Hello, I have a folder with lead sheets for my songs and would like to automatically display them in the foreground when switching to the respective song. Some of them are just open office text documents but some others are proper sheet music created with MuseScore. I think the common denominator (and technically the correct way to display them) would be PDF files. What would be the easiest way to do this with Gig Performer?
Have you seen the tool to convert pdf documents into images that can be displayed in the GP Lyrics/Chords window?
https://gigperformer.com/converting-pdf-files-for-use-with-gig-performer-chordpro/
I have, however I wasn’t sure if this is still the state of the art. This solution is not very user-friendly and not what I would expect from a $160 performance software to be honest. There must be an easier way to do this, especially when it comes to song setlists with 50 or 100 songs!?
I just tried it while it technically seems to work I can’t figure out how to adjust the results to what I need.
- How do I scale the images and display them side by side (almost all of them are two A4 pages which fit a regular computer screen)? The “width” and “height” attributes from the examples don’t seem to have any effect.
- How do I set the directory for the png files to be stored in?
For (2) have the original pdf in the location where you want to store the png files. Otherwise, what gets pasted into the lyrics/chords windows is just a file path, so you can always manually change this to whatever you need.
The lyrics/chords feature in GP is based on the ChordPro format as described here, so wasn’t implemented as a pdf viewer. The tool described in the blog is something that can help users who have existing pdf sheets. As it mentions,
it was not intended as a formal pdf solution.
After discovering chordpro many years ago…i converted all our rep and i have never looked back; very simple to port them between many packages (and GP supports bulk import).
It is the de facto standard now and while i dont use it in GP, I do use it in Onsong or Music Stand where all the band members screens are synced for page turns and key changes are immediate across the team etc. This also allows PDF like markups per member which is so useful. For lead sheets and capo, these are per member as well (which GP does not handle) but unlikely eg sax soloist is going to be using GP for anything except backing tracks in general
I use an old phone on small clip where its close and unobtrusive; I dont want my music on the same screen as synth and in ear mixing etc…point is that chordpro is the professional and responsive format these days. If you keep your repertoire in this format, you can bulk import into most packages and you only need 1 version of each because the keys etc are dynamic.
Pdf and bitmaps are just snapshots
I would encourage you to step into chordpro regardless…its a good investment
Cheers
Thanks for your reply! But isn’t ChordPro just a simple markup language for lead sheets? How can I display sheet music with it without using bitmaps (which doesn’t seem to work properly in GP)?
I just tried it after posting and seemed to be ok for chord charts. There may need to be some tweaks to the renderer though…but its usually a library…I dont want to speak for the developers though.
It doesnt seem to split the page as you would like…and doesnt seem to mention it in the manual but I could have missed something.
The actual lead sheet seems to be only via the PDF converter into png but at least it allows the sheet.
Main point of my reply was to converge your reportoire to chord pro if they are chord charts. GP is useful for this but if you are lead sheet oriented then I would suggest convert or use other app…some are midi driven; just map the midi out of the songlist in GP to drive the changes in eg Onsong etc.
Just trying to help…Im no guru in GP for this but have tons of experience with organisations migrating to chordpro etc Houses of worship etc
Cheers
For guitarists and vocalists who only need lead sheets, sure. ChordPro is not a replacement for anyone who wants actual sheet music.
This is a question of choices and priorities. Given the multitude of sheet music managers out there and also because many people tend to use tablets for sheet music (a well implemented sheet music manager is a significant investment by itself), we chose to prioritize other functionality critical to performers, such functionality easily justifying the cost of the product.
As has been often said, if we waited until every feature that every user wanted was implemented, the product would never be delivered!
I concur.
GP has adequate chord chart handling especially considering the price
It does.its intended job well and im pretty fussy ie fit for purpose.
My main point remains regardless of app used; chord.pro protects your investment of time and keeps that library portable to anything.
Even many publishing organisations eg CCLI support chordpro download…finally for those of us who require it for work
@mangolassi i am soon to integrate GP in controlling our music stand app; at this stage us bluetooth midi or osc but can keep you posted with findings privately if you would like?
Cheers
@Aurasphere Yes, please!
Is there any PDF viewer that’s easily controllable within a MIDI environment? I’m gonna control the setlist position with a MIDI CC and an easy workaround for me would be to sync a PDF viewer to the same setlist and MIDI CC.
Hi,
Bome MIDI Translator Pro can convert MIDI messages to computer keystrokes, if you think that would help.
I did something like this sending page numbers to Pro Presenter. It can be found here.
Does it have to be on the same machine? I run forScore on an iPad and I send it MIDI messages from Gig Performer to change pages, etc
Yupp, definitely. I don’t want to buy (and admin and carry) yet another device just for displaying some sheet music.
Why not use the inbuilt Lyrics Window?
Because this will only be able to display pre-formated text. The workaround for PDFs seems to be impractical and doesn’t work for me anyway (as described above).
It can display Images and on MAC it can display PDF
I tried the PDF converter tool but it won’t show anything in the lyrics window.