Introduction
Back in the day, I used to use paper based sheet music to play guitar, however I’ve since moved onto electronic devices to save and display my sheet music. Here’s my sleuthing to date on formats, devices and apps. In the case of the organization I work with, we had over 500 pages of sheet music, each person with variations of those page. We called it the ‘Sherpa collection’, because you needed a sherpa guide to carry the 4 books worth.
ChordPro
ChordPro is a file format, that provides a text-based markup language for representing chord charts by describing the position of chords in relation to the song’s lyrics. This format includes metadata, such as title, artist, verses and so forth. It can also be used for CIL (chords in line), or COL (chords over lines).
Ideally, apps would allow you to export/import playlists en masse in a standard text format as well as syncing with other band members that use the same app. In the real world, from what I can tell, ChordPro is not in widespread use. As a result, interoperability between platforms can be problematic. This is made more so as a result of a lack of a readable ‘bulk’ export of your song repertoire from the various platforms.
Stage Traxx 3
Appears to be the best app for band management, however it runs only on iOS (Apple). I don’t know if it support bulk export of songs.
Band Helper
Appears to be the best multi-platform app for band management. I don’t know if it supports bulk export of songs.
OnSong
Appears to be the best app primarily for songbooks, however it runs only on iOS (Apple). I don’t know if it supports bulk export of songs.
SongBook Pro
Appears to be the best multi-platform app for songbooks. This supports bulk import of songs, while export is buried in one of the menus. I’m happy they support ChordPro format.
Ultimate Guitar
Appears to be the most popular platform that provides access to a wide range of songs. It’s runs on muliple platforms including the web and is also used by many small bands as a tablet based songbook. It does, however, have multiple ongoing technical issues, so be prepared with a backup platform if things go south. Songsterr is a popular alternative.
You CAN export your private songs in text form, but it’s not easy to find. In addition, your metadata is lost in the process.
Ultimate Guitar do not appear to be interested in operability and only moderately interested in backups.
Bluetooth page turners
Android/iOS apps typically include functionality to support Bluetooth communications for page turning of the songs, which, otherwise may or may not scroll correctly when playing the song.
AirTurn DUO 500 appears to be a popular product for this functionality, although their BT500S-2 looks more like a standard pedal. The Coda Stomp pedal also look to be best in breed, however I ended up buying a Donner, which seems to work just fine.
ChordPro and the apps
Some apps work well with ChordPro, others not so much. Ultimate Guitar does not, and exporting your songs results in loss of your metadata.
Playing backing tracks
Some of the apps include built-in support for playing your downloaded MP3/WAV files, and some only support YouTube/Spotify. For my purpose, I require a music player that supports my downloaded MP3 files and provides:
- Pitch change
- Tempo change
- Vocal isolation
- Graphic equalizer
You won’t get that advanced functionality from these apps, so I tend to use one device for music and another for the songbook.
Personal Experience
I currently use Ultimate Guitar as my ‘master’ location for my songs, and have downloaded songs to my phone/tablet which I play using an Android app called ‘Music Speed Changer’. It provides all the above ‘play’ functionality and more.
I found that Ultimate Guitar can export your private songs in text for each song as an aggregate .zip file, but not in ChordPro format. I later imported those songs successfully into SongBook Pro, however the metadata wasn’t imported correctly, but the song itself looked fine. As a result, I went back and wrote a short Notepad++ macro (using Alt+0151) that added this to each song file. That did the trick, and I was able to import and sort songs by Title/Author in Songbook Pro.
I host a beginners drop-in guitar group and have been using an Excel spreadsheet on a Windows laptop to list the songs and PDF’s for each song, along with playing accompanying MP3’s from my phone on an amp. Since there’s a lot of work involved, I don’t play guitar at these sessions. The reason for this is that I need 100% reliability and viewability in a landscape mode for an overhead projector. I don’t feel comfortable using any of the apps to do so at this time.
I just bought a page turner and will be comparing Ultimate Guitar app with SongbookPro (both in 1920×1080 landscape mode) for this group. Each has their pros and cons. Reliability and viewability are critical.
Conclusion
Interoperability does not appear to be a thing that many of these apps have invested in, mainly because they use proprietary formats, so choose wisely. As far as I’m concerned, import/export and backups of your sheet music in a readable format, along with MP3’s to an independent storage medium are critical for when you find a much better platform.
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