Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Digital Music Library

Recently I decided that hauling around 2 big binders was a hassle so I started putting all of our band tunes onto Google Drive to see if it would be convenient.

The limitations I see are:
a 10" Pad is a bit limited for text size (may have to look for a cheap 15" 2in1
no good sorting options.

Currently I created a sub-folder and have to drag and drop files between them but there is still no way to order them (other than default alphabetical)

Has anyone else tried this and or have a better solution?

Are you talking about putting the sheet music into PDFs and then copying them to Google Drive and accessing them via a tablet?

If so, regarding the size of the tablet: Yeah, my friend does that with his percussion sheet music and he had to get an iPad Pro (12.9") in order to be able to reasonably read it. I don’t know if he uses Google Drive… he may use software that’s specific for this (and it has it’s own storage system).

Regarding sorting: On a file system like Google Drive the only things you can really sort on is “file name” (or folder name) or modified/viewed date… I would organize into sub-folders and then within each subfolder, you just have to name the files smartly to get them to sort the way you want since the file system will sort alphabetically by name. So if you want them sorted by “artist” you would name them with the Artist name at the front or if you wanted them sorted by Song name, you have the Song name at the front. Unfortunately you won’t be able to easy change that after you name them all. Not many options here, those file storage things don’t have any kind of database features behind them.

Now if the main reason you are asking about sorting is because you want to have a way to say build a set list and then have the music in “set list order” at a show or something… and that will change from show to show/etc… maybe look for an app for your tablet that does that… for Example forScore (http://forscore.co)?

Just another idea as well (without buying software… although that forScore looks pretty good): Have a master repository that has all of the music in it (ordered by name or whatever the preference is).

Then when you need to create a set list or something: Create a new folder for that set list, COPY all of the files into that folder for the set list. And then rename those copies to put "001. " "002. " "003. ",… "010. ", "011. " etc… in front of the existing name so that they will go in order of your set… after you’re done with that folder, delete that folder or re-use it for the next set list…

PS: The reason you wouldn’t want to use "1. ", "2. ", "3. " is because if the list is longer than 10 items, it won’t sort like you’d expect.

Ahh, I did not think about looking for an app -though I use android and forscore is not available

I was able to find similar apps

This will work better than having to rename files for a set. and allow us to annotate during practice.

Good Idea thanks!

My 10" pad is not to bad because mostly I just need a reminder but if I want other band members to be able to share it I think it will take a 15" screen or so -so that we will not all have to have individual music stands which gets crowded on small stages. It looks like if this works out I could find a cheap refurb or used 2in1 convertable.

thanks
Chris

MusicNotes? That one looks pretty similar.