I recently bought a copy of Ashley’s setlist in order to add to my own. This post contains a comparison of the format and some of the material used in Ashley’s setlist versus mine.
On Ashley’s Setlist
- Ashley’s setlist of 600+ songs uses a Google spreadsheet with links to Ultimate Guitar (or similar), and YouTube.
- This relies on Internet connectivity and that the links currently work internationally (and not all do).
- Ashley avoids licensing as she only provides links.
On My Setlist
- I store my songs offline using an (Android, iOS, Windows) application called SongbookPro (songbook-pro.com). The cost is $8 per platform.
- I already have 500 songs in my own setlist. Some the same as Ashley’s.
- For my own setlist, I search/filter songs by various criteria such as genre, popularity, decade and difficulty using Ultimate Guitar.
- I’ll then download tabs from Ultimate Guitar into SongbookPro, and YouTube songs to local MP3 files. There’s lots of editing involved.
- I can’t share my downloaded tabs or MP3’s.
Discovering Ashley’s Setlist
- Some Ultimate Guitar songs are not available (on the web site), but can be found and imported into SongbookPro.
- Some YouTube songs are not available in Canada, but I found them with a search.
- There’s some nice metadata included in Ashley’s spreadsheet, i.e. genre, decade, and upbeat/slow. There’s also the 3 and 4 chords pages.
- Ashley has songs from several decades.
- Some Ultimate Guitar songs were difficult to play, so I went to Ultimate Guitar, simplified and then downloaded to SongbookPro.
Adding Songs To My Setlist
- Song tabs will be downloaded from Ultimate Guitar into SongbookPro and use the text based ChordPro markup language. It takes up 1/10th the space of a PDF file.
- Songs will be on the fly transposable with different key/capo setting in SongbookPro.
- I downloaded the YouTube songs to local MP3’s.
- These MP3’s may require editing with Reaper (or Audacity).
- I sometimes change the pitch of a song to make it easier to play, i.e. increase B to C.
- Some songs require fine pitch adjustment, ie. Rainy Day People by Gordon Lightfoot (50 cents).
- If tabs are inaccurate, I’ll use chordify.net to determine correct chords.
- I organize song tabs in SongbookPro folders.
- I have now made a folder with songs from Ashley’s setlist.
- When done, everything will be local to my device(s) and not rely on Internet connectivity.
- I can backup and sync my songs/setlist and MP3’s with my tablet via Google Drive (as the intermediary).
Some Artists Not On Her List
Here’s a list of some of the artists in my setlist that have some very good songs that aren’t in Ashley’s. Most notably would be Blue Rodeo (and Jim Cuddy), who have a lot of easy to play and very listenable songs.
- Albert Hammond (It Never Rains . .)
- Avi Kaplan (Aberdeen)
- Barenaked Ladies
- Blackberry Smoke (some nice songs)
- Blue Rodeo (this is a significant miss)
- Caamp (some nice songs)
- Eilen Jewell (some nice songs)
- First Aid Kit (some nice songs)
- George Strait
- Gordon Lightfoot (this is a significant miss)
- Jackson Browne
- Jim Cuddy (some nice songs)
- John Anderson (Seminole Wind)
- Johnny Reid
- Lewis Capaldi (Someone You Loved)
- Lord Huron (some nice songs)
- Neil Young (this is a significant miss)
- Passenger (Let Her Go)
- Sons Of The East
- The Band
- The Byrds
- The Eagles (she only has 1 song)
- The Secret Sisters
- The Wallflowers (One Headlight)
- Waylon Jennings
- Willie Nelson
In conclusion, it will take anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour per song in order to integrate Ashley’s setlist into the easy to play and offline format I use with Songbook Pro. There’s a LOT of work ahead.
In the meantime, here’s a daily update of my setlist.
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