Practicing, Repertoire, and Organization

[auntlynnie]

I've spent the last several hours attempting to organize hundreds of sheets of paper - tablature and song charts, mostly from Totally Guitars, but also from teachers that I've had over the years, songbooks, etc.

I have at least five binders:
1. Current fingerpicking (mostly blues, country blues and such)
2. Campfire and misc.
3. Alternate Tunings
4. Holiday songs
5. Beatles
6. 12-string specialties

After sorting most of my papers into these binders, I find that some of the songs do not need to be in a binder at all because:
1. I printed it out because I was only temporarily interested in learning the song, i.e. wanted to learn the riff, but not adding it to my playlist.
2. The song was too difficult, I'm setting it aside for later.
3. I've learned the song, committed it to memory, it's in my playlist, no longer need the Tab or Song Chart
4. I think I need an "archives" file... or two.

I'm wondering how others address this paper clutter?
How do you organize your Tabs and song charts?
How do you decide what to keep in your playlist?
Do you sometimes learn songs for the challenge only/just to learn the riff? And then move on?
Do you find that you learn some songs because you've always liked them and sing along in the car, but once you've learned, you don't care to continue playing it?

Thanks for any thoughts on this,
Lynn

[sbutler]

Yes!

[jimcjimc]

Lynn,

I had printed out a lot of charts and put them in plastic sheets and put them in binders. Then, I would have binders with labels like: finger picking songs, dylan songs, campfire songs, etc.

Then I would spend a lot of time trying to figure out what song chart was in which binder. It got to be a mess.

Now, I have an app called forscore on my ipad. Another one people use is onsong, I believe.

I still have music sheets around the house for what I am working on.

But (especially helpful when leaving the house or going to a music camp), I have scanned all of my charts to pdf and added them to the app on the ipad. I can sort them by song name or band name/composer, but I also organize them via tabs: campfire songs, repertoire songs, ukulele songs, etc.

Jim

[michelew]

Lynn,

I also use ForScore on my iPad. It's really the only thing I use now. I also have folders, but I don't know what's in them, I can't search them and as a consequence I no longer open them.

forScore mini by forScore, LLC
https://appsto.re/au/VcCA3.i

I can't find the version I have on my iPad. I don't think it's called "mini". I got it a long time ago when it was much cheaper. But the link looks like an equivalent app.


If you get your music into ForScore, you can add extra info on each song that you can search on (like campfire, ukulele; fingerpicking, whatever you like). You can also set up lists. I have one called 'IGC 2016' and others which include the songs I was focusing on at various points in time. It's easy to set up playlists.

You can also annotate the music easily.

If you also get yourself a foot pedal page turner like "cicada" you'll start to wonder how you ever managed with those heavy volumes of paper that make you stop playing so you can turn the page. http://www.pageflip.com

There's also no limit to the amount of music you can carry around with you. No need to have big muscles like some of our beloved TG-ers.


Check it out.

Having said that, I can't really say I'm organized. I need to spend some time doing exactly what you've just done; or at least a review and the development of a few new lists.

There are so many good lessons being released each month that I'm constantly getting distracted; I've started too many songs that I haven't seen to completion for too many reasons.

M

[auntlynnie]

Thanks Michele and Jim,
I think I have OnSong on my ipad - a question - does one or both of these apps have the ability to scroll the music as you play - I think I've seen that on one of these, or a similar app. You can see how much I've used OnSong - I don't even know what it does.
But as I am trying to declutter my life, going digital does seem to be the logical choice.
Thanks,
Lynn

[daryl]

Jim & Michele (and others who use ForScore or OnSong)....

I hope you've backed up all your files. It would suck to have to scan everything again (especially if you've discarded your paper stuff). Speaking of backing things up, what is your preferred method of backing things up? What works, what didn't? Lynn, I don't mean to hijack your thread, but I thought my question was somehow related.....

[wrsomers]

Hi Lynn,
I have not tried OnSong but have used "Ultimate Guitar Tabs" app. It is a scroller, but I found it to be difficult to use effectively. The reason being: If you use it to perform, you've got to set the scrolling speed to match the tempo of each song. I've found that difficult to do. I think the page turning foot pedal is a much better idea, it puts you in complete control and only requires you to hit the page forward or page back pedal. Here's a link to the one I'm getting for Christmas (I hope) along with an Ipad Air2.

I think this is the same one Michele mentioned:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c ... Caps%2C190

I hope this helps you.

Daryl has a very good point. I use Carbonite.com to backup all my data. I used it to back up my business data (insurance reports, estimates, invoices, pictures etc.) It saved me several times. There are other places to do this like various clouds and dropbox etc. I don't know how much data you want to store but the latter would be good for a small amount. Carbonite costs $60 a year, but is invaluable if you want to back up all your data automatically. It runs in the background. Restoring the data whether to your existing computer or to a new computer is very easy.

Bill

[trix606]

Hi Lynn,

I recently started using Onsong on my iPad. It does scroll songs and I believe ForScore does too. I was using ForScore at one point and most recently I was using Set List Maker. I moved to OnSong because it seems to have better documentation and tutorials and just seems easy to get songs into it.

Harry

[familyman4]

Lynn,

I have found OnSong to work very well for my IPad. I have set up separate set lists for 12 string songs, dropped D, other alternate tunings, special set lists, etc. And the nice thing is also that all of the set lists songs are still also in the main complete song list.

The "Air Turn Duo" is the blue tooth foot pedal that I use for this as well. It works great! Once you have the set list set up, it not only turns the page forward or back but it scrolls down for you with a simple click. So simply said, it scrolls down (or up) for you with the current song that you are performing, then when you are at the end of that song, a simple click moves to the next song in the set list.

Another feature with OnSong that I just discovered a couple of weeks ago is the use of backing tracks. I met an artist at a gig and he was using OnSong with this feature. He stated that once you add the backing track to the lyrics, it actually would scroll the song automatically, with the timing of the backing track. Then he uses his foot pedal to turn the page to the next song. I haven't had time to utilize this backing track feature yet but found it interesting. It worked great for him.

Here is a tutorial site for you to see all that OnSong can do to see if it is right for your needs....
http://onsongapp.com/videos/


Hope this helps you....
Bart


EDIT: P.S. I have the OnSong set up to automatically back up once a week to my Drop Box folder.

[auntlynnie]

Wow, this is such good information. I have OnSong so Im currently experimenting with that. They do seem to have a bunch of tutorials, which I plan to look at. Maybe then I'll understand the features rhat Bart is using.
Lynn