Wanted: 10in for sheet music. Tips?

IMO The Archos 101 is the best 10' Tablet you're gonna find. I think they're releasing it in a couple of weeks.

Check out ArchorsFans forum, they have craploads of intel.

JunBringer said:

IMO The Archos 101 is the best 10' Tablet you're gonna find. I think they're releasing it in a couple of weeks.

Check out ArchorsFans forum, they have craploads of intel.

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honestly if thats ALL you want it for go with Flatcomputings ZT180 $216 shipped.

Its not brand new cutting edge, but as a guitarist I can tell you that it will MORE than do what you want it to do,.

I Tried reading tabs and PDF's of sheet music on my wifes 7" GT78 and the csreen was just TOO small.

W/ 10" you can set it on a music stand (with some velcro - you DONT want a fall) and play to your hearts content. AND if your using scanned sheet music in PDF or EPUB (get calibre to do the conversions) than a tap pf the screen will flip the page.

There IS an app out there that claims to be GuitarPro, but I havent made the time to check it.

I do know that robot guitarist works GREAT on this device

my two cts.

j

nija

if you have the $ the windows tab would PROBABLY be your best bet today.

however android probably executes faster given those specs.

My wifes pc is a dual core 2.5GHZ pc w/ 1.5GB and LOTS of HD space (in the multi TB range) and I have to reboot it at LEAST once a day or it slows to non useability (truly my sons 1GHZ AMD runs faster w/ winxp)

BUT you should be able to run almost any windows sw you want.

So if you have invested in windows processing SW (NI, Protools etc) that wouldnt be a bad idea, but now your getting into laptop $$$ and that was one of the things I was avoiding.

Hi Ninja Well this is probably to late but I just thought I would add my two cents. I was about to purchase the ZT180. But my wife bought the Viewsonic G tablet for me instead. I use it for my music while I play guitar. I place in on my music stand and use it in the portrait mode. I use velco to ensure it does not fall. I have not had any problems at all using the device straight from the box. If you go to slate-droid or XDA you will hear a lot of negative talk about how bad the original software ware is. If you are buying this for a game machine, or laptop computer replacement then they are right. But for playing music it is perfect. I use adobe reader to view my music which is in .pdf format. I have sorted all of my music into sub-folders a - z. Then it is very easy to alphabetize my music. At first I had all my music in one big folder but it took forever to scroll to the song I wanted. I am waiting for one of the big apple music book programers to write something for the android. The viewsonic is now selling for about 259. The Apple thing is twice as much. I am very happy with this device highly recommend it.

WOW I have been looking for guitar software but I missed this one. Thanks for pointing it out. Yes several of the people in my JAM have bought the rotten fruit pad. They have many options available to them. I was the first to have a tablet and I went with Viewsonic. We now have two other Viewsonic tablet users in my JAM. I have retyped all of our music to be in a more tablet friendly .pdf format. This wasn't totally necessary but a lot of our music was a copy of a copy and then scanned into a pdf document. Very light and hard to read. Re-typing has helped everyone, even our paper bound members.
My biggest complaint is most programers get greedy and see all of the Android devices as possible platforms for their software. Hence there in lies the problem. A phone is not a device to play music from. If they would standardize on tablets running 2.2 software and above they could accomplish the same thing the rotten fruit company has. Rotten fruit company restricts everything so the programer knows nothing is going to change. Android being open to lots of changes - causes concerns for the programer.
I am surprised you have not made the jump to the G tablet yet. Since your original post was so long ago. I would have thought you would be neck deep in it by now. Word of warning. Do not expect Viewsonic to treat you like a valued customer. For some stupid reason they seem to be totally indifferent to us. The forums are your best source for support.
Good Luck in your playing. I like the idea of listing all of the sources you find.

Keep playing till it hurts.......then play some more.

This is my second time sending this due to computer error. Hope it does not get duplicated.
You already know about the adobe thing. I don't have a camera so I will describe what I have. 2 inch wide Velcro. Soft side goes horizontally on the G tablet. The Hook side (scratchy) goes horizontally also on the music stand. I use a heavy duty model like this one from Sam Ash. I used to carry two 3 inch binders that caused the little stands to fall over. I use my G tablet in the portrait mode so I keep it about 1 inch above the tray on the stand. I have re-written all of my songs so they fit on one page. This works well for me. I dropped my tablet once from the stand before I came up with the Velcro. Didn't hurt it but why take chances.

I have tried the Chord Reader program. It is pretty good but not exactly what I need. I have no need for the internet downloading part. I have converted all of my songs to plain text. The reader displays them too small. Even on the largest setting. No BOLD highlighting. Plus it does not use any of the advance two finger controls. I think he must have written this a while back under 1.5 or 1.6 Android. I wrote to the developer but I have not heard back. So I have decided to write my own application. I have written other stuff in four other computer languages so I will learn another. But like Apple I will make it specific to one platform. Tablets, and I will try to make it compatible down to Android 2.2 but that is it. Sorry, but that is part of the problem for developers, to many different platforms to support. I will post back here when I have something to share.
P.S. I have just upgraded to Flashback 5.5 software ROM for the G Tablet. It is based on the Honeycomb 3.1 kernel. It works well, very fast. The camera and a few openGL programs do not work but they are improving it all the time. For me it simply does the Adobe faster. Once I have the song on my screen it is going to sit there for a while while I play it. It is not something you have to have. 2.2 works just fine.

Yeah that should work for you. I take it you stand up and play. The set up you are discussing sounds like it should work for you. I play in a JAM that requires us to sit for three to four hours at a stretch. I would definitely trust the Velcro to hold it with out the tray.

Flashback seems to have made the greatest amount of progress lately. IMO. The developer has now gotten Flash to work in different browsers. The only thing that I really don't have is the camera. But I never used it anyhow. They say there are some openGL applications that are not working but I don't run any of them. Many people were having problems with the gallery FC at the being just after boot up. But most people have gotten this corrected. BOS was my favorite until Robeet seemed to decide to slow down on his development.

I have tried the Guitartapp app. I could not use it because I don't have access to the internet when I am playing. The ultimate guitar web site does great online. In fact I get a lot of the songs from there and I can get it in the key I want. But unfortunately once we all sit down someone will get the idea to play it in a different key. I will look into esong-book.

Basically, all I want is an application that will read my songs from a file. I have copies of all of my songs in .pdf, .doc. and plain txt. It would be nice if the program could read pdf's but I will settle on plain txt at first. I would like to be able to change keys. The text of the songs should be in bold letters and capable of being sized by touching the screen with two fingers and expanding them. (I don't know the name of this technique)
That is pretty much it. The chord reader app does a good job of reading my music and changing keys but the text is hard to read because it uses plain text that has no attributes. And it is positioned so close to the left hand edge that I always feel like I am missing something over there.

We have twenty five folks at our JAM's on Tuesday night. Eight people now are using an electronic display of some sort. Two net-books, One laptop, three rotten fruit pads, and two G tablets. Oh yeah most of us are over 60. I think we have one youngster who is 45 in the group. I can say that I am the one who has been pushing the others to modernize our set ups. I used to take two trips to the car to get the guitar, music stands, and music books. Now I have it down to one trip.

I agree with your thoughts about more people wanting this. Once I saw the ad in Sears I immediately thought that is what I need. I can understand younger groups that have bands and have a set list of songs to play maybe not wanting this. Eventually you memorize everything. But we have a list of over 400 songs that we play at different times. Beginners are also prime users of this technology. Gig Book for the Rotten Fruit pad is a real nice application. It even plays the song for you so you can learn the melody. My "friends" that have the #@%^$ pad all love it. The problem is most of the Android devices are phones. And each phone manufacturer has a little different twist on what their phone can do better than the others. Rotten Fruit pad company does not have this problem because they control everything. So a developer only has to write one version of the program and it works for everything.

The songs from ultimate guitar web site are a good starting point for me but then I color code the various parts of the song, correct the chord positions and wording of the songs and add whatever extras we like to do with the songs. Saving it directly does not help me.
I understand what you are saying. I like the way gig book handles the index of songs. It displays them well but that is about all I know of it. I thought my "friends" said it would change key? But since I hate those products I don't pay much attention to them.
I just tried songbook last night. This program is pretty good. Unfortunately it requires chord-pro formatted songs. I just wrote to the developer last night and he replied this morning. He is working on several of the minor tweaks I suggested. I am trying to push him towards using .doc, or .pdf or txt files instead of chord-pro. We will see. He was very willing to improve the program. I am hoping I won't have to write my own.
Keep playin till it hurts....Then play some more.

Hi ninjakyle,
Well I have been busy. I have talked to a couple of developers for music reader programs. They have either lost their funding for the projects or don't believe the market will ever be big enough to warrant them writing a version for Android. BUT all is not lost. I ordered a Cicada foot pedal made by page flip. It is a bit expensive but it is bluetooth and it gave me the most options to choose from. I can simulate page up / page down, up arrow / down arrow, left arrow / right arrow, left mouse click / right mouse click, space key / enter key. Obviously you can only select one of the pairings listed at a time.

Unfortunately Adobe does not use the Page Up / Page Down keys in their current version of Adobe PDF reader. I was able to find some references to "Control N" working as a substitute for Page Down in an older version of Adobe reader for the desktop, but I was not able to duplicate this using any version I could find for the Android. I have submitted this as a request for change but I am not holding my breath.
I found a couple of pdf viewers that are free that will use the up arrow and down arrow. But they are a little flaky and slow to react.
The best solution I have found so far...... ezPDF Reader. It is in the Android Market. It costs $1.94 but it works quickly and preforms a page up or down by using the up arrows and down arrow key combinations. I have used it to view my music in the landscape mode for two JAMs so far. It is much easier seeing the songs in the Landscape mode. Everything is clearer. It does take a bit of getting used to thinking about going up or down in the music.
For example:
I print the Chorus in read in our songs. But I do not print it more than once. So as you go down in the song and it calls for the Chorus, you have to remember that the Chorus was already played once and it would be higher up on the song sheet.
I did it this way to conserve on space. Several songs are very long. It may now be possible for me to make the songs more than one page so we don't have to go up and down .. just down.

Overall I am pleased with the foot pedal and tablet. Like I said I think I will try retyping the songs again but including the chorus as often as needed to make it easier. Kinda depends on what the others feel. I have a total of five people using G tablets in our JAM now. Plus 3 iPADs. One foot pedal user in the Apple group and one foot pedal user in the G tablet group. But I know three of the other G tablet users want to get a foot pedal.
Hope this information helps you. Good Luck

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I have been out of town. I use two inch Velcro across the back of my tablet. Right in the middle, going horizontally across. My stand has the matching 2 inch piece going horizontally across also and about the middle of the way up from the bottom of the stands edge. This way I can move it any where I want on the stand. Good Luck.

Hi ninjakyle,

Yes I am still VERY happy with the Cicada. I have found two ways to use it.
One is with Adobe if you want to scroll down one line at a time. Yes you can use the repeat button if you want to, but this is going to be slower than a page down if that is what you were trying to do. This method is great if your song has the chorus embedded in the song everytime you are supposed to play it. Most of mine only have the chorus listed once with just the word chorus inserted when I am supposed to go back and play the chorus. So this brings me to options 2.

Second method is to use ezpdf from unidocs. (android market) This programer has fixed the page up and page down for me. Very quick to fix the problem the first time. But strangely I have not been able to get him to fix the arrow up and arrow down keys nor the arrow left and arrow right. I have written three times asking for this. If you get it please consider writing to them and asking them to correct the arrow keys so they function correctly. arrow left and right are reversed. arrow up does a page down. arrow down does a page up.

I am using Flashback 8.1. But I am using a 1.2 bootloader. The developer on this one is very committed. He even made corrections to the rom while he was on a family vacation. The rom is solid. No camera and flash only works in Opera mobile browser but it is a Honeycomb 3.0 rom. Everything else works well with it. This same developer has a 1.1 boot loader version also but I have not tried it.

The blue tooth synced up nicely but it was a bit cumbersome the first time I used it. You have to hit this button so many times then hit that button. But if you follow the instructions it does work. Once they are paired up I have not had any problems loosing my pairing.
The Cicada looks a little light weight but it has worked well for me with my big feet. I used it several times a week. Keep extra batteries with it. I find that I have to replace batteries about every two the three weeks. I am not using real expensive batteries so if you use Duracell you might get longer life.

Hope that helps.