First off: Hi everybody.
Second: Thanks for this marvelleous app!
I have already seen the iReal Book before it got the player option and always thought "hm, not bad, really...". Now that it got the player, purchasing it was an absolute no-brainer! Seriously, in those 1-2 weeks it already became one of my most used apps.
Anyway (and of course, that's why I'm posting here...), I have a few feature requests.
I'm really sorry if some (or maybe all?) have been mentioned in this thread already, but it's a bit much to read through all the posts...
So, here goes my little list.
1) Styles
- More styles, please. Yeah, obviously, I also want some more, I know this has been requested often already and I'm absolutely positive that the developers are on it. Basically, I miss a handful of straight 8th note styles (suitable for rock, soul, etc.) and a bunch of 16th note styles (suitable for funky stuff and the likes).
- Variations of existing styles. I'm sorry to say so, but sometimes I feel the existing styles are a little too busy. This is especially true for the piano comping and the drums. I really wish there was an option to switch to some rather rudimentary style, such as, say, half or full note piano comping, a simple 8th note cymbal/hat and not much else. Would let me concentrate a little more on what I'm doing. And I'd like to see some drum styles not using cymbals.
In addition, it'd perhaps be nice to have like, say, 3 (or so) main variations of the styles, such as, say, "less busy", "normal" and "busy".
- Some songs more or less require certain accents (or even stops) to be present. It'd be quite nice if those could be somehow implemeted. Maybe not in the iOS interface (might become too busy to find your way around it) but in the editor(s) only.
- A style editor? That'd be tremendous, seriously!
2) Sounds and stuff
- I really wish I could change the players sounds at least a little. Such as switching the piano to an electric (rhodes-alike) piano, the bass to some electric fingered bass. And well, I'd also like a little tighter drumset.
- Audio input. Well, might not be of too much use to many people, but as a guitar player, I defenitely wish there was an option to connect my guitar straight to iReal Book (I already own Peaveys excellent Amplink LiNK interface). Of course it'd be even better if there was something like a really simple amp simulator, possibly just offering one clean and one overdriven channel with some basic gain/EQ section, plus maybe a little bit of reverb and delay.
- Alternatively (because the above mentioned should really only make sense to guitarists and bassists), it could be sufficient to make iRealBook fully "background compatible". As said, I already use Peaveys Amplink - this is along with the software. It's amazingly CPU efficient, so I could imagine iRB would run along fine with it. Hm, could as well be a problem of the Amplink app, which may not allow other audio apps to run in the backgriund... a word of the developers about whom is respnsible would be very nice, because if it was up to Peavey, I'd ask them to add full multitasking/background support.
- Export as MIDI file has already been mentioned, AFAIK. It could as well be nice to export things as MP3 and automatically add it to your iPod library - one could possibly overcome the limitations mentioned above that way.
3) Handling
- It would be really nice if one wouldn't need a net connection to transfer files back and forth to and from your computer. For instance, photos of the sheets could possibly just be added to the photo album, files from the computer could possibly just be transferred via drag and drop (such as possible with various file reading apps already).
I'm in foreign countries rather often, so online access sometimes simply isn't given or too expensive. But I'd still like to transfer files from and to my computer.
Ok, guess that was it for now. Thanks for reading and thanks for this great app!
Cheers
Sascha
