Recommendations for Software to Create a Song Book

@sairfingers

Technology oftentimes has a steep learning curve and seems to overcomplicate things. Once you were able to remove the initial obstacles and managed to figure out a workflow that works for you, technology can be super helpful. Keep working on it for some more days to figure out :wink:

Cheers Nikolas

Any recommendations for best option on a Mac ? Prefer one off payment rather than subscription etc.

Gordon

Hear where you are coming from but donā€™t give up altogether. Give it some time and run it in parallel to your olde skool tech, for maybe one song. Itā€™s really no different to typing in a text box like this, when you are editing, or any other word/note processing app.

:sunglasses:

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Thanks Guys. Your input is much appreciated. No Iā€™m not going to let this beat me! :smiley:. Even if I end up doing none or minimal editing on the downloads from UG, itā€™s good having the songs Iā€™ve learned/am learning in the one place on my iPad.

My other songs are in Justinā€™s songbooks (Iā€™ve got them all) or in Beatles/Bob Dylan/etc songbooks which are of course indexed.

You may remember a while back I was looking for a spreadsheet solution to build an overall index for the Justin songbooks. Iā€™ve now got this done using the Apple numbers app so I donā€™t have to look through the separate indexes to find songs.

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As I mentioned earlier(possibly another thread), I use a ā€œscan to pdfā€ app on my phone and convert the lessons I want out of Justinā€™s (and other) songbooks. I then upload them to SongbookPro.

I donā€™t manipulate or edit anything. Sometimes I use the markup feature to annotate the score.

Mostly it is a really convenient tablet score notebook. I even have a pedal that scrolls it, although I use that rarely.

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Now that sounds useful. What app do you use? Iā€™ve googled it and it appears Notes has the facility to do this on iPhone/iPad.

I use ScannerPro on my iPhone. I have the free version and havenā€™t needed any additional features of the paid versions (I hate subscriptions for this type of thing).

I also use it to scan all tax documents, legal documents, recipes and all sorts of things. Very useful app.

Alternatively there is a free scanner app by Adobe - Adobe Scan. All documents are directly archived in Adobeā€™s cloud.

Notes has indeed an option to scan documents to pdf - I use it for that. Itā€™s really easy.

Iā€™ve been experimenting with Adobe Scan and Iā€™ve discovered it can scan in ā€˜bookā€™ mode meaning it will scan both pages of an open book in one scan and then create a pdf of each page separately but within the one file. This is especially ideal for my Justin songbooks which have ring binders so lay flat and have the song on the left page and the hints and tips on the right hand page (or a longer song that covers two pages). This pdf can then be imported into SongbookPro. I canā€™t edit the PDF files. It appears I would need the Adobe Acrobat paid for version to do that

What I should be able to do now is scan and import the songs I want from these books (and of course other books too) into SongbookPro meaning I can have all the songs I want on my iPad.

Brilliant. I shouldnā€™t have been so quick to give up yesterday! Now all I need to do is practise taking decent scans so the pages donā€™t look all squint. :grin:

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And not spend all your time scanning the song books rather than learning to play the songs in them :smiley:

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Gordon

Just wanted to thank you for raising this topic, as its got me thinking about how I use Songbook Pro and how I can make greater use of its ā€œfeaturesā€ especially with PDFs.

So I have just finished importing the 20 track PDFs for David Hamburgerā€™s Fingerstyle Blues Handbook and will do likewise from some of my other Truefire courses, Blues Rock Soloing, and Justinā€™s Solo Blues Course which also includes PDFs. Most of these also come with GuitarPro files but I find it easier to follow a PDF than using GP (old eyes!) to learn a song but having to scroll manually in Adobe is a real pita. Collating the lesson material in Songbook Pro makes it much easier and I just create a Set for each course.

And all portable should I decide to play in the courtyard for a change.

From little acorns ā€¦

:sunglasses:

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I have been watching this thread with some interest. At the moment I use Guitar Pro for learning and practice and printed song sheets for ā€˜performingā€™. and trying to work out if Songbook Pro is worth it for me.
I can see it works for rhythm playing where you just play the chords, but what about the individual notes for solo or fingerstyle playing? Can it cope with that?

Tony

See my screen shots for both fingerstyle and lead a few post back. You could export your GP tab as a PDF and import that into Songbook as already discussed. Or copy and paste TAB entries from UG and the like, as I showed above, and build the song layer by later.
Or a combo of the two like White Rabbit.

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@TheMadman_tobyjenner , Toby, thank you. I missed that previous post, or at least I didnā€™t realise itā€™s significance.

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I havenā€™t put effort into seeing if the tablet version of Guitar Pro can do the same as what SongbookPro does. Itā€™s descriptions suggest it might, so you might look into that if you already have the tablet version.

I like that SongbookPro is really a pretty straightforward program and you can scan any pdf you want into it, lesson text, cord shears, tab and whatever.

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I made a comment on this thread a long time ago that I used printed paper and plastic sleeve binders for songs.

Well that got unmanageable a few months ago, and I switched to Songbook Pro. It seems the best I could find, although its syncing didnā€™t work properly for me for a long time (now itā€™s working properly finally via webdav).

I found it cumbersome for tabs, so I still use GP & save tabs to my computer or ultimate guitar. But itā€™s great for chords & lyrics, which is really what I find I need once Iā€™ve learned a song.

So another vote for Songbook Pro.

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If you are into Apple environment and looking for a really good (bonus) free app to create a songbook, check out JustChords. It works on iPhone/iPad and Macā€™s.
Regularly updated with new features, you can:

Write your own songs and tab, lyrics chords and strumming diagrams
Import and edit songs from web,
Transpose/Capo, change key on the fly,
Includes chord diagrams (Guitar, Ukalele, piano) but you can add and edit your own chords and choose versions to use in songs
Show chords with or without beats,
Tap chord in song sheet to play chord sound
Add backing tracks from multiple sources and play while screen auto scrolls song sheet
Record your audio
Create Setlists for live play
Project your lyrics via Airplay
Bluetooth and midi options
AUv3 compatible with DAWs, send your chords and beats to DAW
Tools include Tuner, metronome, chord library
lots moreā€¦ā€¦
Did I mention that it free!

I use forscore. It is a great app but it costs 10 euros in one year when you want extra features. Like turning pages.

https://forscore.co/

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I use patacrep. Unfortunately, itā€™s no longer maintained, but I managed to get the latest version working to create my own songbook. More for PDF and paper version people.