[Scherzo]

I am BRAND new to MobileSheets (LOVING it so far) so I apologize if any of these features is already there and I don't how to use them.

So far, I loaded in some of the many PDF leadsheets I have and one of the features I was looking forward to was having multiple versions of the same song in the same key or version, but filed under different names for the ease of locating them. For example in the Jazz world, the song Black Orpheus goes by three different names.

Duplicating a song in MobileSheets and renaming the copy is a straightforward enough but that creates multiple copies of the same song. That doesn't sound like a bad thing unless you discover a notation error or want to make an annotation on a version and forget that you have 3 or 4 copies that only differ in the title and what letter of the alphabet it is filed under.

Bottom line, you have to remember to render those notations or changes to ALL copies.

What I would like to see is an option to FILE UNDER (with multiple entries) when importing or editing a song so essentially there would be only ONE copy of a song (in the same key or version) in the database but it could be filed under different titles so any changes would be made to ALL copies.

That would also make it easier for people like me who fix any notation errors with other software and replace the defective score in MobileSheets. If you had a FILE UNDER function, you would only need to replace one score.

Another thing I would like to see is a separate field for Lyricist instead of putting multiple entries in the Composer field.

Finally, I don't know if it is me doing something wrong or MobileSheets but as a beginner, I would LOVE it if when I hovered my mouse pointer over a icon it told me what the function of the "button" or icon was.

Other than that, GREAT program!!

[Geoff Bacon]

I don't know if this will cover all your points but it sounds as though you should be using collections (a song can be in more than one collection).
e.g. have a Jazz collection, a Country collection

When importing a song. add it to one or more collections (the song will have the same name in each collection). You can edit a song to add it to another collection if you forget to add them when importing.

I have a different scenario in that I am in two Uke groups which share a lot of songs. My solution is to keep separate versions of the songs for each collection (one per group) so that they can diverge if necessary.

So, I guess you need to mix and match these two methods to achieve what you want to do.


Geoff
PS: To edit an existing song, long press on it's name on a library screen (until the tick appears) and then select edit on top line

PPS For Lyricist, you could use a Custom field (never used them myself)

[BRX]

PPS For Lyricist, you could use a Custom field (never used them myself)

Small correction. You could use the custom group. There is 1 custom group and 2 custom fields you can use. And I've been using the 
custom group (renamed as lyricists) myself for that. Myself and others have requested additionals groups or better custom groups for quite a while (I'd like to have at least one extra for arranger for instance). But because of the load of bugfixes and other new features it's probably way down on Mike's agenda.

The other feature I'd also like to have and also have requested some time back is your idea about some kind of "alias function". That's not available so far in MSP and I don't think the big annotation update Mike is planning is including this. This update will provide to option to have multiple and different annotations for one song.

But I don't think alias names are covered and neither a synced editing.

My solution for now is to have alternate song names in one of the custom fields (here it's indeed the custom field) and have it displayed beneath the title with the song format option (it's a bit more advanced stuff but you can find in the manual).

Example: I have "Black Orpheus" as main song title (and named all my song entries this way regardless how they are in the source pdf) and in
the custom field "Day In The Life Of A Fool [A]  / Manha De Carnaval / Chanson D'Orphee [La]" which is shown beneath the title.

For each of these alt titles I have a dummy.pdf assigned to (only once) which then would be for instance
title: "Day In The Life Of A Fool [A]"
custom field: "Black Orpheus  / Manha De Carnaval / Chanson D'Orphee [La]"

(the main title Black Orpheus always listed as first one, so I know which title to look for if I get the dummy)

It's a bit complicated but works for me as long there's no real alias feature.

And yeah, you're right. MSP and it's developer Mike are fabulous.

[BRX]

Ah, I missed one point. 

If you fix notation errors in other software and you are talking about the source files (PDF I assume), then MSP is already working
as you want.

If you duplicate a song it only makes a new entry in the database you can rename, annotate and whatever. The source PDF is unchanged and not duplicated. So if you change that source PDF the changes will be displayed in your duplicates since they all use the one PDF.

Changes within MSP aren't synced though (annotations essentially as I wrote).

[Zubersoft]

Scherzo, 

What you are describing sounds to me like having a new field for "alternate song titles" where the same song would show up multiple times in the song list under different titles. The song would not show up multiple times in ordered lists like setlists/collections/etc. This type of feature would only apply to the songs tab. I can certainly look into trying to add support for that in the future, but there may be some design issues I haven't considered yet. 

I do plan on adding more custom fields that users will be able to rename and use as they see fit. I just haven't had time for that among all the other feature requests.

I haven't added tooltips in the Windows 10 version for all the icons as it requires a significant number of new translations for all 11 supported languages.  I will certainly try to do this at some point after I've delivered other promised functionality. The reason I haven't made this a priority is that tooltips only work for users with a mouse, and I believe the majority of MobileSheets users are using a tablet (tooltips don't work with a finger).

Thanks for the feedback (and thank you for the kind words of support BRX),
Mike

[Scherzo]

Thank you all for the replies!!
 
In regards to the desired lyricist field. I realize I can use a custom field but I’m a bit obsessed (which is a nice way of saying it) so I guess I would want the lyricist field to be physically located under the Composer field (and before Genre) on the edit song screen.
 
In regards to using a custom field, that doesn’t give me the ability (unless I am missing something) to have a Library tab with the Lyricist displayed as I now do with the Composer field in my Library. I like to be able with one click to see that list of composers for "Irving Berlin Jam Night", etc. Having a lyricist tab for the same reason would be nice too.
 
I realize that at present I can use and display a Custom Group as a Library tab, but I don’t want to use that for Lyricist when I know I will want to use it at another time for something else more logical and it would be populated with more than one type of criteria.
 
In regards to the song titles, I am using collections for the different jam sessions I go to because of the alphabet list, which is VERY helpful. In my scenarios I go to a session and someone calls out a song like  “Slow Boat to China”…
 
…or is it “On a Slow Boat to China”, or is it “I’d Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China”?
 
In the old days because I am dumb and can’t remember where I had it filed in my binders, I made multiple copies with different titles and filed them accordingly so I could find them fast. Having all of the aliases in ALL of the collections is the most helpful to me because the same name calling thing happens everywhere.
 
With MobileSheets I did the same thing the only way I knew how which was to duplicate “Slow Boat to China” in my database and rename accordingly which is fine except when I discover a notation error in the Bb version which I annotate on the fly and fix later with other software and re-import the corrected PDF sheet.
 
The problem is that if I happen to notice the problem while playing from the sheet titled “Slow Boat to China”, the annotation is only on that sheet for the time being which is problem if I use different sheet with an alias before I get around to re-importing a corrected sheet. I also have to remember to replace and rename it three times.
 
A minor hassle I know, but if there were one copy of the song that could have many alias that would appear everywhere including the Song List, Collections & Set Lists, it would make that situation a lot easier to manage.
 
Other than that I am loving MSP!!
 
I will be away from the Internet for a few days so I apologize in advance for any delay in responding to additional questions or suggestions generated from this response. I’ll be back soon and thanks again!!

[itsme]

Lyricist:
---
Currently the custom group would be the way to go.
You can rename the custom group, you have a tab like composer, you can choose from a list of existing lyricists instead of having to type it again and again, and (maybe most important) you can maintain a certain entry in one place (in case of typos or to replace abbreviations) instead of having to correct hundreds of custom field entries
"... I will want to use it at another time for something else ..." - you're not the only one, that's why more custom groups, more custom fields and renaming of custom fields have been requested many times
another possibility: use the Composer group for both Composer and Lyricist and add a postfix or prefix that specifies the role
example:
George Gershwin ( c )|Ira Gershwin ( l )
George Gershwin (m)|Ira Gershwin (t)
c: George Gershwin|l: Ira Gershwin
m: George Gershwin|t: Ira Gershwin
with c composer, l lyricist, m music, t text or whatever
The pipe symbol | is the separator to be used if you want to see two entries in the list of composers.
I would prefer the postfix as it sorts also nicely in case the role  is not specified (it's often not mentioned on sheet music who contributed what)


Corrections in MSP and aliases:
---
I suppose you make corrections as MSP annotations.
You will need to rework your PDFs to transfer the annotations so that they are available in any alias.
And you will have to do that frequently, otherwise you will get lost sooner or later.

To find corrected songs I use two possibilities:
1.) I have an additional collection TODO (or SourceType) where I add the songs that need corrections
2.) In the thread http://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum/...p?tid=3415
Sciurius posted an SQL statement that searches for files with annotations

[itsme]

@Mike:
Regarding handling of alternative title, composers, lyricist and the like the MSP database is not perfect.
All versions of a certain song share the same alternative titles, composers, lyricists and so on.
In an ideal solution I would have to maintain those common metadata only once at a central location.
This would need an additional "higher level" field in the database and is probably far beyond the focus of MSP.