After having now owned the Music Pad Pro Plus for over a week, getting it initally loaded with a small 75+ core set of song material (chord-lyric charts & leadsheets), I finally had a chance to work with it in the studio (rehearsal) as well as on a couple of gigs (both casual nursing home venue and weekend festival show).

Getting my music into MusicPad, and of acceptable quality was at first rather challenging, but after working with the helpful & friendly Tech Support specialist at Freehand Systems:
http://freehandsystems.com/

(manufacter of the MPPP) the display quality improved dramatically, and the conversion speed was much faster as well. I'm fortunate because much of my song lyrics and chords are already stored in my computer in a software program I've been using for MANY years called GigMaster (highly recommended):
http://www.shubb.com/gigm.html

so I only needed to export them directly from GigMaster to Freehand (.fh) grahpics format. Much of my other music is already in PDF format, so conversion was relatively simple as well, though not as sharp as I had originally hoped for. The best looking leadsheet scores displayed on the MPPP (1022 X 766 resolution) are the ones I manually scan myself and then tweak in Photoshop (5 min per song). Ok enough of the technical gibberish. Here's how the MPPP worked for me in actual use in rehearsal as well as on the gig.

After importing and organizing in the MPPP the songs alphabetically in folders A-Z, you can (if you desire) further crop the music to elimate all blank areas surrounding the music to maximize the size of the actual music displayed on the screen. I am then able to erase any existing notes, lyrics, chords, and add changes & additional instruction, like when to trigger arranger variation changes, fills, instr voice changes, etc. I find this feature quite USEFUL for song rehearsal. These additions can be stored, ammended, and even erased later if you desire, and does not affect the original music itself as its stored on a separate layer. I find the MPPP's screen very EZ to read and plenty BRIGHT for all lighting situations except possibly in very BRIGHT direct sunlight. You can also change the notes and/or sheet music background display to any color under the sun. The anti glare screen is definitely FAR easier to read outdoors than my Tyros LCD screen is. I threw together a couple of playlist sets which include some songs with lyrics alone, others with chords/lyrics, and a few actual lead shhets, which include some complicated non-standard chord changes & substitutions.

Ok off to my weekly nursing home job with MPPP underarm. The MPPP sets solidly on the larger than average music rack that attaches directly to my keyboard stand. Though I brought along the AC adapter (just in case), I ran the MPPP completely on battery power. It has a 3 hour life. I first selected and pulled up songs (on the fly) via my Tyros Music Finder, and then merely tap the MPPP same titled song folder & whatever song I choose in the Music Finder is able to appear on the MPPP (if desired) within 3-6 seconds, a lot faster than having to pull a fakebook up and locate the correct page, even if the page was memorized. I especially like the MPPP because it does NOT distract your audiences attention from you. No shuffling of pages or paper. Completely silent and very quick song access. Easy to converse with the audience while tapping the screen. When utilizing multiple page leadsheets, it too is seamless. I merely reach up briefly to tap the screen one measure before the end of the page, and presto, the next page appears. Pressing the lower right portion of the screen turns page right, and pressing lower left portion of the screen tunrs the page back. I doubt I will need to purchase the optional foot pedal activated page turner now.
My only complaint about navigating the MPPP on the touchpad screen is that song selection, scrolling, and window size expand selection can be a little difficult using bare fingers (instead of included stylus). The Technical Support rep assured me that Freehand will be updating the software to accomodate easier touchpad selection using bare fingers in a future update. I trust that they will be able to fullfill that promise.

Yesterday (Monday), I performed a show set for a Martin Luther King festival here utilizing the MPPP and utilized the custom playlist function. I typically would NEVER use music for a stage show, but this time I took the MPPP and because its unobstructive & undistracting, no one in the audience really noticed when I called up a few songs via playlist function with it. I merely tapped the screen once and then next song would appear, providing me lyrics & chords prompts (to each song) to glance at if needed. This is really an accepted stage practice used by MANY pros: even Frank Sinatra, as someone else here noted on another SZ thread.

Ok, the bottom line is that even though the MPPP may be a bit pricey, it's advantages (at least to me) is worth the price paid from Amazon.Com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ ...glance&n=507846

Yes, you can do a lot more different things with a laptop computer (and at a cheaper price) but if you need a dedicated digital sheet music organizer, viewer, and editor as I do, for BOTH studio rehearsal & taking on the gig, then the Music Pad Pro Plus is well worth considering. Directly Imported music from digital PDF files & other programs can have mixed quality results (from barely acceptable to good), but scanned files & tweaked in Photoshop music will look fairly impressive. I realize that this technology will continue to improve over time, but the good thing is that Freehand Systems is continually releasing OS upgrades to take advantage of the improvements. They are very customer oriented and actually listen to as well as act on customer user requests.

I still have a couple weeks plus to audition the MPPP and return it for a full refund if desired, but so far, I'm pretty sure this one (like the Yamaha Tyros) is going to be a KEEPER. The only trade-off is that I'm having to use the money I was going to spend to attend Winter NAMM for the MusicPad Pro instead. Oh well.

Scott