MobileSheets Forums

Hi all,

I am finally making the move from IPad to MobileSheets on a Chromebook.

Before I start the work to get my music into MobileSheets I would like to get some advise/opinion from you experienced users.

I am using several different real books (in Bb, C in Eb). I would like to be able to switch easily between songs and also build sets or lists. Also it would be nice (not really a must-have) to move directly from the Bb version of a song to the Eb or C version and vice versa.

In my understanding there are two options:

- use the Real Book PDFs as a whole and create/use index files to specify on which page which song is
- split the Real Books into many different small PDFs with one song each and use indexing or file name for searhing for songs

I quite like the second option but I think it will be quite a lot of work so I would appreciate your opinions on the best way forward. Also I am not sure how Mobilesheet usability will be with either of the two options. Would the large number of small PDFs be a problem?

Thanks a lot,
Armin

For ease of use, you need a MSP entry per song (this allows you to put it in set lists etc)

As you are using Real Books, which never change, I suggest you use the CSV method. This will create MSP entries for you and there is no need to muck about with keeping separate index files (other than the initial CSV file)

The CSV format is quite pernickety so I suggest you look at the one of the CSV files in this thread https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum...php?fid=29 to see how it is formatted.

It is quite difficult to get the CSV file right so I it is a good idea to initially put each book in it's own collection (this just requires another field in the CSV). Doing this makes it easy to delete the collection and reimport a new version of the CSV and Real Book (otherwise you have to manually select all the songs in the book so that you can delete them before re-importing).When you are happy that the CSV file is working ok, you can easily move them out of the collection (if you don't want them to be in their own collection.)

If you are using composite books that are liable to change then I prefer splitting the file into separate songs. This saves effort having to rework the CSV each time the book changes. It also means that any annotations that you make stay on the correct song!

Geoff

Geoff explained it clearly and correctly.
I use Collections for my bands and Albums exclusively for fakebooks (one album per book).
My CSVs usually contain a "Keys" column and I include the key in the title format so that the key shows up in every list.
This requires going through the book song by song to include the key in the CSV.
Many CSVs are already available in the forum. You just have to cross check if they match your fakebooks. Different editions of the realbooks exist. Alas it's not possible to share CSVs together with the matching PDF books in case the books are under copyright.

In MSP both solutions are working fine. Neither thousands of songs nor thousands of files cause problems.

Hi both, thanks for the detailled answers. Finally got my Chromebook and MSP installed and ready to go. Your suggestions help me a lot.

All the best,
Armin