A Reply To "Technology In Musical Education"

I had one disappointing/embarrassing experience in writing this blog over the past three years, which was a war of words with a developer regarding the feature of annotation in PDF music readers. The app in question was iGigBook, which has been a popular PDF music reader for gigging musicians. Regardless of my past interactions with the developer, I thought it would be important to mention that the latest version of iGigBook includes annotation. As I’ve stated repeatedly, my opinion is that annotation is an essential/required feature needed by a musician (whether a pro or a student). iGigBook has added that feature, and therefore joins the ranks of PDF Music Readers that have the core features that are needed by musicians (along with forScore, unrealBook, Deep Dish Designs GigBook, and the new Gig Easy app).

Original Post Here

I would have posted this comment to this blog but since comments aren't allowed, I'll post my comment here...

I don't think there was a war of words, just me disagreeing with you and setting the record straight about what you wrote so that people get an accurate picture.

I appreciate you mentioning that iGigBook has annotation, as they say, "any publicity is good publicity". I realize iGigBook isn't an app that you would find useful and also realize that no one app is going to be all things to all people. Having said that, there are features that are important to the musicians that use iGigBook on a daily basis, that are missing from all of the apps that you highly recommend. Contrary to what you say, iGigBook isn't joining the ranks of those apps, it stands alone in a class by itself, pushing the envelope of what a musician can do with an iPad and their PDF sheet music library.

I personally know a number of gigging pianists, that literally traveled with a suitcase full of sheet music books to their gigs, with no efficient way to locate 1 tune out of the thousands they may be requested to play at any given time. With iGigBook and an iPad a dream of theirs has been realized; instant access to their entire music library in seconds. I also know numerous sidemen, sax players, trumpet players, bassist, guitarist, etc, that also find iGigBook to be a dream come true because of the indexing, the transposing chord charts and the transposing books.

Keep in mind I'm not saying you should like iGigBook and use it, I just want readers to know that there are different realities and when they read your blog they should keep in mind that your view and recommendations are limited to what you use, what you know and how much gigging you do or do not do.

Transposable Chord Charts

Over a thousand chord charts available here, can now be accessed directly from iGigBook as a Dynamic Book, which means iGigBook has an index that allows you to access any of the charts on the site and also allows you to transpose them to any key. This is a great addition to the app for those situations where you're working with a singer that needs to perform a tune in a particular key and just adds to the extensiveness of your own iPad music library. These charts can be added to set list, shared with other users via email just like any other piece of music you would use in iGigBook. Of course an internet connection is required to view a chart however the caching feature of iGigBook allows any chart viewed to be called up again without internet access.

Busy October

October has proven to be a busy month for development on iGigBook with a grand total of 5 versions, each adding some really cool functionality to the app.

Version 1.51 exchanged the not so useful dimmer feature for a more useful quick view jump feature on the PDF page view. The quick jump allows you to jump to any of the 6 different iGigBook views which means you can swtch between up to 5 different scores using this feature. Version 1.51 also introduced the page preview in the Set List Manager something that was needed since the search can turn up multiple versions of the same tune in different books.

Version 1.52 introduced the ability to set the page offset for a book directly from the device. This is a welcome addition to those user that like using the trial and error method to figure out what the offset to a book should be even though there's a method for computing eactly what it should be.

Version 1.53 didn't introduce anything new but fixed a bug with A4 sized charts that were getting cut off at the bottom and fixed a bug with the set list manager page preview under iOS 5.

Version 1.54 added a feature missing from the Set List Manager search function which was the ability to search indexed song and files contained in the My Scores View. A handy little toggle switch allows you to flip between results from indexed songs and from files contained in the My Scores View. The page preview was also enhanced making it a lot more useful. This particular update got approved by Apple in less than 48 hours!

Version 1.55 added a much needed refresh button to the My Scores View which replaced a nagging pop up that would ask you if you wanted to rescan the folder whenever there was a possibility that the contents of the folder had changed. One may not need to worry about re-scanning the documents folder when there a small number of files present but when you have 500 to 2,000 files in a folder, it takes a while to resolve the differences, open up each file to determine the number of pages, etc. This update bests 1.54 in being approved in less than 24 hours! Go Apple!

There's already a version 1.56 in the works and this tricks the Set List Manager out even further, stay tuned...