Folders and files

Stikmaster

Hi ….thanks Damir and Peter.
To be honest I’m not following all of this. However I’m going to start again. As I’ve just discovered I can attach pdf to the song(which I already new).
My pdfs have the lyrics and chords, so they are ready to read…
Now my light on moment was when I found you could also add text file with midi information. I’ve just got home from a gig and tried it. Wow…I can read my pdf and on playback it reads the midi information on the text.
Problem solved.
So tomorrow I’m going to add a bunch of tunes, duplicate them with a different prefix, ( for different band personnel)…add the pdfs…. copy and paste midi information to both versions. Then see what the filing system looks like.
And it maybe a good idea to make up playlists, one for SOLO….one for BAND. And as long as the file names are different, hopefully that might work.
Keep up the good work Peter.

Damir

Stikmaster my suggestion before spending any more time, really get to know the Power and possabilities of ST3 because you can do so many things with it in different ways, then make your best choice of operation, after all these years i am still finding how to do things slightly differently to save time in preperation and ease of on stage use.
I maily run with stereo backing tracks and lyrics/chords display, but even this can be done in so many ways and each way has its advantage and disadvantage, i am perfectly happy on stage with ST3 its the prep of lyrics/ chords that needs some fixing the conceipt is fine but slight inputing of timecode is my main gripe when using chords above lyrics.
Good luck!

peter

You might want to look at the tutorial video #2. It explains how to work with keywords. That might be preferable to using setlists for categorizing songs to different projects.

Stikmaster

Damir thanks Damir. I’ll let you know how I get on.
I work totally live, solo with tracks and in a residency with keyboard player and tracks. So that is my aim in the next week or so, to get hundreds of songs into ST3 and catalogue them for easy access.

Damir

Stikmaster yes i understand now, before ST3 i ran Yamaha Tyros 2 with midi files
And lyrics and chords displayed on rgb 15 inch monitors this worked really well as i could create 4 loop return points and having midi it was all synced up using bars of music, it was absolutely perfect, but still bulky and i always had to be behind a large keyboard seperating me from my audiance and restricted my on stage movement, ST3 is almost perfect now totally replacing $7000 bucks of bulky equipment, but i still miss my 4 loop points.
I definitely dont miss mucking about with midi editing which is a language of its own.
I am soooo happy with ST3 and am sure you will be too, just make sure you start the right way otherwise you will spend a lot of time redoing things.
All the best.

DaveT

Another way is to actually embed the lyrics in the mp3 file, that way if you move the file then the lyrics will always still be attached to it, plus if you decide to use other software then the lyrics will still be with the song. I use Kid3 on Mac to attach my lyrics and edit my mp3 tags etc as well (for easier searching). Its an absolute breeze as I can copy and paste the lyrics right into the app, job done and dusted.

Stikmaster

DaveT thanks DaveT. I’m just having a look at kid3 now.
So you are saying tag the lyrics with the mp3 before you import into ST3 ?
This will then become one file ?
Any particular site to downloading it from. .?
Thanks again.

peter

Yes, but Stage Traxx will only display lyrics embedded in mp3 files if you did not edit lyrics for that song within Stage Traxx. If you did, you will need to reset lyrics for each song.

Another issue is that you can not easily timecode your lyrics in another app.

Apart from that you can use any tag editor to add lyrics to an mp3. Even iTunes can do it.

Damir

peter i found, The fastest way to do things is just load an audio file and use the lyrics editor in ST3 itself, otherwise you will spend time in another app but still have to spend time in ST3 to get it perfect so i just do it all in ST3, but i will also checkout kid3 software to see what possibly it can do for me to save me time.
So far these are the apps i use on the ipad to help me speed things up without involving my imac.
Twisted Wave -- is excellent to tidy up my audio files, this is another serious app.
Chord ai -- i use to easily find cords when i havent got a guitar handy, great help and pritty accurate for my requirement to enter chords to ST3.The beauty of it it comes on my iphone as well, just activate the mic place it next to the ipad and let it listen as you go along the chord editing process and it just displays your required chords as you are moving slowly along the slow chord entering process.Its primitive but it works fast, well much faster than i can enter and position accuratery the chords.
Cubasis -- i can use to create audio backing tracks but i find Logic pro on the imac is easier.
Thanks

Stikmaster

Last night I started from scratch. An empty ST3.
I imported 20 or so tracks, (each one duplicated, as I want two versions of each song),into the app.
Gave each one a colour, suffix, and keyword…..
red…S….SOLO, for solo version….
Blue…. B…BAND, for band version …
Shared the pdfs from another app on both versions of each song.
Now all I need to do is enter midi information where necessary.
It will obviously take a while as there are hundreds of songs.
Jobs a goodun.

peter

Great! But don't forget to create backups each time you make big changes. And store those backups on your computer.

Old admin saying is: no backup, no mercy 😉

Stikmaster

peter thanks Peter..don’t worry though…..learnt my lesson years ago. Constantly save, especially when I’m recording tracks.
Keep up the great work. We musicians really do appreciate it.