PerfectGuitarSongBook 1.4 coming soon

I just submitted PerfectGuitarSongBook version 1.4 to the App Store Review Team.
The new version will as usual make PGSongBook even more perfect, with an overall graphical overhaul, great new features and tons of bug fixes.

Here is a screenshot of the new UI in comparison to the old one:

Old
New

Looks great, doesn’t it?

From my experience, it takes about a week for the App Store Team to review new updates, so if there is no problem, you all will soon be able to explore it.
A full list of changes will come soon.

USB MIDI Drums Android

As the USB OTG functionality of my Samsung Galaxy S II works again due to the recent update to 4.0.4, I finally was able to test my phone with multiple USB devices. After successfully trying a mouse, keyboard and flash drive, I tried a MIDI USB interface together with a BandHero drum kit.

I downloaded a USB MIDI Monitor app and found out that the phone was able to receive the signals sent by the drum kit and continued searching the Play Store for an app that was able to play the suitable drum sound accordingly to the input signals.
I did not find one, so I quickly asked Google for any available open source basis and really found something: https://github.com/kshoji/USB-MIDI-Driver

After downloading the demo application, it soon seemed clear that there was not much more work to do to implement a simple USB MIDI drum kit app.
Actually, only the sounds part was left, which was easily implemented after I had found this post from a  countryman of mine. A web search led me to some drum kit wave files, I adjusted the code a bit to allow for a variable volume of the sounds according to the beat velocity and finally had a (more or less) useable app.

Here is the resulting app: http://bit.ly/USB_MIDI_Drums (APK, 0.8 MB)
EDIT: Please note that only the MIDI notes the BandHero drum kit sends are assigned to sounds, so this app will most likely not work if you try it with another drum kit.

Basically, I’ve just merged components created by other people, but I hope it’s of some use for someone.

Don’t be surprised if you don’t see an icon in the launcher after installing the app. It only has one activity that launches when you connect a USB device through an USB OTG cable to your device.
Moreover, I have not adjusted the user interface nor the bundle name of the USB-MIDI-Driver sample app, so you won’t get any hints or settings concerning the drum kit.

PS: I quickly found out that Android is not really suitable for real time audio (yet), but that’s another story.

Introducing Magic Features

With version 1.3 of Perfect Guitar Song Book, editing songs in the built-in editor is now easy like never before.

Complete verse’s chords

Many songs from the Internet only have one verse that is provided with chords.If you don’t know the chords by heart, it’s difficult to play the second or third verse without chords.This feature helps you to easily transfer the chords from the first verse to all the others without chords.

Complete Choruses

Lots of songs contain only one complete chorus and referrals to this one complete chorus when the chorus should be played again later in the song.This function pastes the complete chorus (if marked with {soc} and {eoc}) to the places where “Chorus” or “Refrain” is only referred. If one of these words is followed by x2 or 2x, the chorus will be pasted twice.

Mark choruses

This feature automatically finds and marks choruses with the {soc} and {eoc} chord pro tag.

Read here for a full list of new features.

Version 1.3 Released

Version 1.3.2 of Perfect Guitar Song Book was just released and is now available on the App Store.

The new features are:

► Introducing Magic Features: ◄
+ Transfer chords
       If only one verse of a song is provided with chords, this feature easily lets you transfer chords from this one verse to all the other yet chordless verses.
+ Find and mark choruses
       Makes the app find choruses and mark them with the {soc}/{eoc} tag
+ Complete choruses
       Fill in the complete chorus where only a referral is written

► Can now import PDF, DOC, DOCX and PAGES ◄
PerfectGuitarSongBook finally allows integrating these files into your library

► Playlists can now be sent and received via emails ◄
The app automatically imports yet not existing songs and links already existing songs to the playlist
There also is a new button that allows to easily create a playlist with all songs on the device so that you can easily share your whole library

► Export playlists as PDF ◄
Allows you to create full song book just with your iOS device
The generated PDFs even include an index with links to each song.

► And many more: ◄
+ Now supports Bluetooth page turn pedals
+ iPad 3 retina graphics
+ Fill new song’s information from MP3
+ Smaller buttons for scrolling whole pages (Option for old, big buttons)
+ New Chopro tag: {h} highlights phrase like a text marker (works in-line)
+ Now artist and title are capitalized automatically
+ Saves autoscroll speed for every song
+ Night mode for songs screen (even playlist’s songs view is black in night mode)
+ TV out on iPad 2 and iPad 3 disabled, so that the whole app is shown on TV on those devices
+ Autoscroll bar can now be opened without swiping the toolbar
+ Swipe over song screen to get to the next song of a playlist

+ Completely reworked PDF-Export
+ PGSongBook can now generate PDFs with multiple columns
+ Supports tablatures on PDFs now

+ Bug fixes

The new update is already available on the App Store.

How to change editor text size

PGSongBook allows you to easily adjust the font size of the built-in editor to your needs:

Just tap the screen with two fingers, keep touching it and move your fingers away from each other.
This movement is also called “Pinching” and works in many other applications as well.

Version 1.2 submitted

PGSongBook version 1.2 was submitted on January, 25 and therefore should be available this week if everything goes well. Here is the complete list of new features:

+ Supports all device orientations

+ AutoScroll (Swipe toolbar to access)

Organization:

+ Swipe to delete Chord Pro file

+ Change order of songs in a playlist
+ Playlists can now be duplicated
+ Option to delete files after import

Editor:

+ Pinch to zoom in editor

+ Monospace font in editor
+ Search & Replace in editor
+ Chords turn capitalized after chord tag is closes with a ]

Songs:
+ {sot} tag *with tab line break*
+ New {solc} and {eolc} tag for long comments
+ Chorus, Bridge and long comments now have borders

Bug fixes:
+ Chords and text are no more combined in comment areas or tab areas
+ Empty lines are no more compressed when printing
+ Now warns if you want to rename playlist to existing name
+ Several more

How to create a PGSongBook-compatible Text File

On a Mac:

1. Open TextEdit and click Format->Make Plain Text

2. Click File->Save as…

3. Choose your desired destination and Unicode (UTF-8) as encoding.

On Windows:

1. Open Notepad (Editor in some countries) and choose File->Save As…

2. Choose UTF-8 as encoding and save to your desired location.

Import the file in PGSongBook and enjoy playing it.