 sj |
||
|
||
Tech: Set List Software
|
|
|
|||||||
|
Tech: Set List Software |
Share Thread
|
||||||
|
Subject: Tech: Set List Making Software Needed From: MickyMan Date: 17 Jan 04 - 05:58 PM I'm wondering if anybody has had luck finding some software that can help me formulate and print out set lists for performing. What I have in mind is a bunch of tile-like icons with the song title on each one, similar to the tiles in the "My Documents" section of Microsoft Word...or even sort of like the desktop icons in Windows. I could then rearrange their order by moving them with my mouse and magically produce my set list. Unless I'm wrong, regular database programs don't have this feature in an easy to see format where I could quickly add a new song to the mix. What would be extra-great would be to find out that there is already some way I could be doing this in Microsoft Word, or in one of the other Microsoft Office programs that I have. Any ideas? |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: Don Firth Date: 17 Jan 04 - 06:23 PM I don't know about doing this with icons, but if you have a list of your songs, open it with Microsoft Word, then go to "View" and click on "Outline." Then you can pick out songs from the list and drag-and-drop them to the top of the list in any order you want. When you have a set that looks good, cut-and-paste in into a new document and print it out. You can then save if for later reference if you wish, or just zap it. Then, when you close the document screen containing your original list, when the dialogue box asks you if you want to save your changes, click "No." Simple, elegant, and, if you already have MS Word, cheap. Don Firth |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: Margret RoadKnight Date: 17 Jan 04 - 06:46 PM Malvina Reynolds used to type her set list on yellow satin ribbon and tie it to her guitar (I bought one of her guitars after her death, with set list, including keys & capo positions, attached). Now there's software for you..... |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,DonMeixner Date: 17 Jan 04 - 06:58 PM Golly Margaret What a document. Worthy of Smithsonian Institutionalization. Cant it be scanned and shown to people? Don |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: Margret RoadKnight Date: 17 Jan 04 - 07:12 PM Perhaps one day Don, when someone much more computer savvy than yours truly is visiting and I remember to deal with it......in the meantime I can tell you , e.g., that Malvina played "Boxes" in F (E, 1st fret) and "God Bless" in Am..... Cheers Margret RoadKnight |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: JohnInKansas Date: 17 Jan 04 - 08:05 PM If we may assume that you have a list of the songs that you might want to use in your playlist in Word: 1. Create, in the same document with your list of songs, a space that sort of looks like the playlist you want to print. The simplest way to do this is just to insert a bunch of carriage returns for the length, highlight the empty section, and go to File - Page Setup and set margins, apply to "Selection only" 2. In the playlist space, position your cursor where you want the first song, and hit Ctl-F9. This will create a pair of "curly braces" that are actually a "Field Marker." 3. Type "Song1" inside the markers. 4. Repeat step 2 and 3 for each line where you want a song title to appear, using Song2, Song3, etc in sequence. 5. Now go to your list of songs and highlight a title. Click on Insert - Bookmark and name the bookmark "Song1" 6. Repeat step 5 to "bookmark" Song2, Song3, etc. 7. Now go back and highlight the entire space where your playlist should be, and hit F9. Each "bookmarked" title should appear in place of the {Song#} field. 8. Select the whole playlist schmear, and Print - Selection. If you want to "iconize" your playlist, you'll need to create something like a textbox for each icon, and put a "field" in each textbox. You can format textbox to put borders, shading, etc on them if you like. One of the difficulties with textboxes, though, is that in some versions of Word you may have to click in each textbox separately for the "F9" field update, although in most versions if you select enough to include all the textboxes they should update together. The field markers look like "{" and "}" but they are not simple characters. You can use "Insert - Field" to get them, or just the Ctl-F9 quickkey. They will disappear and reappear if you toggle Shift-F9, or you can go to Tools - View Field Codes. F9 alone "updates" the value shown for the field. Caution: Ctl-Shift-F9 unlinks them, turning them into plain text and making them not work anymore. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: JohnInKansas Date: 17 Jan 04 - 08:20 PM For a little simpler "icon" setup, you could use a table, with a {Song#} field in each square. You can format borders and background shading in the table, and it's probably a little easier to handle than the text boxes, especially if you havent' fought with the TBs before. For a hint - an empty column or row formatted minimum width and shaded makes for flexible borders and colors. I should have noted that to change the song selection, you just highlight a new title, Insert - Bookmark, and click on the existing Bookmark name for the line where you want that title to show. Using an existing bookmark name removes it from the old location and puts it at the new one. If you leave a "blank" field, i.e. no bookmark to fill it, it will display and will print an error message. Rather than deleting the field, just put a bookmark on a blank space to get rid of the error message. Whatever is highlighted (selected) when you Insert - Bookmark is what will be displayed when you update the field that "calls" that bookmark. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,Russ Date: 17 Jan 04 - 08:54 PM Some very interesting suggestions here. If you're serious about the idea of dragging things around, you could create a powerpoint file and populate slides with text boxes containing the names of songs. The text boxes are extremely easy to create and duplicate and powerpoint is the best product in the standard MS Office suite for handling free floating graphics (which is what text boxes really are). Text boxes on a slide would pretty closely mimic icons on a desktop. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: JohnInKansas Date: 17 Jan 04 - 09:14 PM "SHE" says I should simplify: If you insert {thisbookmark} by creating the {} with Ctl-F9 and typing "thisbookmark" inside them. When you insert a bookmark, and name it "thisbookmark," whatever is higlighted when you do the Insert - Bookmark becomes what is displayed in place of the {thisbookmark} field, when you update the field (Ctl - A, F9). Move the bookmarks, and you change the displayed content of the list. There will be a quiz. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: wysiwyg Date: 17 Jan 04 - 11:17 PM Why not just set it up as a blank table in Word and drag-drop things into that? Or why not do it all up in Excel with song keys keys and comments, and drag-drop to that? You could add a column in Excel for some kind of attribute and sort by that to divide your total repertoire into various segments of the list. Highlight and Print Selection to print the post-sorted segmnent. This way you could add details like "singalong" or "weeper" or "non-PC" so you could see not only the titles, but the shape and mood of the set, the flow from mood to mood. Add how long the song is, which instrument you need to grab, capo to what fret, etc., so that you can organize the set with minimal stage fussing. You can even program in your patter with reminders to tell certain jokes or anecdotes. You can put intro details in there too, you know, the things you want to be able to say as you introduce each item. You can move rows around as desired till it all makes sense, and you can copy and bulk-paste cell content wherever details repeat. You can highlight only those columns you actually need to see while onstage, and print just those columns in small type. Yeah, Excel... I'd do it in Excel. Some people would use Access instead (or some other database), but I like to see things all laid out in a table more than I like a card catalogue effect, and Excel will do that as well as let you sort. ~S~ |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: JohnInKansas Date: 18 Jan 04 - 12:09 AM I'd agree with drag and drop if your source list is fairly small, but if you have a fairly extensive list to pick from, it can get tedious. It depends on how far you have to drag, I guess. Linking to bookmarks avoids dragging anything around. You just pop the bookmark onto what you want to display. It does take a little practice --- but you'll learn a lot about Word by the time you get good at it... The simplest, of course, is just to paste what you want in a new document (or Excel range/table, or PowerPunt slide), and in fact any of the Office programs can do the links thing too, if you want. Unless changes are very frequent, and there's a very large source list, I'd probably - in reality - just make a Word template to print the size/format I want, and then just paste into a separate document for each printing. Of course, for real class, one might use PhotoShop and put the album cover in the box with each tune... For an inexperienced user, getting the first setup in any program may be something of a trial; but once you get the first one a simple copy and paste (edit and save with a new name?) would seem to be all that's requested. And it doesn't really matter which program you choose to use. Any of those mentioned will work for this. John |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,Jon Date: 18 Jan 04 - 02:36 AM Depending on how much material you have and how often you may use the same set, I'd either take Susan's Excel route or a MS Access route. With the Acess route, what you could do is have 2 tables, 1 called song and one called set. Song could contain SongID (a reference number), SongTitle and any optionaly, other useful information as suggested by Susan. Set could contain SetID, SetTitle, SongID (to link with the info in the Song table) and SortOrder (To set the order of a song within a set). It would take more work to set it up and a little time would be required to make it user friendly but once done, you would have records of past sets that you may like to call up again as well as modify qutie easily if say you just wanted to change one song or the running order. Jon |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,Jon Date: 18 Jan 04 - 03:17 AM Susan, just noticed your comment about the card file type views and Access. I take it you mean viewing forms. Forms can be viewed in "datasheet" view and you can also produce reports. It's hard to do this in text but my sort of "vision" of part of the type of Access soulution would have both a "card" and a "datasheet" on the same input form. Sort of (and I'm adding a date here just to show how flexible this sort of approach can be)
Jon |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,Jon Date: 18 Jan 04 - 03:28 AM Oh and just to bore people further... "Song" could easily be extended to include a field such as "lyrics". It wouldn't show on the Set form I attempted to show for a set but the same system could well print out words to a song any time you want. Jon |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: MickyMan Date: 18 Jan 04 - 07:23 AM This is all very helpful. Now I've got to get to work. Many thanks, MIckyMan |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,pavane Date: 19 Jan 04 - 07:45 AM I did produce a similar program for Mrs Pavane, but for the purpose of creating sets of MIDI file backing tracks. It allows the user to select songs from the main list (in this case a directory) and will then create a list which includes performance time of each song, and an overall elapsed time for the whole set. This program obviously needs the MIDI files present, but it would be possible to create something similar if you had a file containing all your song names and their elapsed times. |
|
Subject: RE: Tech: Set List Software From: GUEST,MCP Date: 19 Jan 04 - 09:00 AM I use an Access Database for this, with tables for 1)songs and song info, 2) authors, 3)gigs, 4)sets for each gig, 5)song text (not used at present) and 6)venues. The song info contains title, author, key, duration, accompaniment type (for me guitar in standard, guitar in dropped D and unaccompanied). The set listing lets you create as many sets as you like, select songs from the song list and delete/move them around in the sets. The standard printout for a gig is the gig and venue details (address, contact phone#s) followed by a section for each set. Each set section contains the total time for the set followed by one line for each song/tune showing on each line: Sequence# Title Author Accompaniment Key Duration Cumulative time in set Time remaining to end of set (I use the last one when I have to decide to drop items when a set's too long). Each song sequence can in fact have more than one song (usually for meldleys of tunes, but occasionally for songs that are run together) and a repeat number (again for tunes, used to calculate the time for the tune based on time for once through in the song list and the number of repeats). If you'd like more technical details let me know. Mick |
| Share Thread: |