Song book Generator

[streetlightindie]

i have like 5000 songs now and i can't get it to copy into the generic excel program i have. Anyone know any good free songbook generators?

[dave]

use TextEdit instead. you'll have to adjust the tab stops.

the "free" spreadsheets sometimes only hold 500 rows (AppleWorks comes to mind)
Excel by M$ really does the job.

has anyone tried Google Docs Spreadsheet?

[streetlightindie]

the PLI numbers dont come up in text edit. and it pastes all the contect into one cell in excel...any ideas?

[dave]

You are not to use PLI in song books, use SongID instead.

if you're copying multiple columns they should go into mulitple cells.

if not, please paste into a text file, then zip and send me that text file, maybe there's a bug

-dave

[natblend]

NeoOffice is free, A barebones Mac Clone of Office.
Works great.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15797

[seanphafer]

Does anyone know of an app that will let you have your song list print indented, with the Artist listed once, and the song titles all below, "tabbed in". I use a windows app right now in parallels, but it's a pain copying/pasting to excel, saving a .csv, then importing into the windows app. I would perhaps just use excel or numbers, but I can't find a way to print two columns on a page without pasting into word. Just wondering if anyone on here has a good solution.

I downloaded this one http://www.latshawsystems.com/productde ... rator.aspx (windows) and it gave the look i liked, but when trying to read the songs from the KJams Music folder it got caught up in "illegal characters" in the file names and hung up. I knew I couldn't change the file names without messing something up so I thought I'd ask on here.

[dave]

one day....

[cfspinner]

Does anyone know of an app that will let you have your song list print indented, with the Artist listed once, and the song titles all below, "tabbed in". I use a windows app right now in parallels, but it's a pain copying/pasting to excel, saving a .csv, then importing into the windows app. I would perhaps just use excel or numbers, but I can't find a way to print two columns on a page without pasting into word. Just wondering if anyone on here has a good solution.

I downloaded this one http://www.latshawsystems.com/productde ... rator.aspx (windows) and it gave the look i liked, but when trying to read the songs from the KJams Music folder it got caught up in "illegal characters" in the file names and hung up. I knew I couldn't change the file names without messing something up so I thought I'd ask on here.

I found MS Access has a neat little report generator that will let you design how you want your data to. look. What I do is instead of pasting into excel, I keep an ms access database of all my songs with all their assoicated data. You set up the report generator to connect to the table that contains your song listings, then design the layout of the report and save it off as a template. When I want to print song books, I just bring up the report generator in access and run it. Creates really nice books neatly formatted with the artists name in a larger bold font and all their songs beneath the name. I have it set up so it prints two columns per page.

Just wish I could find something on the Mac side to do the same thing.

[dave]

okay okay okay!! i hear you all about the need for a nice song book generator. I WILL make one, all slick and easy to use, with lots of layout options and stuff. But it's gonna hafta wait 'till i'm done with my current "thing" (you know what that is, i think).

[cfspinner]

okay okay okay!! i hear you all about the need for a nice song book generator. I WILL make one, all slick and easy to use, with lots of layout options and stuff. But it's gonna hafta wait 'till i'm done with my current "thing" (you know what that is, i think).

You ROCK dave! Output to pdf would be a nice feature for a songbook generator

[dave]

Yes on the Mac PDF comes quite for free. On the "other" platform you'll have to get Acrobat to "print" to PDF.

[SWLinPHX]

I put a lot of money and time into full-color song books back in 2000 when I started KJ'ing. I originally created the songbook database in AppleWorks as it can hold several thousand songs (records). I used different layout for Title, Artist and even Year. It worked great. I especially liked the control over alphabetization where you can choose standard (first letter of first word) or "name" mode where it alphabetizes by the first letter of the last word (enabling you to type first name first but still sort by last name) such as "Tom Jones" listed under "Jones" or writing "The Beatles" but still alphabetized under "Beatles". In artist mode, you can override this on an individual basis by placing an @ at the beginning (which is invisible unless editing) and it will resort to first letter of first word, such as when typing "Def Leppard". And if you have complex artist names where you don't want to sort by first word or last word in name (and still don't want to use standard "Last, First" format) you can invisibly link words together as one using option-space instead of space. For instance "Daryl Hall & John Oates" would normally be listed under "Daryl" in standard mode (or with leading @ in artist mode) or else by "Oates" in artist mode. Since both of these are incorrect (I'm a stickler for last name sort) you can avoid using standard "Hall, Daryl, & John Oates" by typing "Daryl(space)Hall(option-space)&(option-space)John(option-space)Oates. That resorts in "Daryl Hall & John Oates" sorted under "Hall". It sees "Hall&JohnOates" as one word and thus the last word in the name, beginning with "H". Of course you could simply put "Hall & Oates", LOL, but you get the point. AppleWorks came in handy for me over and over with so many databases I created, and had all the features I needed even back in the 1990s!

Also, I later exported the entire song book (with my artistic section cover pages & photos) into a large .pdf file, especially nice when you can click on a specific letter of the alphabet or heading to skip right to a section in the Adobe side bar, and do the .pdf searches too!

[dave]

Gosh! Well i have some work to do to catch up to *AppleWorks*

[SWLinPHX]

Well it's not so necessary in your case as long as people have clean, distinguishable and clear layouts to choose from kJams. Plus, with iJams the point is not to have to print, and re-print and maintain and collect and carry big heavy song books! I was mostly commenting because you had mentioned AppleWorks limits. The spreadsheet maximums are 256 Columns by 16,384 Rows = 4,194,304 cells, while a single database can hold up to 32,767 separate records. I can see how many would think it is an outdated or antiquated product with restrictive limits, but I run two businesses from it, including multiple elaborate databases & spreadsheets with advanced calculations.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60732

[dave]

I was kindof making a joke about AppleWorks. AW is pretty ancient, and not considered "high end", so to "catch up" to it is sortof self-depreciating. But the fact is it does fill in the gap at the moment, and you make the point that to catch up *and surpass* it, that kJams must have "clean, distinguishable and clear layouts to choose from", which is exactly correct! I definitely plan to make kJams be the premiere software for creating song books, even tho I"m simultaneously trying to get rid of them forever, some folks simply prefer a physical book, which I completely understand.