Creating a Real Book Index in forScore

This is a video tutorial on how to create an index of large scores in the iPad app forScore. Large files like Real Books are difficult to navigate because you cannot search them by the songs, sections, or movements within. In this video, learn how to associate a CSV index file with scores in your forScore library so that you can search them by song title.

Here is a link to my blog post on the subject:

[wunderduc]

Great job, Robby, thank you very much! I installed all of my Real/Fakebooks this way. Your tutorial is such a huge help to use the essential files of Jazz-gigging. Thanks again!

[tommyxwumusic]

This is the best video of 2023, pure gold

[makoto_bass]

HUGE THANK YOU from Japan!!🇯🇵 This video and CSV file made me so much easier to search songs

[ellamissmoo]

After some trial and error, I realised it's useful to have a header row at the top of the CVS, with Title (ie the title of the song), Start, End (useful when some songs are one page and others are more than one page.) You can also have columns for Genre, Tags and Labels, and they'll all go in automatically for each song.

[isaac.trumpet]

Hey man, thanks for the tutorial, do you have CSV file for real book in Bb version?

[StevenSimon]

Wow! Didn’t know I could do that! Thank you!

[ellamissmoo]

Also, some csv indexes work fine, while others are out of sync. The "page number offset" doesn't seem to have any effect.

[mpeltz]

wow Robby this could be very useful but I have a slightly different problem. I am just getting started with forScore. I haven't even gotten my Ipad pro yet but its ordered. So here is my situation, I have two large biners of music that I use for my gigs. I'm a classical guitarists. I play 3 hour restaurant gigs every week. I have my 2 books organized with a master spreed sheet that gives my songs in alphabetical order with book and page number. My books are not alphabetized by music but that has not been a problem. When I build my set for the week (about 40 songs) I use the spreadsheet to pull the songs from with page and book so I can find them quickly. I had these two books digitized before a trip a while back just in case something happened to the books. The files are just copies of my books..one page after the other. Kind of like your books but I only have my own spreed sheet to index them. I'm wondering If there is a way to use your method to index and organize these files in forScore? I haven't even gotten the program yet so I don't really know what I'm dealing with yet. I think my spreadsheet is in CSV form?? I have transferred my music pdf's to my dropbox at this point and organized them into two folders book 1 and book 2 . Any suggestions....Thanks for you r video!

[QalinaCom]

thank you, I have synced all my books, but the csv list you provide doesn't have some of mine, for example none for Bb instruments or brazilian fake book. I looked but I can not find another page with more indexes. Any idea please?

[davidpatrick]

Thank you. I have some church band with several of our song. So I need to know how to make a "book" (I guess) first to make an index?

[mnmleung]

Thank you for this very helpful video, Robby. Ming

[hhc-channel]

Great Feature, thanks for Demonstration.

[petercallaway]

Extremely informative tutorial!
I thought the forScore app automatically created a index of all the Fakebooks you import?
I had swipe up or down to find a song.

[WilliamWallacegtr]

Thanks man, you helped me a lot with this!

[joelpickett]

alternatively for other large books that don't have publicly available indexes, I just split the original PDF by embedded bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat. Takes about 5 seconds and you're left with a folder with 400 PDFs to import into Google Drive and Forscore. Each PDF is named by it's bookmark (hence its title)

[cello]

many thanks! really helpful - if you see I add a single song to a set list it adds the entire RealBook this particular song belong to - is there a way to add a single song to a set list after adding the index? - thanks!

[nadiagreen]

Hi i would like to know if you have created a video on the last forscore version ?
I try to do the same actions than you but it doesn t Work. Thank you from Brussels ❤️

[jimfuqua]

All the steps work fine, however, the indexing is not correct. None of the bookmarks take me to the correct song page.

[chazzd]

Im a little puzzled as how to get the app to show up on my Ipad. It only shows a few apps to use but I can't see the forscore app. Even when I hit more. So How do I make that show up?
I love the video but can you help me with this? Thanks

[nathanbrownonline]

This is very helpful, thanks. Do you know where I can find a CSV index file of The Real Christmas Book?