Mail of the Month - April

Posted by . on Thursday, April 12, 2012

This months Mail of the Month will consist of snippets from some user mail conversations - a short Fakebook FAQ:


> I purchased the fake book for android today. When I open it I cannot
> scroll through the tunes. What am I doing wrong?
There are several ways to change tunes:
* Swipe left/right to "turn page". The faster you swipe, the more songs will be skipped.
* Use the menu button and then press previous/next.
* If your phone has hardware buttons, pressing left/right on these.
* If you have a headset with buttons, these shall work as well.
* The simplest way, if you know what you are looking for, is to press the menu button and then the "browse" button. In this dialog you can search any way you want.
* The same dialog is available when pressing "search", if your phone has a dedicated button for that.


> Can you switch between C instruments and Bb? 
Transpose is planned for the next release -- both global (for all tunes, e.g. for wind or brass) and local (adapting a single tune, e.g. to suit the singer). Actually I have a long list of features waiting to be added, but I wanted to get the app out there for you all to try and to provide some feedback. So your response is most welcome and I hope to release the next version in a few weeks.


> The first thing I found uncomfortable is the lack of zooming and
> changing the font size.
I know. Actually, the possibility to change the font size and to transpose (individual songs as well as the entire book for e.g. an Eb sax) are the first additions I'm working on. They will both be included i the next release, planned for the next week or so.


> Spotify isn't supported in my country yet. Which literally disables all the
> possibilities of listening to sample tracks added on the app.
Sorry to hear that -- Spotify is great! But honestly, my ambition was to add also YouTube links for a lot of the tracks, which simply wasn't possible with 1200 songs in the first release. I will definitely look into adding alternatives to Spotify (like YouTube), but it is so time consuming that I cannot promise it will be prioritized in the first updates. 
However, I'm thinking of adding a "Search YouTube" option for the Play function, that would automatically search for the tunes name. It would simplify somewhat for the musician, not needing to switch app and manually type the name, and still be possible for me to implement (not needing to listen and find the best version 
of 1200 songs...). Hope that is OK for a start?


> I did read the forum of irealbook but only to find out that I will have to
> spend another 10 dollars to get irealbook in order to import irealb
> song lists. Not only the matter of money but also my phone being
> quite old, not enough memory to install that app.
Note that Fakebook is in no way related to iRealBook. (Actually I wrote the app because i thought iRealBook was too expensive and it wouldn't run on one of my old phones.) So no other purchase is necessary. But Fakebook does import iRealBook tunes! Just click on one of the song links, e.g. on the iRealBook forum, and the chords will be imported and the song added to the Fakebook database. It will also import complete iRealBook song lists, adding all songs as well as storing the list info in the database. 
However, the Fakebook app can only show the songs at the moment, the playlist features are not yet implemented. When they are (they are on the prio list), Fakebok will also be able to use the previously imported song lists, e.g. from iRealBook.  

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