[trevor.thompson@bris.ac.uk]

Howdy MSers

I am totes new to electronic sheet music. I play jazz guitar mainly to accompany my wife. She has a growing pile of Real Book-type books. The ones I like have chords, melody and sometimes words (words not needed). I prefer that to chords only. My wife often wants to sing in a key different to that in any of the books. So ... I would like to be able to access charts (chords + melody), and be able to transpose the given version into the key of her choice + and then print in good resolution. I don't plan to read off a tablet (don't have tablet, only Samsung 21 phone).  I have dipped into the manual and even imported an entire Real Book as one file (with 500+ songs). This didn't seem useful. 

I don't understand what MS is refering as "files". There seem to be many types. For instance I can't see how a software is clever enough to "read" a pdf file and change its key. There is much mention of csv files which I understand to be tiny text files and so can't see how they carry the necessary information. 

So question is:

Can you kindly point me to a source of jazz standards, that I choose from, download, transpose and print? Or an album of individual files to download (rather than one file with 500 songs) from which I would select on the phone.  Happy to pay if necessary.  I will not be using MS to play from - I don't have a tablet - only Samsung S21 phone. 

What is the best format of file for MS and where do csv files fit in? 

I don't have the head-space to invest a lot of time in mastering this programme, but I sense it going to be fine once I figure how to load files in the correct format. Here is her current  set list (for her main band). 

Apolopies for such a low-level enquiry

Trevor Thompson
Bristol UK

[Zubersoft]

Hello Trevor,

When MobileSheets mentions files, this typically means one of two things:

1) A PDF, image file (.bmp, .jpg, .png, etc) or a text/chord pro file (.txt/.cho/.crd). Files of this type are displayed when a song is loaded. With PDFs and images, more than one file can be added to a single song, so there is not a one-to-one correlation of files to songs. Multiple songs can also share the same file which is important when dealing with large fakebooks so that duplicates are not made for the large file.

2) An audio file (.mp3, .wav, .mid, etc). These can be added to songs for audio playback

One thing many users do is use a csv file to break up a large PDF into individual songs. This makes it faster/easier to populate metadata and allows many songs to be created at once that use a smaller range of pages from the PDF. If you go to https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...php?fid=29 on the forum you can see many CSV files that have been uploaded by users for common realbooks/jazzbooks/fakebooks/etc. If you find the right csv for your PDF, you can place the two in the same directory, tap Import->CSV or PDF Bookmarks, select the csv file and you will be given a list of songs. You can create any of those songs and MobileSheets will copy the large PDF into the storage location and each song will share that same PDF but use a different range of pages.

When it comes to transposing, only text/chord pro files can be transposed. That's because transposing a PDF is incredibly complex, and requires something called Music OCR that allows an image of sheet music to be scanned and the music notes and other information extracted from that image. Then the software can reconstruct all of the sheet music from the notes it read. As you can imagine, this can be very error prone if the image quality is low or there are other things that interfere with the image analysis. There aren't many Android applications that can handle Music OCR (at least not well). There are some great products for Windows though, although they are anywhere from $100-$250. I don't support this in MobileSheets because I haven't found an open source library that can help with the image analysis that can be used for commercial products. I may try to tackle this in the future, but it will be a very large undertaking, so it's very low in my list of priorities.

As far as your question about a source of jazz standards - I can't help with that unfortunately. Hopefully another user can chime in if they are aware of anything like that.

Mike

[itsme]

Hello Trevor
It sounds like Mobile Sheets is not the tool for you.
I would recommend that you learn to use a score writing software. I would recommmend MuseScore. https://musescore.org is the URL to get the free software and excellent help in the forum. On https://musescore.com/ you can find lots of sheet music as MuseScore files of every style (and, to be honest, of different quality). Downloading scores from musescore.com requires a paid account.
ABC notation https://abcnotation.com/ might be an alternative, but it is more common for traditional and folk music than for jazz.
Scores for specific songs are not easy to find, neither in MuseScore nor in ABC format. This is mostly caused by copyright issues.
One example that I came across, public domain jazz both as PDF and as music xml (that can be imported both into MuseScore and into ABC software) is the "Public Domain Song Anthology" https://aperio.press/site/books/m/10.32881/book2/

[GraemeJ]

I'm inclined to agree with itsme - MSP may not be the best choice for you.  May I suggest yet another software for you to look at - https://www.irealpro.com/ .  There is a huge library of music available for this, with an active forum of people adding new stuff all the time.

The only drawback, from your point of view, is that it is chord charts only.  This is true for many Real Book type applications because of copyright restrictions.  OTOH, instant transposition is available.  

I can only suggest you try out all the alternatives that have been mentioned and see what works best for you.

[trevor.thompson@bris.ac.uk]

Hi People

Thanks for these tips. Very helpful to know that mobilesheets is mb not quite the right thing for me - could save me a lot of time! Graeme I have got irealpro - and yes it is good for transcription but, as you say, no melody.

Not giving up quite yet - will explore musescore, 

BWs

Trevor
Bristol UK

[BRX]

Well, Trevor, I think you see the difficulties yourself if you ask "how a program can be clever enough". 

For PDFs there simply isn't a good transposing method. Even the OCR programs for note recognition aren't quite there that.
(Scanscore seems promising, but it's not cheap and they changed to a suscription mode with the new version which I dislike).

You can look into Band-in-a-Box too. That's practically a very sophisticated and mighty "iRealPro for PC" which also can display
melodies (and is actually much longer on the market).

It's also not cheap. But you will be able to find files and songs for BIAB with melodies and chords for a lot of standards (not text though) 
which you can transpose and print out or save as a pdf to display on your phone.

If you are willing to invest time and work to transcribe a PDF into transposable electronic form MuseScore (or any other notation software)
is indeed the way.

I'm very partial to the aforementioned ABC though which is an ASCII notation language which is very simple to learn (at least for the
basic stuff). And if you just want chords/melody/text you can very quickly write down an ABC file which can be displayed and
printed in a lot of (free) ways. I won't dive into that further. But I have quite often transcribed songs from real books into ABC
to be able to transpose them on the fly or quickly edit something and display or print it.

But actually, if you won't use a tablet but only your phone IMHO you should stick to iRealPro, because the melodies probably are
displayed so tiny that they aren't to useful (but maybe you've got very good eyes).

[otnt]

So ... I would like to be able to access charts (chords + melody), and be able to transpose the given version into the key of her choice + and then print in good resolution. I don't plan to read off a tablet (don't have tablet, only Samsung 21 phone).  

So question is:
Can you kindly point me to a source of jazz standards, that I choose from, download, transpose and print?

https://www.musicnotes.com/
is what you are looking for.