External Monitor Support Coming Soon

Yes folks, iGigBook will be supporting an external monitor for those of you that have the VGA dongle. You will see pages two up on the external monitor, while the iPad shows only one. Perfect for those two page songs in addition to being larger and easier to read. When you combine this capability with iGBPager, you have a basic presentation system that allows you to walk around a room and turn pages without having to touch your iPad. Sweet!

iGigBook version 1.20 currently waiting for review

This update adds some tweaks to the app so that it can operate correctly in the new multitasking environment of the iPad. Currently working on showing charts two up in landscape mode and easier ways to accommodate individual sheets/packets of music. I'm finding that a number of purchasers do not have any of the books indexed, but want the application to do stuff with their stuff. No problem, the customer is always right.

iGBPager Now Available!

Good news for all of you iGigBook users that also own iPhones or iPod Touches, the wireless page turner iGBPager is now available for download from the iTunes Apps Store and the it's FREE! Amaze you friends as you wireless turn pages from across the room or use it seriouly as I did during a reading gig this summer. I had my iPod Touch in my sock, yes my sock, and it helped a great deal with the score that I was playing that wasn't page turn friendly. I was using an early prototype which required me to kick my leg out which the other musicians got a big kick out of.

Why I created iGigBook

They say necessity is the mother of invention and this have never been truer with respect to the creation of this application. I own a large number of physical fake books, all of the bootleg real books, all of the New Real Books and a host of others. The challenge for me has always been, given a list of tunes I may do at a gig, getting all of the music together in one place so that I can use it effectively. To meet this challenge I created a binder with just the indexes of all of the books and when I need to find a tune, I would consult the index of each book to see if the tune was in it. A little tedious, but way better than flipping through pages of a book. Once I located the songs I would make copies of pages or print copies from PDF versions of the books to create a "gig book" that I would play from at the gig. This worked pretty good when I would need a number of tunes from different books and is way better than lugging multiple books around and having the music ready to play. The problem with this was that it seems that on every gig tunes tend to get called that are not in the book I created(but may be in the book that I own) and that I don't either remember or know.

Until the iPad there wasn't a device that was large enough and with sufficient battery longevity that was portable with the ability for me to create software to make getting access to this information more efficient. Incidently, the realbook.us site was a side effect of trying to create a transposable chord chart resource on a windows mobile device way back in 2002, the small screen, dismall battery life and lack of processing power didn't make such a tool practical so the next best thing for easy access was the web and realbook.us was born.

I'm primarly a Microsoft Windows based software developer and so the adoption of the Mac OS and the iPhone development platform was a slow one simply because I'm busy gigging and writing software for clients. Once I got with Mac OSX I was able to get up to speed with the iPhone development tools and make far more effecient a process I've doing for a long time.

I've had a lot of fun developing this tool and testing it on actual gigs in addition to interacting with other musicians and listening to their feedback and ideas. iGigBook and the iPad are currently what I use on gigs be they Jazz standards or reading gigs and having a wealth of music available to me at my fingertips just makes a whole lot more possible. Hopefully you'll think the same.

iGBPager turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a wireless page turner.

With iGBPager loaded onto your iPhone/iPod Touch you can wirelessly signal page turns for songs in your iGigBook set list. You can advance by a single page by pressing a button or by motion detection. Using motion detection you can advance by a single page by waving your hand, moving your foot or any other means of moving the device. The movement required is not as severe as shaking and can be dialed in to meet your specific needs.

iGBPager connects to iGigBook via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi which means you will need at least one or both enabled on both devices. When the two devices have successfully connected, iGBPager's button text will change from RED to GREEN. If either device goes into sleep mode the connection or session will be disrupted, to re-establish the connection exit from the PDF view in iGigBook and then return to it. The wireless page advance feature is only available for songs displayed from the Set View.

Version 1.15 adds ability to email your set list to band members.

Version 1.15 of iGigBook and iGigBook Mobile adds the ability to email your set list to your band members and you have the option of including a PDF attachment containing the songs in your set list. This feature allows those that do not have an iPad to simply print the music or "gig book" that you supply as a PDF.