MobileSheets Forums

Hi All,

I've been managing my own charts for a couple of big bands now on MobileSheets for a couple of years and I love it! 

I now find myself the librarian for one of the big bands I play in. Most of the players are still on paper copies, but there's a vision to keep a couple of ipads that we can use for deps or if people are ever missing their pads. There's also a few players making noises about switching, so if I can support that so that people dont have to scan all their pads in themselves, that would be nice too.

I'm currently trawling through the library on disk making sure we have instrument parts for all the charts etc etc with a view to making it as easy as possible to get something working within mobilesheets but I could do with some thoughts on "best practice" or ways people have done this before.

At the moment, I'm thinking that once I've got all the pdfs of all the charts for all of the instruments, I create a library in mobilesheets on my laptop for each instrument with all the charts for that instrument/part. Then, I can essentially "sync" those libraries to the spare ipads so that any player who needs can pick it up, go to the right library and find the chart they need. Does that sound like a sensible option? Thinking "out loud" perhaps, the best option is not one library per part, but one per instrument "group", e.g. "Alto Sax" could contain the parts for Alto 1, Alto 2 but also the odds and sods where the alto players cover clarinet or flute. In my own library I use custom group to identify different instrument parts of the same piece (E.g. I have Tbn 1, Tbn2 etc and add that to the name displayed in the lists). But the overall idea still stands - multiple libraries to make it easier to manage for the end users, but does that make it harder for me?! Would it be better to have a single library for the whole band and then "group" the instruments? 

What happens then when we add a new chart to our library? I assume I would have to add that chart to each library on the master device and then sync that out to the others? 

Given I have a couple of hundred charts, each with 17 instrument parts (loosely) is there a simple way to get that imported to the master libraries in the first place? I do have a spreadsheet with our chart numbers (at the moment each chart is assigned a number before it given out - they're not sequential anymore as many have been dropped over the years), titles, composers, arrangers, lyricists etc. Can I use that in someway to automate the import? Is there an API for this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance for any help (and I've put this in the wrong place... sorry!)

Paul

For now, I would recommend having separate libraries per instrument so long as you don't need to utilize the "Connect Tablets" feature. You should use a different synchronization folder for each library if you plan to use the cloud sync feature. If you want to use library backup files, make sure a separate backup file is created for each library. Each library needs to be handled completely independently.

In the future, once I add the versioning features (which have been a long time in the making), this will solve most of the current issues with having one library that can be shared while still handling all of the different instruments. My goal is to have this feature rolled out this year, but I won't try to make promises on the exact timeline or date.

If you add a new chart, you'd need to add the chart to each library, and then sync each library to each separate cloud folder. Then other musicians can pull the changes down for their specific instrument/library.

As far as importing, if you have all the files separateed per instrument and in completely separate libraries, you can just use Import->Batch Import to pull all of the files in for a particular instrument at once. So my recommendation would be to have all of the instruments in separate folders for the import if possible, as it will save you a lot of time. You can switch to one library, batch import, switch to another library, batch import the folder for that library, etc.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the reply. Ok, so one library with "Collection" used to separate instrument families (e.g "saxes") and then custom group for specific instrument parts (e.g. Alto Sax 1, Alto Sax 2) etx is not going to work well for syncing? Dont think we'll cloud sync, I was thinking I'd sync from my laptop possibly via the companion app in some way? 

At the moment, I have the music arranged in one folder per "piece" and then each instrument for that piece is in its own pdf file within the folder. That still feels like the most logical as if we ever need to print things for the paper people, its easier to find by piece (I think, maybe?!). For import, I did see something about using metadata in pdfs to autofill the fields within each file? In which case I thought I could script something in python to set all the pdf metadata before batch importing the lot into mobilesheets... then that would automatically set things up for me? Also, does batch import work recursively or just on the files within one folder?

Thanks again for your help!

Paul

That will also work perfectly fine so long as you uniquely name every song or piece and file in the library. You will only run into issues if files are not uniquely named (and you are instead relying on directories to separate things with identical file names in each directory). The companion app doesn't really support synchronization, but you can use it to generate a library backup file, and then restore that backup file on the other devices if you just want an "all or nothing" kind of approach. Basically, if you don't mind every device being identical (meaning each musician does not need their own annotations, link points, bookmarks, etc), then that will work great.

You can certainly leverage PDF metadata to populate the metadata in the library (enable Settings->Import Settings->Extract PDF Metadata). That could save you some time for sure (other than the initial data entry and time spent writing the python script). Batch import does work recursively, but you can control that as there is a checkbox to enable or disable it.

I'm happy to help however I can.

Mike

I also manage the music for a Big Band and I take a different approach but am really really looking forward to the Versioning feature.

All our songs are stored as PDFs, one per part and in a subfolder for each song. I share these on both OneDrive and as a copy on GoogleDrive and the players simply download the song parts they want each season/gig and keep their own annotated versions where preferred.

Not everyone uses MobileSheets (until recently - most printed it out) but after a disastrous gig where the rhythm section complained during the interval that the stage lights were in their eyes, the techies moved them, not telling the singers who didn't realise until they stood up for their big duet and couldn't see the music anymore!  Backlit tablets are the solution here!

The majority of our band uses Mobilesheets on a variety of devices - not sure how many bother with the Companion but they do have trouble with OneDrive from within MobileSheets - I think this is likely as they have more than one microsoft accounts on their devices.

If I have a guest player for a gig, I simply Combine all the parts for each song into a single multiple page PDF and send them that.  This works in MobileSheets just as well and has minimum interaction unless the set list order changes.

I am also about to do the same for a choir, (less parts luckily) and am going to try multiple libraries in MobileSheets.

As I said, can't wait for versioning as I can hopefully just publish a set list and each player grabs their own files. 

Hope this is helpful.

(05-29-2026, 11:48 PM)clandsbert Wrote: [ -> ]I also manage the music for a Big Band and I take a different approach but am really really looking forward to the Versioning feature.

All our songs are stored as PDFs, one per part and in a subfolder for each song. I share these on both OneDrive and as a copy on GoogleDrive and the players simply download the song parts they want each season/gig and keep their own annotated versions where preferred.

Not everyone uses MobileSheets (until recently - most printed it out) but after a disastrous gig where the rhythm section complained during the interval that the stage lights were in their eyes, the techies moved them, not telling the singers who didn't realise until they stood up for their big duet and couldn't see the music anymore!  Backlit tablets are the solution here!

The majority of our band uses Mobilesheets on a variety of devices - not sure how many bother with the Companion but they do have trouble with OneDrive from within MobileSheets - I think this is likely as they have more than one microsoft accounts on their devices.

If I have a guest player for a gig, I simply Combine all the parts for each song into a single multiple page PDF and send them that.  This works in MobileSheets just as well and has minimum interaction unless the set list order changes.

I am also about to do the same for a choir, (less parts luckily) and am going to try multiple libraries in MobileSheets.

As I said, can't wait for versioning as I can hopefully just publish a set list and each player grabs their own files. 

Hope this is helpful.

Exactly my approach as well. Host the pdfs in the cloud and let the users manage parts themselves. They all use different software and devices and their own personal workflow. This is much easier for users and for the librarian.

I've played with several big bands, concert bands, wedding bands, small groups, etc. They all take different approaches - 1 file per instrument, 1 file per section, or 1 file for the whole chart. Luckily, Mobile Sheets makes it easy to set the page range for each song to show just my part if the file has multiple parts. No need to extract pages or make separate files.