sheets.

[U.Honey]

I'm using forScore. In addition to setlist I use it to send the program change message to the keyboard whenever I choose a song in the setlist. I'm sure there are other apps that do the same, I just happened to pick forScore when I transferred from paper sheets to iPad. I still write charts with pen and paper but as soon the chart is ready I take a photo of it and import to forScore.

[CharlieLosGatos]

On a related topic what do you recommend for fake books with indices. I tried one program a few years ago and it was archaic to setup the indexes,

[ImproKeys]

This works fine with ForScore, although it took me a minute or two to understand. Just google it. Cheers!

[ElmerJFudd]

Have you seen these apps for worship bands?

 

https://www.codamusictech.com/blogs/news/paperless-sheet-music-and-chord-charts-for-worship-leaders-praise-teams

[DaveMcM]

I have been using iGigBook and iReal Pro for years now. Both have more than paid for themselves. Take time to look over the websites to see what all they can do. In a nut shell, iGigBook is a PDF viewer with some very useful functions. iReal Pro just displays chord charts in a proprietary file format which allows for transposition. Both apps have the ability to add notes which I sometimes use for lyrics. iGigBook has a large assortment of indexes for the most popular fake books so if you have or purchase one of these books in PDF format, the book will automatically be indexed. Search for a song, and iGigBook will display that song in every book or single PDF that is in the database so you can choose a particular version. In iReal Pro, you can easily create your own transposable chord charts and even upload them to a user area where other iReal Pro users have placed a huge number of tunes. From within the app, you can search that database, provided you have a wifi or cell connection, for an on-the-spot request. I am extremely happy with both of these apps. iReal Pro even includes playback using fairly basic but still useable backing tracks based on the song chord progression. Not really gig-worthy IMO, but for practicing/jamming its a nice addition.

[synthizen2]

I use a word processor and a printer. Result: printed set list on paper.

 

Seriously, though... Other members of my classic rock covers band (especially those doing lead vocals) DO use an iPad with set list software that gives them the lyrics. Totally understandable, with all the lyrics that would otherwise need to be memorized. Me, though... a simple sheet with the song titles (and key of song) is enough. Don't really need an iPad for that. And as someone already pointed out... it can be a target for theft. And breakage too.

[obxa]

I actually use a couple of different apps, because sometimes each are better suited for the particular gig.

 

1. Igigbook: for Jazz-cocktail- solo piano corporate- wedding stuff because it's got all the indexes for the Real books,and a ton of other fakebooks already in that are great to have. It's fairly easy to import charts within the IOS sphere too. Easy to do set lists. It's a great app, but has some limitations. The indexing is still way harder than it needs to be, and I only use the ready made ones.- which cover most of what you'd want. . Plus there are some esoteric books out there that have come in super handy. (Jewish Fakebook, New Orleans etc.) Editing/annotating charts is not fun and kinda counter intuitive, but they do now offer pdf drawing as an option. One of the trademark things doing solo piano or jazz cocktail is there's always someone that wants to request the most obscure standard or B-side song. Igigbook hasn't failed me yet there.

 

2. Forscore: for Pitband/Show/Artist stuff, because you can store audio files, do program changes as mentioned by Uhoney. Plus codas, repeats. It's a great and deep program but might be overkill for simple charts where you just need to make a few notes, and it's not always the most intuitive. . If I don't use it for a while and need to create a new show, I've got to pull the manual out, but the Devs are super helpful. For anything that's using an actual score, or long multi-page charts it's my first choice.

 

3. Music Stand- If you do any kind of worship/ministry your church is probably using the Planning center app to do scheduling and service orders. Their built in Music Stand app is amazingly good, well written and powerful. It stores your edits in the respective church's cloud, and pulls up the charts your need based on the service order. Lets you choose lyric sheets, guitar sheets, scores or rhythm charts to view. Can easily rehearse select tracks, along with metronome and more. Can share charts, and also import other players annotations. One of the bigger churches I work at here in Atlanta often has over 30 fies posted per tune with orchestra, choir, and band charts and respective audio files posted, but you're able to set it up to only view/listen to your specific parts, plus re-arrange pages as needed.

If your particular church doesn't use it, it's $5.00 a month, (for the church, free to you) and worth asking the Worship leader or MD if they will add it.

 

4. Paperless Music- This is a great simple, and cheap ($5.00!) gem of an app that's very similar to Music Stand above. It strikes a great balance of features with a single overhead menu- Allows you to do simple annotations (with an added stock library of useful music symbols) Easy to do setlists and import charts. Isn't as complicated to use as Forscore, and super intuitive. They just added the ability to have audio files linked to songs as well. Built in metronome. Highly recommended.

 

5. Irealpro- As David mentioned above, nice mature program. I's a quick way to view a ton of songs in shorthand format and also practice with. Easy to transpose, and easy to import -export. Wealth of user created cover tunes are available. Some of the shared user charts on the forum are better than others, and a few are downright wrong. But as David also mentioned, it's great for an odd ball request. I often will use this program when needing to create quick simple transcriptions and don't want to pull out Finale. But the beauty is any chart created can be exported into your notation program if you do need to make a more detailed chart.

 

One thing I can strongly recommend, is to get a free cloud drive account- Dropbox, Box, Gdrive etc. It will make moving your files in and out of your software much easier. Most PDFs are small sized, so a free account should work plenty.

[mmartinez]

sorry I'm going to have to be brutal about iGigBook, it's not a good piece of software. It's not intuitive to use, it freezes a lot on my iPad, and trying to do simple things with it is a pain.

 

iRealPro is way better, its easy to use, it's stable, it easy to read, and you go onto their website and can click on any of the songs people have uploaded and it'll prompt you to load them automatically into the playlist on your iPad. The only drawback is that you can't import arbitrary files like PDFs.

[DaveMcM]

48 minutes ago, mmartinez said:

sorry I'm going to have to be brutal about iGigBook, it's not a good piece of software. It's not intuitive to use, it freezes a lot on my iPad, and trying to do simple things with it is a pain.

 

iRealPro is way better, its easy to use, it's stable, it easy to read, and you go onto their website and can click on any of the songs people have uploaded and it'll prompt you to load them automatically into the playlist on your iPad. The only drawback is that you can't import arbitrary files like PDFs.

Hmm. To each his own I guess. I have been using iGigBook for years with no problems and have been very happy. What kinds of [i]simple things[/i] are you having trouble with? I do agree that iRealPro is a good app as well. Although I do wish that folks would adhere to posting individual songs to the iRealPro forum instead of complete song lists. It would be great if the iRealPro app could scan its data file and remove exact copies. In a pinch when I need a chart quickly and it is only mixed in with a bunch of other songs, the app doesn't scan to see if a particular chart already exists.

[Phil-E-Phil]

On 8/10/2022 at 2:38 PM, mmartinez said:

sorry I'm going to have to be brutal about iGigBook, it's not a good piece of software. It's not intuitive to use, it freezes a lot on my iPad, and trying to do simple things with it is a pain.

 

iRealPro is way better, its easy to use, it's stable, it easy to read, and you go onto their website and can click on any of the songs people have uploaded and it'll prompt you to load them automatically into the playlist on your iPad. The only drawback is that you can't import arbitrary files like PDFs.

I'm the author of iGigBook.  You're comparing apples to oranges here.  iRealPro is a good app for chord charts with backing tracks.  You're not going to have access to the melodies of songs using iRealPro and there in lies the difference.  I created iGigBook to be a more complete tool for the working musician.  When I created iGigBook I had many years prior to the iPhone existing,created a web based chord chart resource with backing tracks, that site was and is called http://www.realbook.us.   You can easily verify this by using the internet archive and picking any date prior to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

 

With thousands of users we haven't heard of iGigBook freezing a lot on iPads and to this date there is no app that's going to allow you to instantly search through various real books and fake books to find a particular song and also provide you with access to chord charts that you can transpose, all in one app.

[Jim Alfredson]

On recommendation from folks here, I use forScore. It's great. I can load pdfs in directly from dropbox and arrange them in sets or groups and just flick through them easy peasy. Great software.

[rickzjamm]

ForScore user here, spent too many gigs dealing with notebooks. Each one has their own weakness & strength but ForScore works flawlessly for me for his & Sunday worship.

[erik_nie]

 

I checked forscore and that should work well. I still use my own app written in Pythonista mainly because all data (pictures, text and MP3/WAV files) are located in iCloud and can easily be changed from any PC/MAC. My iPad automatically syncs this and my app will automatically gets the latest data.
Even the Python code of the app is stored on iCloud.

I have a backup iPad that I use and that is always up to data after syncing iCloud.

 

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/182141-your-methods-for-lyrics-charts-tab-and-notation/?do=findComment&comment=2895695

 

Recently I added the option to also select patches on my Nord Stage 3 and Nord Wave 2 when selecting a song. No need for setlist anymore (as this is extra preparation befor a gig and when deviating it can take some extra time to find the right song). Now I just use the printed setlist as reference.

 

Good luck with finding the right application for your task. There are many to choose from!
 

[DaveMcM]

On 10/17/2022 at 2:18 PM, Phil-E-Phil said:

I'm the author of iGigBook.  You're comparing apples to oranges here.  iRealPro is a good app for chord charts with backing tracks.  You're not going to have access to the melodies of songs using iRealPro and there in lies the difference.  I created iGigBook to be a more complete tool for the working musician.  When I created iGigBook I had many years prior to the iPhone existing,created a web based chord chart resource with backing tracks, that site was and is called http://www.realbook.us.   You can easily verify this by using the internet archive and picking any date prior to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

 

With thousands of users we haven't heard of iGigBook freezing a lot on iPads and to this date there is no app that's going to allow you to instantly search through various real books and fake books to find a particular song and also provide you with access to chord charts that you can transpose, all in one app.

Hi Phil, I have used iGigBook for years originally on an iPad2 and currently on an iPad Air2 and it has never let me down. Thanks for continuing to support iGigBook.

[brenner13]

Mostly PDF’s here…foreScore is super simple and friendly with other apps…Dropbox and the like. I use Doc Scan Pro to capture and edit PDF’s before sending to foreScore.

[Polkahero]

17 hours ago, erik_nie said:

 

I checked forscore and that should work well. I still use my own app written in Pythonista mainly because all data (pictures, text and MP3/WAV files) are located in iCloud and can easily be changed from any PC/MAC. My iPad automatically syncs this and my app will automatically gets the latest data.
Even the Python code of the app is stored on iCloud.

I have a backup iPad that I use and that is always up to data after syncing iCloud.

 

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/182141-your-methods-for-lyrics-charts-tab-and-notation/?do=findComment&comment=2895695

 

Recently I added the option to also select patches on my Nord Stage 3 and Nord Wave 2 when selecting a song. No need for setlist anymore (as this is extra preparation befor a gig and when deviating it can take some extra time to find the right song). Now I just use the printed setlist as reference.

 

Good luck with finding the right application for your task. There are many to choose from!

 

 

I was using forScore to bring up patches on my Yamaha MODX earlier this year but that function no longer works.  Messaged forScore and haven't heard back as to why.  Any ideas?

[cphollis]

As a keys player, I think I've used most of the apps, usually as a result of whatever the band is using.  I try to minimize my reliance on lead sheets anyway, just what works for me.

 

Now that I am BL, I found the simplest thing to help my bandmates was to produce a single, large PDF with the gig's song charts in sequence, and emailing it to everyone far ahead of time.  Doing this is more work for me (initially) but ended up saving boatloads of time during rehearsals.  In a pinch, you can scroll through it on your phone. 

[DovJ]

1 hour ago, Polkahero said:

I was using forScore to bring up patches on my Yamaha MODX earlier this year but that function no longer works.  Messaged forScore and haven't heard back as to why.  Any ideas?

After a recent update, forScore stopped responding to Previous Page messages. I verified that my iPad was receiving the CC, which it was, consistently. 
 

Curiously, Next Page continued to work. 
 

I reached out to the publisher, who blamed the problem on my MIDI network. Their answer made no sense. 
 

Of late, forScore started responding to Previous Page again. I have no idea why - I didn’t change anything in my MIDI configuration that I can determine. 
 

This isn’t really to answer your question, but rather to say that forScore (and it’s publisher) has behaved weirdly lately. 
 

Take a look at Camelot Pro. It’s not as powerful a score reader as forScore, but it’s a much more suitable tool for controlling settings on hardware and managing VST’s. 

[Polkahero]

22 hours ago, DovJ said:

After a recent update, forScore stopped responding to Previous Page messages. I verified that my iPad was receiving the CC, which it was, consistently. 
 

Curiously, Next Page continued to work. 
 

I reached out to the publisher, who blamed the problem on my MIDI network. Their answer made no sense. 
 

Of late, forScore started responding to Previous Page again. I have no idea why - I didn’t change anything in my MIDI configuration that I can determine. 
 

This isn’t really to answer your question, but rather to say that forScore (and it’s publisher) has behaved weirdly lately. 
 

Take a look at Camelot Pro. It’s not as powerful a score reader as forScore, but it’s a much more suitable tool for controlling settings on hardware and managing VST’s. 

Finally heard back from forScore today and they said the issue should be resolved with their next update.  Told me if it still doesn't work to contact them to sort it out.  Don't want to switch to a different app as I have almost two thousand charts annotated in forScore.  This is just a minor annoyance for now.

[cassdad]

On 10/18/2022 at 6:19 PM, Polkahero said:

I was using forScore to bring up patches on my Yamaha MODX earlier this year but that function no longer works.  Messaged forScore and haven't heard back as to why.  Any ideas?

Yes, I can tell you exactly…..   Like you, I was/am using forScore (in addition to viewing my charts / notation) for doing the Program Changes on my Yamaha MOXF8.  The MOXF8 has several “modes” (e.g. Voice, Performance).  In order to change between these “modes”, a MIDI System Exclusive message has to be received, then a normal MIDI Program Change message for the specific patch.  I programmed both so that whenever I called up certain music charts, it would automatically send both the MIDI System Exclusive & MIDI Program Change messages.  And for many months, it worked perfectly, flawlessly.  Which really helped me especially for live gigs…… just pull up the music, and all the pertinent settings on my keyboard would be instantly changed as needed for that particular song.  Truly a God-send.

 

Then, a few weeks ago, it just simply stopped working, as you cite.  Turns out that forScore did 3 recent updates (culminating in the latest current version, 13.1.4).  Lo and behold, in the updates, they broke the MIDI System Exclusive send function - ugh.   I searched various forums and found several people (even one in Europe) who are also experiencing the exact same problem as a result of the recent forScore updates.  Specifically (and I’ve so advised them), it now limits the send function to 8 hex numbers (and most Yamaha System Exclusive messages require more hex numbers than that).

 

forScore has responded that they “might” fix it in their next update.  Ugh.  I’m so disappointed, especially when it previously worked so perfectly well, and really immensely helped me (not to mention the hours of time I spent putting those MIDI PC changes and hex codes in each music score).

[Polkahero]

4 hours ago, cassdad said:

Yes, I can tell you exactly…..   Like you, I was/am using forScore (in addition to viewing my charts / notation) for doing the Program Changes on my Yamaha MOXF8.  The MOXF8 has several “modes” (e.g. Voice, Performance).  In order to change between these “modes”, a MIDI System Exclusive message has to be received, then a normal MIDI Program Change message for the specific patch.  I programmed both so that whenever I called up certain music charts, it would automatically send both the MIDI System Exclusive & MIDI Program Change messages.  And for many months, it worked perfectly, flawlessly.  Which really helped me especially for live gigs…… just pull up the music, and all the pertinent settings on my keyboard would be instantly changed as needed for that particular song.  Truly a God-send.

 

Then, a few weeks ago, it just simply stopped working, as you cite.  Turns out that forScore did 3 recent updates (culminating in the latest current version, 13.1.4).  Lo and behold, in the updates, they broke the MIDI System Exclusive send function - ugh.   I searched various forums and found several people (even one in Europe) who are also experiencing the exact same problem as a result of the recent forScore updates.  Specifically (and I’ve so advised them), it now limits the send function to 8 hex numbers (and most Yamaha System Exclusive messages require more hex numbers than that).

 

forScore has responded that they “might” fix it in their next update.  Ugh.  I’m so disappointed, especially when it previously worked so perfectly well, and really immensely helped me (not to mention the hours of time I spent putting those MIDI PC changes and hex codes in each music score).

Version 13.1.5 just came out today!  Going to try it tomorrow with my MODX and see if it works again.

[cassdad]

Yup…. I just downloaded it….  new forScore update version 13.1.5 finally fixes back to fully working again!  YAY!!!!!