The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #137059 Message #3133162
Posted By: Zhenya
11-Apr-11 - 01:53 PM
Thread Name: Kindle for words and music
Subject: RE: Kindle for words and music
I have a Kindle, and I've loaded Word files with lyrics onto it. That works fine, and you can easily search from the home page to get to exactly the song you want. One issue that might come up, though, is with formatting. Depending on the font size used, the lyrics may or may not fit neatly on the page in normal verse form. I believe if you set them up as pdfs, you may be able to work around this, but I don't know if that would bring up other issues, as I don't use the pdfs myself. I've been putting the lyrics on mainly to learn songs and for a quick memory refresh, rather than for active use as I'm singing, so the formatting / font issue hasn't been a big concert for me.
I haven't tried putting sheet music on it, but the screen is fairly small, unless you go for the Kindle DX. Based on other items I've tried, I'm thinking it might be hard to read the music comfortably from the regular size Kindle, even if you use the zoom option. I don't know this for sure though, so perhaps someone who's actually tried this can comment.
In terms of playing music, that's more problematic. The Kindle does have the ability to play MP3s that you load onto it. The problem is, there are almost no controls for the music program. You can start the program, and skip ahead, but you can't go back to a previous track, and you can't select a specific track to listen to. There's nowhere to actually see a list of what tracks you have on there. (As far as I know from my own attempts. Again, maybe someone actively using this feature could supply more information. I just tried it once, and didn't find it to be useful feature, so I never tried again.) Apparently, the intention is just to provide some background music for reading.
I use the Amazon lighted cover, with the light conveniently built in to the corner of the cover, and that works fine when needed. When you don't need a light, it retracts completely into the cover and you don't even know it's there. It works off the Kindle battery, so it doesn't need its own battery, but if used extensively, it will drain the battery somewhat sooner.