Electronic gadgets for storing/reading music

[Faithless]

Hey Guys,

Soon we're gonna start doing a big TV show "The Voice" (You can check out Youtube for "The Voice of America" and "The Voice of Holland") and the thing is that we gonna have shitload of tunes to do (60 tunes for the first round).

We are now discussing with our band how to avoid having 60 sheets on the music stand during a live show - its not really handy nor good looking for TV, so we are thinking of getting either some sort of text readers (something like Kindle Reader) or one of those Tabs, like [url="http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-10-1-Inch-16GB-Wi-Fi/dp/B00519RW1U/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1320836367&sr=1-1"]Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1[/url] or Acer A500.

I thought maybe some of you have any experience with dealing with gadgets like that?
Any have experience with plain text readers - what is needed from them is the ability edit material on the fly and USB port to import material.


PS Do you find comfortable to read music (dots and/or chord progressions) from a 10.1 inch screen?

any thoughts much appreciated,
Laimis

[LukeFRC]

I have a friend who just uses his iPad for something similar, he sets it and it scrolls the music along with the song.

[phil625sxc]

I've been using the forscore app on the ipad 2 for a couple of months, mostly for reading realbook charts and pdf scores - it has some very good features for scrolling, auto page turning, half page turning, as well as editing scores etc - I haven't explored it fully yet and I'm still a bit dubious about using it for multi page scores but i think it's just a case of getting used to it.
There was talk of a bluetooth footswitch for page turning fop it but I'm not sure if that is available yet.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/forscore/id363738376?mt=8
also, good reader is another good score reading app, and there's plenty more about:
http://techinmusiced.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/a-comparison-of-five-ipad-sheet-music-readers/
obviously the ipad is the more expensive option but also probably the best... :-)

[Faithless]

Well, I don't really think iPad is the best solution (esp if you dont have Mac, and only drummer in our band has one) because it doesnt have USB or any other sort of access to it, so that aint really an option. Our managers are after a deal with Samsung so we are about getting those Samsung Galaxies S2..

Though if that doesnt work out, I'm still looking for your advices (iPads excluded )

easy
Laimis

[phil625sxc]

ok well keep me posted, i'm interested to see what you come up with as the best solution, as when i researched this a while ago the Ipad seemed by far to be the best !

oh, and you don't need a mac to use an ipad - i don't have one... :-)

[SteveO]

Doesn't the Galaxy Tab have a usb port dongle thing that plugs into its proprietary socket. Just like the ipad? the only other way of getting files onto them looks like via the wireless ethernet, which of course the ipad also does (Been looking at them as christmas is approaching and no 1 daughter has been dropping a few (un)subtle hints. (I'm going for the ipad anyway, but I wanted to look at what else is on the market)

[bluesparky]

I have a Fujistu Siemens PC tablet which I use for work. When I'm away I use it to read my music in hotel rooms etc.

http://gadgets.softpedia.com/gadgets/Portable-computing-systems/Fujitsu-Siemens-STYLISTIC-ST5112-Tablet-PC-7695.html

I've got my Line 6 toneport GX & my midi keyboard software running through it to play through and i have all of my PDF's of my music stored on it too.

I found a USB footswitch pageturner a few years ago which is perfect for the job.
http://gizmodo.com/306326/foot+based-usb-sheet-music-turner-pedal

It works for me and does exactly what I need it too, but i'm not sure if it's a bit too cumbersome for gigging. Also, as it's a tablet PC it still needs to boot up each time in the same way as a normal PC does.