Here are some stills I took to show you how I utilize my iPad with my Yamaha Tyros2 keyboard for those situations where I might need some roadmap assistance of lyrics/chords.

I've got my iPad protected in a rubberized Hard Candy brand Street Case for added roadworthy protection. Because the iPad's got a 'beveled shape' back, when it sits directly on the T2's LCD screen, it doesn't depress any of the T2's LCD buttons (included in my pics).

The iPad apps I recommend and use for leadsheet/lyrics display are:

GoodReader $1.99

iRealBook $9.99

Both of the above apps allow you to organize and group songs in custom folders for quick navigation & retrieval.

The iPad doesn't include a USB port, but it utilizes a USB-Apple cable (included with the iPad) which allows you to easily drag & drop files into the iPad from the PC thru iTunes and the above soft apps.

When playing a medley of songs, I simply leave the iPad leaning against the T2 LCD, which switching between song styles stored in each of the T2's 8 regs, and use a finger swipe to quickly change from song to song on the iPad. Because the iPad's so compact & light, I use one hand to navigate to other desired songs/song setlist as required, while with my other hand, call up another Yamaha reg bank file on the T2, yet all the while, chatting with the audience, so they're pretty much unaware any of this is going on.

I really appreciate how the iPad blends in (integrates) with the Tyros2 lcd screen, making it pretty much unnoticeable to the audience. Another added iPad plus is battery life is NEVER an issue as there's always enough battery life to last a 4-5 hour gig plus plenty to spare. - Scott

Ok, here are the pics:

great pics and the setup looks awesome!

I Noticed you have a lot of tough chords in that sheet music for "what a difference a day made". Do you actually play those chords with the left hand for the accomp?

Nick

Yes, but some of these I play rootless jazz chord voicings as Yamaha's chord recognition table recognizes these. Too bad Yamaha doesn't bother to list these more exotic jazz chord voicings in their owners/data manual though. oh well. Scott

Hi Scott

I would like to be able to listen to my emails, as I drive..I have the "Blueant S4"....

Is there anything out there, that I can use on my iphone4, that will read me my emails as they are being "pushed" to my phone?

Thanks
Ron

Hi Ron. Great to hear from you. I don't own this iphone app myself, but Text'nDrive $9.99 appears to be what you're looking for. You might want to checkout the FREE lite edition first. Also, here's the developer's website . If you end up getting it, let me know what you think of it, as I may then follow your lead. Scott

[This message has been edited by Scottyee (edited 11-05-2010).]

Hiya, Scott, thanks for posting, nice to see you again. Sort of, haha. I mean, I can't see you but, sort of!

Scott, on those lead sheets with staff music, did you post those chords on there?

[This message has been edited by SemiLiveMusic (edited 11-05-2010).]

Hi Scott, just a quick question m8, how do you find the 9.7" screen? Do you have to do much adjusting from landscape to portrait, and do you need to do much photo-shop work on the charts themselves?

I was going to seriously look at getting one but then I saw the screen size....

Thanks
Dennis

Nice pics Scott. Always on the cutting edge and thx for sharing

Looks great Scott,

Would be no good for me though since I never learned to read music..

I have an Ipad still haven't figured out anything better to do with than surfing the web and playing games in bed....

I guess it's just the latest toy and I had to have one...

Although your making the most out of yours... Good luck

[This message has been edited by beachbum (edited 11-05-2010).]

Dennis,

For full score viewing, probably too small!, But I find the smaller 9.7 screen size idea for displaying lead sheets & chords/lyrics when performing. Large enough to see but without calling attention to itself.

iPad supports automatic portrait/landscape display rotation, as well as ability to lock to desired mode. Little or No Photoshop work required as all my digtial music & fakebooks were already in PDF, txt, png & jpg of which is natively supported by my iPad apps. Page cropping easily done on iPad, including single page or multiple-all pages cropping. I've got my complete large music Fakebook, and Songbook collection and individual song/lyrics library on the iPad.

Very nice setup Scott. Is there anything you miss about the Music Pad Pro that you used to use compared with the iPad?

Hi Scott,

very good idea with the iPad and thanx for the pics.

It seems to be the future to show score/lyrics in best way and without searching in thousands of songbooks and single papers.

Thilo.

Scott, great photos and summary of how you're using the iPad, not sure which I like better all the techie equipment or that Steinway lurking in the background. Do you play the Steinway often? Is that a model B?

BTW, here's a couple of iPad app I'm enjoying, former SZ member Mikey Maestro discovered theses two.

UnrealBook

and another cool app

Multitrack DAW

Thank you Scott. A few questions:

How do you see the Tyros screen when the ipad is resting on it?

What if you chart is more than one page?

How well does the ipad do in sun light? Hopefully better than the Tyros screen!

Another alternative.
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/iklip/features/

Jerryghr


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

That looks really cool! But I also wonder about the display.

I'm sure my coming iPad will spend a lot of time on my S910's music rest (at least the one I keep at home). It looks perfect for sheet music.

Beakybird



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

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).



1) You can't. Because all my song-style setups are stored in Yamaha Regs (1-8) I don't need to see the LCD screen while performing a song or song medley. After I complete a song, I can simply lift the iPad off the screen and set it to my side until I need to use it again. Since my core repertoire is memorized and/or played by ear, I only need to call up the iPad occasionally, for songs I'm not very familiar with, or have forgotten lyrics to. Afterall I seriously doubt anybody knows how to play as many songs (over 10,000+_ as I have stored in my iPad digital fakebook & leadsheet collection. In this business, the ability to satisfy an obscure song request can yield an enormous tip. The iPad has paid itself off in circumstances like many times.

2) Easy Peasy. The iPad supports multiple page docs & intuitive page turning with a simple finger-tap/swipe (left or right) on the screen. I think there's a 3rd party foot pedal switch adapter available as well which will allow you to turn pages hand free as well, but I haven't yet found the need for this.

3) I find the outdoor view ability bright & impressive. Though in direct sun , you'll only see a reflective image of your face, without the sun's rays directly hitting the screen, the iPad screen (for both music & text) is impressively bright and easy to read outdoors. This is in contrast to the Tyros2's LCD screen which is totally useless when viewing outdoors even in diffused sunlight.

Jerry: Thanks for your alternative iPad holder link. Looks interesting

Scott

Lar, congrats on your decision. In addition to music display plus all the cool music apps available, I'm confident you're going to discover many other cool things you can do with your iPad as well. Soon after I got mine, my netbook's been collecting dust on the shelf. Feel free to ask if you have any iPad questions or app recommendations. Steve, myself, or Mikey will be happy to share our opinions.

- Scott

Hi Nigel,

I tried to send you a message using your forum address, and it said "Verification failed client host [fatback.sonicftp.com] blocked using Barracuda Reputation;

Is there a problem, or some way around it?

Thanks,

Ian

Hi Scott

What a great app !!! You can listen to your emails while you drive and answer them without taking your hand off the wheel.....

The only thing that it is missing is, you cannot listen to text messages...This would be a "Killer" app if it did both......But I am not complaining, because my goal was to listen and respond to emails while I drive...

I am a volunteer Driver for Childrens Aid and I am on the road a lot so this really works well for me...

Hope this helps
Ron



------------------
createsongstyles.com

newmusicroom.com

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


=================================================

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.

HI Scott

Thanx for the email. I have been wanting to give you a buzz but have been on the fly

Pretty cool iPad setup. May have to consider this some day. As for now I am happy using a laptop on it's side using pdf's. Also have a backwards forwards page turning footswitch.

Hi Scott, let me send off an email to Marco and ask about version 4. As I said I am one of the Beta testers, so I may be able to get an answer.

Anything specific you want ask?

Dennis

Hi Scott. Would be cool to see a shot of your setup.



Dennis, yes.

It states on the Music Reader website that 'MusicReader for iPad' does NOT support any of the 'advanced features' of Music Reader Mac/Windows version, but may be considered in future . . .

so 'which' features now included in the current 'mac/windows version' of 'MusicReader' are missing from the 'ipad version, and which of these will be implemented in the next new 'ipad version' of MusicReader?

Hi Scott:

What a beautiful setup, and nice home too....
That Grand Piano is wauuueeee !!!.. I can see you have good taste.
Kudos my friend. May I ask what digital camera did you used for those pictures?.

Manuel

------------------
mdorantes

Canon SD990

Done. Will let you know when Marco responds..

Dennis

Hi Scott

Here's a video of me using my laptop set up. It just looks like a music stand basically from the front, but you will see my usb light for the keyboard. It is very handy. Although last night it looks like my laptop may have crapped out on me. But, I always carry a hardcopy with me which is what I used on one of my weekly gigs tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UklZfiynEM8

Here you will see a pic of what my setup looks like if you scroll down the page. I turn the laptop sideways. I use Pivot Pro to have everything set at 90 degrees so I don't have to tilt my head to see files etc. You can also see the footswitch I use. It's great.

Also, if you scroll to the bottom of the page you will see a testimonial of mine.
http://www.bilila.com/pagescore_turner

Hope I can get my laptop going again otherwise I guess I'll need to get a new one.

I would need a good sized screen for what I do. What is the larges sized iPad screen?

This discussion is very interesting, but way over my head (age related). When I first saw an ipad up close, I remarked that it was the exact size and configuration that I would like to have for lyrics reading - compact and low profile. I had used the Music Pad Pro since it was released and when it started to freeze on occasion; I got an 8” monitor and hooked it up to the VGA connection of the Midjay. Like everyone else, I have trouble with outdoor gigs. Then, I saw that the Ipad offered a VGA connection and got excited only to find out that it is a VGA ‘out’ connection. I was dreaming of using the Ipad as a monitor as well as using the other features and apps you guys have been discussing. I have since been told that the inners of the Ipad most likely won’t allow for a VGA ‘in’ connection. Do you techies think that this could someday be possible with the Ipad (VGA-15 pin ‘in’)?
Ciao,
Jerry


[This message has been edited by Jerry T (edited 11-10-2010).]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jerry T:
[B]I have since been told that the inners of the Ipad most likely won’t allow for a VGA ‘in’ connection. Do you techies think that this could someday be possible with the Ipad (VGA-15 pin ‘in’)?

Jerry, don't know whether the iPad has the potential to support VGA in, but that said, the iPad CAN be used, via the Air Display App , as an external wireless monitor from a Mac or Windows laptop/desktop PC:

Air Display on Video: iPad as External Monitor Video Demo

Nothing is impossible ... Got to figure out how to Wi-Fi a Midjay Plus and have the Plus host the required software ... it could happen.
Ciao

Hi Scott,
Sorry for the delay, Marco has been swamped with emails.This version 4 is creating some interest!!

Any way his reply is (this is verbatim) :

In MR 4.0 a lot of features will be added to the Apple iPad:
· Many ways of annotations (including symbols)
· Recorder, Tuner, Metronome, Music Player.
· Bookmarks and links
· Half/One/Two page display.
· And much more…. (the list will be long)

With MR 4.0 roughly all features on Mac / Windows will be on the iPad, except the scanning, editing and conversion.

This last line (except scanning....) simply means these tasks are completed on either your PC or MAC and then synced by Music Reader via wi-fi to the ipad.

Hope that helps...

Cheers
Dennis

hi Dennis. Thanks for the info. That said, I've received & accepted your MSN Messenger chat invitation, so have just now signed on there. Do you see me appearing there online? - Scott

Yeah I can see you Scott but I tried starting a chat yesterday (my time) and it didn't seem anyone was at home LOL!

I have now got Skype installed so I reckon that will be easier...I am about to run the test phone call...So hopefully we can chat soon

Ciao
Dennis