The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Last year someone here suggested I get iReal Pro. I figured what the heck and did. Needed an emulator to run it and chose BlueStacks. But I hated the incessant ads / offers (-try this ap or pay $2 a month to keep using this emulator.) I uninstalled Blue Stacks and forgot about iReal Pro until after Christmas, when I got another laptop. The other day I thought it might be nice to try iReal Pro again. (Frankly, I'd forgotten why I stopped using it.)

    When I installed BlueStacks, I remembered.
    Someone in support at iReal Pro said there are many other emulators and they don't choke you with ads. Sounds good. But I'd rather not download 4-5 of them and compare and contrast them. Any recommendations from happy users of the other emulators? (Leapdroid, MEmu, AndY, AMIDuOS...)

    Thanks!

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Mark, do you have a tablet or a smartphone?

  4. #3

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    It seems odd that these free emulators give you a portal to buy something that doesn't normally run on Windows.

  5. #4

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  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    Mark, do you have a tablet or a smartphone?
    Neither. I have a laptop running Windows. iReal Pro is not yet available in a Windows format but will run with an emulator. There are lots of emulators out there and I was wondering if anyone else in my position had found one or another of them useful. BlueStacks works but is always trying to get you to try out other apps or pay a monthly fee to use Blue Stacks, which I only want to use with iReal Pro. Which is what I may end up doing but I hope there's a better option.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stevebol
    I want something besides BlueStacks too. Doing a little homework;
    Thanks for the links. As it happens, my Internet got dodgy over the weekend and a tech guy came out yesterday. The problem is in the line outside the condo, so it won't cost me anything. (The outside is "their" problem; the inside is "my" problem.) He was there five hours and couldn't get it working. On top of that, the phone stopped working. So now my phone is plugged into my DSL line--and it works--but I have no Internet at all. Yesterday's tech guy will be off today, so another tech person will come out and perhaps the problem will be fixed. I'm at the library to take care of a few things and check in here---if my connection is fixed at home later, I'll download another emulator and see if that works. Fingers crossed!

    We can compare notes on different emulators.

  8. #7

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    I got very confused about all this.
    ireal is a nice app. $15 is a decent price. then they recommend BlueStacks who want a $2 monthly fee? That adds up and I don't like the monthly subscription so they don't seem to care about Windows users. Not a huge deal.
    Not sure I have this straight but these emulators allow you to purchase and run the app you want.
    ireal say's you don't have to buy the app a 2nd time for Windows. That's tricky and I don't want to get hung up on the how's and why's of that.
    I have a zillion apps on my cell. They seem to have a mind of their own the way they download. Google Play isn't synced all the way with Google Play on my computer. Everything related to Amazon which I use quite a bit is.
    I have to assume ireal has a special arrangement with BlueStacks regarding Windows users. I would rather use a free or pay one-time app to get ireal going on the laptop.
    I can say Droid4X did uninstall with no problems. These emulators seem to take forever to install and fire up. It's a Chinese app. I wasn't sure about the network connection questions when installing.
    It's a contender. There are no reviews.

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stevebol
    I would rather use a free or pay one-time app to get ireal going on the laptop.
    .
    Same here. I'd pay $10-15 bucks as a one-shot deal.

    Latest from the phone company: something is wrong with a cable underground and another crew will have to come deal with that. One of the guys has recently taken up guitar, saw mine, and we had a conversation about that. Turns out he's played tenor sax for over 30 years but recently decided he wants to play guitar. But that's another story...

  10. #9

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    As an alternative you could get
    an Amazon kindle fire tablet aprox £50
    quite cheap and run irealpro on that

    I did that ...

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by pingu
    As an alternative you could get
    an Amazon kindle fire tablet aprox £50
    quite cheap and run irealpro on that

    I did that ...
    I'm used to a 22" monitor. I put my laptop in front of it. I'm fairly new to cell phones. I will have to learn to do everything by cell phone because I'm moving soon. I can't imagine how anyone can be productive on a cell phone. They're too small.
    I might look into a tablet. I need to be able to play audio files and look at song lyrics.

  12. #11

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    I believe there is a free non-commercial version of VMWare Player that can run an image of an OS, IIRC the limitation is Player can't create virtual machines, only run them. VirtualBox is an open source alternative owned by Oracle. VMWare tends to have much better performance than Virtual Box so is a better option if there's still a free version.

    If you search for 'Android Nougat for VMWare' or 'Android Nougat for VirtualBox' you should find images that will run in VMWare or Virtual Box.

    I'm in a power outage right now so can't test Android images on VMWare. I'll try to get to it tomorrow.

  13. #12

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    I was wondering about the difference between cell phones and tablets;

    "The difference is not in specifications (i.e. the attributes of the device). Nor is it in the markets (i.e. the attributes of the buyers). It's in what they are hired to do.

    Try to make a map in your mind of places and times (context or setting) when each would be more useful. Consider how much they would overlap. The degree of overlap would give you an idea of how much they compete. A real map of jobs to be done would be far richer than place/time but that's the core of the designer's question.

    If you were to ask my opinion, I would answer that tablet devices are very different in the jobs they are hired to do than smartphones. The decision to use one or the other depends on many variables that are under constant evaluation by users. A purchase decision of one or the other will be similarly linked to this calculus."

  14. #13

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    I've downloaded an Android virtual machine but it's not opening on VMWare Fusion on my Mac. I'll try to look at it over the weekend and see if I can get it running.

  15. #14

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    Spent some time this morning with Blue Stacks trying to run iReal Pro. Verdict: I give up. Uninstalled Blue Stacks and I'm not looking for another emulator. Going to forget about iReal Pro until they have a version for Windows. If that is never, I can live with that.

    There. I feel better now.

  16. #15

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    I was able to get Android to work with VMWare, the latest Android 7 'Nougat' for x86 is for developers and is buggy. Android 6 'Marshmallow' was able to install. To run in VMWare you need to use "Android x86" which is Android adapted to run on PC hardware.

    There's a site that has Android x86 images for VMWare and Virtual box, but I couldn't get these working on the Mac version of VMWare.

    I downloaded Android x86 Marshmallow's installer and was able to install and get it installed and running on VM Ware. There's websites and YouTube videos that show how to install Android on VMWare if anyone's interested.

    Initial impressions:

    I didn't buy iRealPro but did try a couple free apps: Pro Metronome, and Jazz Backing Tracks. (If you're on iOS or Android give Pro Metronome a try). Both apps ran fairly well but there were occasional glitches, the metronome hung occasionally then caught up.

    The big issue I found was Pro Metronome rotates the display to portrait mode, I believe iRealPro does the same on iOS. On VMWare Fusion (the Mac version) I couldn't rotate the VMWare screen, I found instructions on the internet for rotating VMWare Workstation (Windows): CTRL-F9, CTRL-F10, CTRL-F11, CTRL-F12 (these don't appear to work on the Mac version).

    Conclusion:

    If you've worked with VMWare or VirtualBox before then Android x86 is worth a try, if you're not familiar with installing and working with virtual machines these could be a trip down a tech rabbit hole that's probably best avoided.
    Last edited by MaxTwang; 01-22-2017 at 05:30 PM.

  17. #16

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    G'day friends,
    I have the Ireal Pro app for accessing tunes and chord charts,but it's on our phone/tablet device,which I find difficult to use ..Is there any way to get IrealPro to work on the home computer ? Windows 10 .
    If anyone knows of a better idea for accessing chord charts /lyrics of Jazz Standards on the computer could they let me know please ? If there's a cost we don't mind.
    Best regards from OZ .. Charlie.

  18. #17

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    This is one way to do it according to the iReal pro website:

    You are being redirected...

  19. #18

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    I tried to do a similar problem thing with bluestacks android gadget
    on my PC a few years ago .....

    toooo sloooow ...... Didn't function well
    but that was a long time ago

    bon chance

  20. #19

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    Alternatively google the fake books e.g. ‘557 Jazz Standards’ and download the pdf to your PC.

    The ‘old’ real books are also out there somewhere as pdfs, I think I found them on a French website.

  21. #20

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    Swiss site, written in French Swiss Speak
    Of course, this doesn't offer the all the features of irealpro, play, transpose, etc ..

    Partitions gratuites. Real Book - Volume 1, 2, 3(C, Eb, Bb)

    There is also a site containing most Realbook tunes in BIAB format
    Just Chords: BiaB Resources

    Both are free

  22. #21

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    The 557 Jazz Standards is pretty good ... thanks Graham ..

  23. #22

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    I like the IReal Pro ... I'll keep looking for a way to get it to mt PC .. thanks friends ..

  24. #23

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    Old thread revive but using MS Windows 11's built in Android emulator I'm now able to use IReal Pro on my Surface Pro tablet.