Instrumentalists can take all their songs to a session on a small tablet,
but singers still have to carry lots of heavy folders.
I tried different ways to get the lyrics onto my iPad,
but they weren't so convenient...
You might have tried some of these ideas already:
Asssumptions:
- you need the chords also; otherwise you could just use a single PDF of your lyrics in iBooks (or equivalent)
- you usually only sing a song in the one key so a PDF of the chords is ok
1
You could make a PDF of each chart then (presumably in a computer) construct a landscape page with lyrics on one side and the (smaller) chart on the other. Use your tablet in landscape.
2
Use another tablet (could be a cheap android 7 inch or iPad mini or iPod touch) for lyrics. Lyrics (as simply text files) do not take up much processing to display so should work on 'last years' cheaper devices.
I have an 'older' android tablet with the app 'Lyric pad'
http://www.lyricpadapps.com
I am not a singer, but it is used for any singers who spontaneously get asked to sing with the band and do not have their lyrics or want to try a 'new' song but perhaps do not know all the lyrics. I have downloaded various lyrics and save into dropbox which automatically updates into Lyric Pad (obviously you can add directly into the app, but using a computer to find the lyrics, it is very easy - the tablet updates the next time I turn it on.)
(I also have iReal b on it, so any 'stray' musician can come and play instead.)
3
Unrealbook (iPad app) has a facility of master/slave, where a PDF page chosen on one iPad, brings up that page (or the one after) on another iPad. This means if you have the left page lyrics and right page chords (double page spread) of each song then load the PDF in Gigbook on each iPad, set the lyrics one to master, the other to slave (turn on plus 1 page), you only need to control your master ipad, with the facing page instantly showing on the other. Or you have two separate PDFs, one for the lyrics and the other for the chords - each page is a song, where each song is on the same page in each PDF. Set to master/slave, changing on one will change to the exact page on the other. Each ipad shows either the chords or lyrics PDF. Just put them side-by-side on your music stand. (It probably was designed for pianists where they prefer two pages displayed at once.) It works well.
http://diystompboxes.com/unrealbook/index.html
4
Edit the long length songs so there is space at the bottom, export the PDF of the chart, then add the lyrics with an image editor, save as PDF, then use iBooks (or whatever) for displaying.
If you do not like iBooks you can use a PDF viewing app like forscore, gigbook, unrealbook etc. These are designed for musicians, so you can make setlists for your gigs or rehearsal lists and search for the songs etc.
On android, use Mobilesheets or a PDF viewer.
http://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/
5
An app like Scanner Pro (iOS) can be used to simply photograph your lyric pages and turn them into PDFs. This would be much quicker and maybe all you need instead of text files.
6
Construct a PDF with facing pages (lyrics on left, chords on right for instance) (as in #3 above) then use a PDF viewer to display both pages at once in landscape (I presume this is possible, I have never needed to do this.)
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We are aware many users like you want lyrics inside iReal b. We have different sized devices to consider (iPhone might be too small to have lyrics as well as the chords showing at once) and how it is all organized to make it simple and useful. Thanks for your support. We have have lyrics on our list for future ideas.
Any chance your programming gurus can tweak these features? (P.S. I know we can manually edit the order of songs if they're moved into individual playlists, but that means rearranging them every time we click the "sort" button.)
