Syncing forScore on iPad and Songbook

[PraiseTheLord]

I have finally figured out how to sync forScore on my iPad with the Pa900 Songbook and thought I would share my findings in case it helps someone else. I drew a complete blank in researching for help in this matter. Maybe it is intuitively obvious to competent MIDI users, but not for me.

What I wanted to be able to do was to select the appropriate Songbook entry whenever I opened up a new score in forScore. Although I usually set up playlists in both forScore and Songbook, if I get requests I have to search both forScore and Songbook. I have become adept at doing this and talking while I search but I was looking for a better approach.

The first thing I had to do was to number the songs in Songbook. I wish there was a way that these were automatically assigned a number when you create a new song, but anyway. I created the numbers on my Mac using Songbook Editor as the quickest approach.

I purchased the Apple Lightning to USB Camera Adapter and a USB 2.0 USB A to USB B cable, and connected the iPad to the Pa900.

I opened forScore and from the Library selected each song in turn. In the Library menu, the blue arrow button off to the right-hand side of any song file will open the metadata editor, where you can edit an item’s title, composer, genre, difficulty, rating, and more. Select MIDI and Send. Then select the + symbol in the bottom right of the window and select Learn… Once you see it is listening for a signal go to the Songbook and select the appropriate song and hit Select. Finally hit Done on the forScore window and the link is established.

Incidentally, I turned the STS Mode off before the last process, because otherwise you will create some unnecessary (?) program changes, that in the future if you change the song’s settings on the Korg, may cause complications (I don’t know this for a fact, but was cautious anyway).

Now, when I select the song in forScore it automatically selects the appropriate song in the Korg Songbook. Cool!

I am left with a couple of problems:

Firstly, if I disconnect the iPad that seems to sever the MIDI connection. I have to reboot the Pa900 in order to get it working again. Any ideas?

Secondly, on certain songs I use 2 Songbook settings, e.g. MySong 1 and MySong 2, put them in my Songbook Custom List and then just hit Next Song to go from one to the other. I haven’t found a way to achieve that using forScore. As I’m writing I’m wondering if I could create a new score in forScore for each song setting in Songbook. I’ll work on that separately.

Hope this helps.

[PraiseTheLord]

Just to close the loop, I have failed to find a solution to the problem I have with being unable to restart the MIDI link when disconnecting and reconnecting the iPad. forScore have no option for me either, "The issue with disconnecting your keyboard from the iPad is unfortunately the nature of how MIDI devices work with iOS. We don’t have any means of working around that on our end."

With regard to my second problem, I did create a new score for MySong2 and linked that to the MySong2 Songbook setting, and it works like a dream!