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iReal Book
Tested version: 1.1
Latest version: 1.3
Requires Android: from 1.6
Summary
The app featured today will probably appeal to a minority of Android users: to musicians, and more specifically, to jazz musicians. But… someone has to stick up for minorities ;-) That being said, even those of you who aren’t specialized in jazz should have a read-through of this review; iReal Book has the potential of becoming viable for musicians of all genres in the future.
Features & Use
Those of you who feel at home in the jazz world probably already have a notion what iReal Book is about. Real Books are collections of partitions of popular jazz, Latin and pop standards—“classics”, so to speak. Some of these Real Books are used in jazz jam sessions.
Real Book partitions, known as Sheets or Leedsheets, provide the chords as well as melodies and sometimes lyrics of songs. iReal Book showcases 900 standards, most of which are jazz tracks. These tracks can be displayed as well as transposed. For copyright reasons only the chords of standards are given; but even this may prove to be quite useful to some (jazz) musicians.
Seeing as an Android screen is rather small in comparison to sheet partition, some of you might already be thinking that iReal Book can’t be all that practical. That being said, I was recently in a situation in which I had to resort to usinfg my Milestone to fill in for sheet music (I managed to forget the sheet of the song we were about to play during rehearsal in my scanner at home). Thanks to SugarSync I was able to download the sheet in question onto my Milestone and was thus able to play along with the rest of the guys.
Even if you have a “standard” Android phone, iReal Book could come in handy if you’re a jazz musician, so I’m awarding three stars for that.
What’s also quite interesting to keep in mind is what this app may have to offer in the future. A similar app has been available for iPhone since quite some time. With this app you have the option of creating your own sheets on your phone or using Web-Editor, which can then be added to iReal Book via email to your phone. If you carry this thought a bit further, it could mean, for example, that you no longer need to lug around tons of partitions and sheets (you have to be ready for anything as a top-40 musician ;-))… provided of course the Android app allows you to create your own sheets. This means that in the (hopefully no too distant) future, I could compile sheets using Web-Editor, possibly add a 7 Zoll Android Tablet (which can be downloaded from the Android market), install iReal Book, and the days of dragging around binders of notes would be over.
This is all just a hypothesis, but it shows what iReal Book could be capable of providing in the future.
Screen & Controls
When you start iReal Book you arrive straight away at the list of 900 standards. You can scroll through this list or else use the search function, which you reach via the menu button, and select songs by clicking on them. The corresponding sheet is then shown, and by clicking the menu button and "Transpose" you have the option of transposing the song into the key of your choice. If you’ve opened a sheet you can leaf through previous or upcoming sheets by wiping your finger across the screen.
Pressing the menu button lands you in “Settings”, where you can choose the color scheme for your display. The choices are:
Black text on White
Black text on Light Gray
White text on Black
White text on Dark Gray
The option “Song Info” tells you who the composer is as well as relay information about style and key.
Considering what iReal Book has to offer at the moment, it has to be said that the function can be operated well. It would be really great if you could comply your own playlists, though.
Bottom line:
For most Android users, iReal Book doesn’t (yet) represent a viable replacement of actual Realbooks; it does, however, prove to be quite useful. If ever you happen to forget your Realbook sheets on your one are better than nothing. If you’ve already got an Android Tablet you may even be able to leave your Realbook collection at home.
Speed & Stability
iReal Book ran smoothly and without any problems throughout my test run of it.
Price/Performance Ratio
You can download iReal Book for $5.99 from the Android Market.
Comparable Apps
Report comparable or similar appsReviews of this app in other languages
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