The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    looking for tablet for pdf transcription scrolling..cheap..Lenovo stands out..no iPads

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by voxo
    looking for tablet for pdf transcription scrolling..cheap..Lenovo stands out..no iPads

    iPads are the best, and a refurbished 2021 model is only about $300.

  4. #3

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    Although my wife and I have and love iPads, I use a Kindle Fire HD10 for music. When on sale, it’s the best buy in tablets for musicians - I just got a new one for $75 on Prime Day. You can easily add the Google Play Store and side load regular Android apps like iReal. The screen on the newest versions is excellent and I’m loving it. It lives in my gig bag.

  5. #4
    done research ty...none the tablets stand in comparison to the ipad 12..page turners..forget them....just wink....not blink and it will turn a page...no foot pedal needed..and no more scrolling neccessary...just page turn......the price....sadly expensive... FORScore is the only one with the face recognition for page turning...

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by voxo
    done research ty...none the tablets stand in comparison to the ipad 12..page turners..forget them....just wink....not blink and it will turn a page...no foot pedal needed..and no more scrolling neccessary...just page turn......the price....sadly expensive... FORScore is the only one with the face recognition for page turning...
    That's all true. But you did say....

    Quote Originally Posted by voxo
    ..no iPads
    You need to purchase the forScore Pro annual subscription (admittedly not a big deal at $10/yr) for gesture-driven page turning - but I don't see anything about blinking to change pages. All it says is "If your device supports face tracking, you can use facial gestures to turn pages—either by turning your head or by moving your lips to the left or right." There are some facial-gesture-driven page turning apps that will apparently let you use eye blinking, but the reviews I've seen are generally bad (like this one), e.g. "After many attempts tweaking the preferences, face recognition just works inconsistently..Also, wearing eyeglasses prevents the blink function from working."

    You can use MobileSheets or Orpheus on a $75 Kindle or other Android tablet and add a $55 (Moukey), $73 (Donner), or $79 Airturn page turner BT pedal for full functionality for less than half the cost of an iPad. The one thing I like about myiPad compared to my Kindle is that I can use an Apple Pencil or equivalent (I have the Logitech version for a lot less $) for easy annotation and editing on screen. There are also pencils for Kindle / Android tablets, and several websites say that the Logitech will work too. But I haven't been able to get it to do so yet. So I edit my pdfs on my PC before copying them to my Kindle Fire for gigs.

    If $ and security were no object, I'd use the biggest, most powerful iPad for music. But I carry it in the pocket of my gigbags - so between breakage and potential theft, I've always used the least expensive tablet i could find that would do the job and reserved it for music only. I keep my bag on stage with me unless a club or event manager insists that it be moved, and I'm always conscious of the tablet sitting in the pocket. But I've come close to breaking it a few times, and our drummer had a small bag stolen a few weeks ago at a club. So I find it most comforting to use a cheap Android with no personal data or info on it.

  7. #6
    i have an asus transformer at the moment..8 inch......scrolling isnt good on it...so ive reverted back to printing...still love handling paper...

  8. #7
    you mentioned theft...i was taking evening classes years ago we took a break and went for a cup tea....teachers Gibson 175 was gone...he spent the next week searching London looking for it..turned up in a hock shop..he got it back..will be checking out the Kindle Fire HD10...lol
    Last edited by voxo; 07-26-2022 at 09:39 PM.

  9. #8

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    Last year I bought a used "ChromeTab", a 10" ChromeOS tablet that exists under the Acer and Asus brands. It has the same screen proportions as a 10" iPad but is significantly cheaper, runs a desktop version of Google Chrome and has native support for Android (9) apps. I think it will also support most USB peripherals (that are supported by the Linux kernel).

    The hardware is getting a bit long in the tooth and I was disappointed to see it won't get the vaunted 7 or 8 years worth of OS upgrades but it's good enough as a PDF reader. Haven't tried to use it with a page turner though.

  10. #9

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    I have a Google Pixel chromebook with touchscreen, and it's the best I've found. It folds all the way back, usable as a tablet, but has the essential (to me) physical keyboard. I use it all the time, for everything, in the living room and away from home. It runs Android and Linux apps as well as the ChromeOS. It seems the best of all worlds. I do not now, have never, and plan to never, own an Apple device of any kind, so I have no recommendation on those. I also have a defunct Asus Transformer Prime, which worked well for years, but has since succumbed to attempts to flash newer firmware, and I just gave up on it because it's very old and I have a better solution now. It's just not worth the effort any more.

  11. #10
    were spoilt for choice now but my fav method is still band in a box...notation window moving horizontally across the screen...PC only..add the real tracks why on earth do i need to get a tablet...im actually commissioning a guy to make me BIAB files from pdfs....still nice to have best of both worlds..

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by sgosnell
    It runs Android and Linux apps as well as the ChromeOS. It seems the best of all worlds.
    Given that CrOS *is* Linux where Chrome (running under Wayland) is hard to escape I am not so convinced about the "best of all worlds" aspect. You can actually run Linux apps via "crosh" so it bums me a bit you have to install an entire different Linux distro for the official Linux support. Which I presume you'll also lose during a "PowerWash", something that's a bit too easy to run into IMHO.

    But as long as you don't need accented characters (or use crosh) the onscreen keyboard is good enough for tablet use, and with the desktop Chrome version you get indeed a more versatile tablet than typical Android devices. Having a Chromium ("Blink") based browser plus the possibility to install Firefox (for Android) could even give it an edge over the iPad (limited to WebKit browsers).
    That said, and despite the fact that me too I've never owned an iPad because of their price I do think Apple invented the type of device and still sets the standard. That could change if Google got their head(s) out of their ***es and improved tablet mode support in CrOS. Something they may not dare to do out of fear their Android tablet OS (as far as that exists).

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by RJVB
    You can actually run Linux apps via "crosh" so it bums me a bit you have to install an entire different Linux distro for the official Linux support.
    You can easily install Ubuntu on any Chromebox or Chromebook and run in a dual boot mode, choosing either one at startup. Here's the "official" Ubuntu page about doing this. Crouton is one way, but there are several. I replaced ChromeOS with a full Ubuntu 20 instance on my original Asus Chromebox, and it's a solid performer currently running a web server, ColdFusion, a Maria database, and several other demanding programs with no problems at all (except a bit of slowness compared to a "real" computer). I've tried it as a DAW and it's quite fine until you start pushing it with loopback real time monitoring and multiple tracks.

    So I don't see any problem with an inexpensive Chromebook for music, as long as you're willing to do a little work to get it up and running. But once you get into Chromebooks with the power to rival performance of iPads and decent Android tablets, the price ranges are very close. So unless you already have a Chromebook you're willling to devote to music use, I don't think it's a good place to start. A $75 Kindle FireHD is a much faster and better device than the cheapest Chromes.

  14. #13

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    With the current ChromeOS, you just enable Linux in the settings, click go, and Debian is installed without any further action needed. You then install whatever Linux packages you want, and they show up just like any other app, whether ChromeOS, Android, or Linux. It's entirely seamless. I mostly use Thunderbird email client, because there is no ChromeOS email client, plus Firefox, KeePassXC password safe, Signal message app, and a few others, including several command-line apps run through the provided Linux terminal. The need to dual boot or use any of the previous kludges is long gone, has been for some time.

  15. #14

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    I do agree that most chromebooks are not well suited for use as a music display on stage. I would never buy one just for that. My Pixelbook was far more expensive than a tablet, but I didn't buy it for that purpose, it's just a useful extra benefit. I use it for most daily computing, and my Linux desktop is mostly just a file server via ssh. I also have an older Asus Chromebox, fully dedicated to Linux, with my living room TV as the monitor, mostly just because I can. I don't use it a lot. I'm really out of the loop for tablets. My old Transformer Prime was on the cutting edge when I bought it, and I got it because it came with a physical keyboard. It served me well for several years, but it's obsolete now. I really have little use for a tablet. My phone does all I need for that. I run iReal Pro on it, and it does the job well enough.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by sgosnell
    With the current ChromeOS, you just enable Linux in the settings, click go, and Debian is installed without any further action needed.
    You can also do this under MSWin, and there it makes some measure of sense. Installing Debian (never the most progressive distro) to run Linux apps in a VM on a system that is an undoubtedly much more recent Linux is not my cup of tea. One thing to take into consideration for use in a music context is that realtime applications typically lose any true realtime guarantees when run under a VM.
    I've run CrOS on a cheap tablet PC for a while as a test, and confirmed I could get some crucial-for-me apps (for an auxilliary computer) to run directly. For email and light text editing I (would) use Android apps (there's a full LibreOffice build under the name Collab'Office or something like that). Those probably also run under a VM, of course (which isn't alway perfectly stable on my ARM-based tablet).
    But I think we're a bit outside the scope of the original question here

    PS: I've been scratching my head about the prices the higher-end ChromeBooks command. IMHO the ChromeBook originated as the successor of the netbook of a decade or so ago, i.e. beaters (I still have one acting as a media server driving the AV amp in my main stereo).

  17. #16

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    On ChromeOS, the VM is automatic, and you don't have to do anything to run it manually. Simply clicking or tapping on the app icon does it. You also have access to the Linux files from ChromeOS and vice versa. You can seamlessly run 3 operating systems simultaneously.

    But yes, this thread has gone off topic, probably the first time in the history of the internet that it has happened.

  18. #17
    off topic lol..just received my Kindle Fire 10...its going straight back....its same size as my Asus Transformer..my love affair with tablets is over...going back to the 25 inch monitor...

  19. #18

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    Lenovo Tab M10 - 140€. More than adequate for irealpro and pdfs.

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by voxo
    off topic lol..just received my Kindle Fire 10...its going straight back....its same size as my Asus Transformer..my love affair with tablets is over...going back to the 25 inch monitor...
    Then you're going to need a much bigger music stand looking for tablet for pdf transcription scrolling..cheap..Lenovo stands out-laughing_smiley-gif

    I'm a bit confused about your issue. The Kindle Fire 10 is called a 10 because it has a 10" display. You told us in post #6 in this thread that your Asus was an 8", so recommending a 10 made perfect sense to me. But if your Asus is actually a 10, why not just use that? I love my Kindle 10 for music and find it much easier to read on the stand than my 7 or 8" tablets - I used it last night while backing up a wonderful local singer (Ella Gahnt) and couldn't believe how much easier it was to read than the 8" Android tablet I'd been using for years.

    I find the dark mode to be much better on stage than the light. The white graphics really stand out against the black background in the dark, and the high contrast makes it easy to read even when the stage lights are on the vocalist only a few feet away from me and I have no direct light.

  21. #20

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    I would imagine that tablets are not user upgradeable so I would not want to come up short on RAM. Any recommendations on storage capacity for ipad or kindle fire hd 10?

    I would expect that minimum configuration would be plenty for just reading pdfs of charts, doing casual surfing or video calls, but I would like to hear from those who have taken the plunge.

    Any advice related to multitasking? Say I want to run iRealPro for backing while reading a PDF that provides the melody....

    Thanks

    SJ

  22. #21

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    Assuming nothing on "iPadOS" takes more place than it does under "iPhoneOS" I'd say you'd probably be fine with whatever the entry-level model has but go 64Gb minimum preferably. Applications tend to be a lot more bloated on iOS than on Android (I've seen music-related apps that run over 400Mb) but I suppose you won't be installing tons of those, nor taking loads of pictures and videos.
    iOS can *probably* access PDFs stored on a thumbdrive nowadays, via a dongle.

    Quote Originally Posted by starjasmine
    Any advice related to multitasking? Say I want to run iRealPro for backing while reading a PDF that provides the melody....
    Music playback doesn't require a lot of computing resources, nor does reading a PDF. I can't say anything about iRealPro (that you can't find yourself online) but as a general remark related to multiprocessing I'd advise to look at RAM, working memory. Getting an older, refurbished model (that still has OS update support) with more RAM over one with a newer CPU could be a good move (this should automatically give you more storage space too).

  23. #22

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    RAM in iStuff depends on the model (and internal memory size for some models). Here’s a web page with a list of RAM size for all iPads. My 64G Mini 4 only has 2G of RAM. It’s loaded with apps and I’ve never had a problem with iReal Pro. Garage Band slows when recording multitrack with virtual instruments, though - it’s fine recording a single stereo track without loop back monitoring but really isn’t up to more. This is a confluence of compromises among CPU, RAM, etc.

    The latest iPad with a TB of memory has 8 or 16G of RAM and a much faster processor and chipset. But you get what you pay for, and they’re not cheap.