The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Hey everybody:

    I have a whole bunch of fake book PDFs, most of which I got from scanning physical copies. Now, whenever I go to gigs, if a tune gets called, I have some 5,000 charts right on my laptop.

    Here's my predicament, though: all of my books are in one big PDF file per book except for Real Books 1, 2, & 3. So, if All of Me gets called, great, I just search and I have a single page PDF titled "All of Me". But if "26-2" gets called (New Real Book 1 or 2, right?) or if someone requests "How Sweet It Is", I need to ask which book that is (which if someone requests the song, how am I supposed to know?!), and what page in that book it is, once I've opened up that 500-page PDF.

    SO. Does anybody know of some magical software that will somehow be able to read the titles of these charts and help me search them? Ideally, I'd be able to type in the name of a tune and it would have my twenty or so fake books in its database and be able to find which book it's in and what page, and open it when I double click. But that may be asking for too much.....

    Help???

    Thanks everybody!

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  3. #2

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    If you are on a Mac you can download "CUPS PDF" (Google is Your friend). It allows you to make PDF's out of everything printable. For instance a single page in a large PDF file. It mimics printer software but instead of printing, it saves the PDF-file to the computer. I'm sure there are similar software for Windows.
    Hope this helps.

  4. #3
    Here's the thing. I have all of the books as PDFs already. I just have no way of finding the specific song that I want, because I have about 20 PDF books. I'm looking for something that will read the pages that I have and help me find titles.

    Thanks for your input though. I'll check it out.

  5. #4

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    I think that's real hard, and I know of no magical solution. PDF files is a kind of image files and I believe that text searches are not easy/not possible, because with an image file it doesn't really make a difference if it is a lead sheet or a portrait of Napoleon.

    You may be able to make some kind of searchable database of all the tunes in the books for example in a spreadsheet program, but it would be a tedious task.

    You can also make individual PDF files of each indivial tune by "printing" each page in the fake book as a new PDF file with one of those free PDF printer "drivers". That involves quite some time at your hand. But when you are done, you can search the files easily in your file management program. OTOH, it doesn't take more time than scanning to digital format all your old black and white photo negatives you shot 30 years ago and many people actually do that.

  6. #5
    I had a good idea. I'll post it, just in case someone runs into this thread and wants my solution. All of the books have a track list online right? So I copy and paste the tracklist into a word document. Label each 500 song track list by book. The word document will probably end up being upwards of 30 pages BUT. Command+F will let me do a search. Then, it will at least show me which list it's in, giving me the book. I look into the forward of said book and find the page number.

    Thanks for the help

  7. #6

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    Its a great idea to do that index thing
    yeah it would very cool to be able to click on a title and go straight there !

    Have look at this , its very wonderfull (but only runs online)

    PS
    If someone calls a tune , they bring the charts yeah ?
    (yeah I know sometimes they don't)

  8. #7

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    I don't know where or how I ended up with it, but I have a "Master Index" of a whole bunch of the scanned fakebooks, and I use it *a lot*... It doesn't index 25 books, but it has a lot of them. If you have the books (and I do) you can find practically any standard or often-played jazz tune, very fast.

    I don't see how a homemade index could be illegal, but still, I don't want to get in trouble by posting it here.

  9. #8

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    What Wallburg was trying to tell you, is to use a software that allows you to split a PDF into individual pages, so you can have all the songs as individual documents in a folder; that way you can just search your computer for the chart you need.

    Alternatively, Here's a searchable fakebook index:
    The Fake Book Index

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by RyanM
    What Wallburg was trying to tell you, is to use a software that allows you to split a PDF into individual pages, so you can have all the songs as individual documents in a folder; that way you can just search your computer for the chart you need.

    Alternatively, Here's a searchable fakebook index:
    The Fake Book Index
    Hey Ryan,

    I agree that's what Walburg's saying, but can it work without character recognition? Just splitting the big PDFs into single pages would only yield hundreds of smaller graphics (scanned, the files are pictures) -- so they'd still be impossible to search for text - wouldn't they? I don't know. Of course if you wanted to take the time to NAME each file - but whoa! Big job.

    KJ

  11. #10

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    Yes, you'd have to name them all.

  12. #11

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    Scan the index/table of contents into a text file, or a separate file for each book. Then you can convert them to a table (making sure the book and page numbers are each one of the fields) and copy and paste it into either Excel or Access. Then you can easily search for titles and have the information you need as to which book and what page. With enough time, you could even put a hyperlink in each field that would take you directly to the tune.Lots of time there, though, as you'd have to enter a link for each title.
    Brad