Karaoke Forums

I'm close to finishing my first complete makeover of my song book in five years.  I'm sick of typing and looking for typos. Yikes!

I see it's a pain... so much, ya put in TWO topics about it! !

When I redid my books several years ago, it took me about 3 months to retype everything (at the time, I had about 4,000 songs in my library). I was doing a few pages at a time each night (in my spare time). I did it all on Microsoft Word. Once I had the Titles all typed out, it was easier for me to do the Artists, because all I had to do was resort the columns (and then I just retyped the Artists by Last Name first... that only took me a few hours).

I'm laughing through my tears... as I haven't bought anything since July 2006... so I'm catching up on the monthlies and a few things, scraped my old songbook and am compiling my new database!

Not wanting to do it, but KNOW I gotta!

No gigs yet, but gotta go in with SOMETHING!

That's why they make actual song book programs.

Can some administrator tell me what I'm doing wrong to cause my posts to double?  Since I was re-doing my book I extended a bit and added about 500 new songs this year instead of my usual two or three hundred. Plus I had to type in a couple of hundred from 2006 that I had been to lazy to add to the book  I'm still doing it the old fashion way. Hand typing into a spread sheet,   but it works and I like the way the book looks.  I went ahead and purchased the zoom eagles hits volume one. I'm glad I made the purchase.  It is a much better disc than the backstage disc.

Rippers like Kjamp Rip-n-Zip automatically name with whatever format you want. It does work with the PJ Pro database Then with software like latshaw you print books from the files in your library.

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

This sometime happen; mainly due to double clicking the submit button. Don't worry about it, Mod will delete the dup.

_________________
I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

[align=left][/align][font=Verdana][/font]When we put our first system together, I naively thought doing the song books would be the easiest part.  We did ours in Excel and I know I went through it well over 100 times eliminating mis-spellings, capitalization errors, artist listed last name first instead of first name first, punctuations errors and getting out all the duplicates.  What a pain!  Even after all that still found a few 'oops' when it came back from the printers.

yes and I used one for years.

I actually prefer Microsoft Access and it's reports!

I prefer the least amount of typing.     Just a click and the entire disc is automatically listed in the book with all of the vital info.

I disagree. I think by typing it in, you have a better chance of knowing right off the top of your head what you have. And also, I was raised with the work ethic that you're never going to appreciate your work unless you do it yourself.

I don't have to worry about the maker of the program not supporting it anymore... upgrades, monthly updates or downloads...

if something breaks, I can fix it, not waiting for support IF they'll give it to me!

and any errors ini the listings are mine. I don't have "The Beatles" and "Beatles, The" and "Beatles" all in one listing as I've seen others (in my area!), just because the book program maker doesn't have a standard way of listing the artists.

to each their own!

Knightshow,

I agree with you about learning your song book.   For the last 5 years i've simply been adding new songs to the front of my book and had forgetten a lot of the old songs in my book.  This re-do is allowing (or forcing) me to take a hard look at my book.  With my recent conversion of my songs to computer I can easily compare different versions of the same song select the best and eliminate the other dupe or dupes.  I've also been able to identify some shortcomings in my songs and add a few.   While tedious I think it will help my show.

I've been busily deleting dupes and it looks like I'm going to end up with around 6000 songs.  About 1000 of those are sound choice.  Of the remaining about half are chartbusters or Dk.  The remaining half are monthlies or other brands.

yeah, and agree with you on deleting dupes, at least for the singer's book. For me, I like having all the songs in the KJ book, the master book.

Some folks are used to certain versions. I prefer Pioneer over DK, but my ex partner prefered the DK over Pioneer in many instances. It's what he was used to. I was used to the old lasers!

also, some singers are used to inferior versions, because as home singers, they buy the more inexpensive versions... now that SC and CB are more inexpensive, this may not be an issue much longer... but as long as come sites sell discs for $1.99 or about that, they'll buy those, and LIKE those versions as they're used to them...

so I try not to delete any dupes I have. I just won't list them in the singer book. I list what I think is the best one!

I use Song List Generator to grab the songs from my HD. It also offers a Unique Songs button, eliminates all duplicates in a second. Then I export it to a Excel Sheet and import it in Access and use it's Report function. Then printed to PDF and send online to Office Depot, where I can pick them up mostly the same or the next day.

This way new Songbooks are generated in about 5 minutes (or even less).

One of the reasons I chose Hoster was for their song book function. I don't know about you people who think that typing every single song title is therapeutic. I type for a living so the last thing I'd want to do is spend even a minute typing song books. Been there, done that. Hand typed my first one in Word, years ago.

I've been using Music Book Deluxe (when I used CDGs) and it is very good software for those who are at the point of having to create song books. Their database is VERY up to date and there are VERY few errors in it.

I'm in no hurry to recreate my new books since switching to computer-based show. I just tell people they needn't put a song # down on the slip. I'll get around to it eventually but after having to re-rip so many songs, I'm ready to stop looking at the whole thing for a while.

If I was going to spend MORE time on karaoke books, etc., because I thought it would refresh my mind about songs I had, I would rather turn on the computer and just go through and listen to them...and compare manus. Hoster's .rtf is great to work with - allows you to change your parameters so you can do a quick look by artist or title, etc.  

K

It deletes the dupes, but how do you know if it left the best musical version of a song?

You need to delete the dupes manually so you can choose which one is left.

It's called proof reading.   I have checked and rechecked mine several times and several different ways.

I have made some typos doing it myself.   And i still can see every song i have.

Prefer to do it myself as well.  All Access database/reports.  Agree with knightshow, you definitely learn your listing more than if you just click a disc & add.  Even proofreading, doesn't really give you a general idea because you aren't going to retain just reading over physincally typing it in.  However they only ones I need to manually type in now are the brand new discs, the rest is already done so it's not a big deal anyway.

_________________
[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]

It doesn't delete the duplicates, just eliminates them from the song book. I don't print the version in my song books. Just Artist and Title, no Songnumber and no version.