Great Idea; Pretty Lousy Code
I have pretty much every one of the books that are available imported into Tune Librarian, and a dozen or so more years of several hundred other tunes each imported singly. I wish I had never started with it because now it would be such a huge undertaking to move all these tunes, and a good 300 sets, into another program. And I haven’t found one that works with the idea of tunes/sets/set lists.
If you accidentally hit print screen while a copy-righted tune is showing, the program decides that you’ve been trying to steal the tune and does not allow you further access to any copyrighted tunes until you get a unblock code from the author. He is quick about getting you those codes. Unfortunately at some point, maybe six months ago, one stopped being able to enter the unlock codes (due to a change in Apple, the author says).
Tunes from the Barnes collection and the Portland books occasionally, randomly, disappear and you have to reimport the book. That is pretty easy, but you then lose all annotations and notes on the other tunes in the book.
It was easy to send a set list to another to TL user. Six months or so ago, one stopped being able to import any set list you received. The author says this is due to an Apple change. So, you can no longer share set lists.
In theory you can export tunes you imported singly (i.e., not from Barnes, not from Portland, etc.). In reality you can’t. The export function crashes.
If the author gets an update that fixes these problems there’s still one major problem: so far, every update has required that you reload all the books – that’s no big deal – and all of the hundreds of tunes you have imported — one at a time by yourself. That’s a big deal. Of course, if you could export them all without the program crashing, then you could re-import after upgrading. That would be nice – but you can’t. And my guess is that to install a fix that fixes the exporting, well you can’t export before you put the fix in, so you just lose them all and have to find them from whatever sources you had and reimport them.
As I recall, you have to reset up all sets when there’s an upgrade. I’ve only got about 250 or 300 with the various bands that I play with and sure, we sure don’t play more than about 20% on a regular basis but others get used on occasion. And then you lose all your set lists.
The architecture of the program is just right for trad musicians. Using the program is OK when it works but too many things don’t work any more.
If you accidentally hit print screen while a copy-righted tune is showing, the program decides that you’ve been trying to steal the tune and does not allow you further access to any copyrighted tunes until you get a unblock code from the author. He is quick about getting you those codes. Unfortunately at some point, maybe six months ago, one stopped being able to enter the unlock codes (due to a change in Apple, the author says).
Tunes from the Barnes collection and the Portland books occasionally, randomly, disappear and you have to reimport the book. That is pretty easy, but you then lose all annotations and notes on the other tunes in the book.
It was easy to send a set list to another to TL user. Six months or so ago, one stopped being able to import any set list you received. The author says this is due to an Apple change. So, you can no longer share set lists.
In theory you can export tunes you imported singly (i.e., not from Barnes, not from Portland, etc.). In reality you can’t. The export function crashes.
If the author gets an update that fixes these problems there’s still one major problem: so far, every update has required that you reload all the books – that’s no big deal – and all of the hundreds of tunes you have imported — one at a time by yourself. That’s a big deal. Of course, if you could export them all without the program crashing, then you could re-import after upgrading. That would be nice – but you can’t. And my guess is that to install a fix that fixes the exporting, well you can’t export before you put the fix in, so you just lose them all and have to find them from whatever sources you had and reimport them.
As I recall, you have to reset up all sets when there’s an upgrade. I’ve only got about 250 or 300 with the various bands that I play with and sure, we sure don’t play more than about 20% on a regular basis but others get used on occasion. And then you lose all your set lists.
The architecture of the program is just right for trad musicians. Using the program is OK when it works but too many things don’t work any more.
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“Update Volumes” in Update menu.
There IS no update menu in the settings. This is in the instructions on how to add your own tunes as a ZIP file. It doesn’t work. As others have said, it is an awful interface. And don’t make the mistake of doing a screenshot, or you will get a nasty popup that tells you if you try that again they will take away all of the music that you paid for. The physical books can be had for about the same price you pay for them here.
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Alpha list of tunes at first did not display properly
When I first installed this, the alphabetical list of tunes does not display properly. The tune titles in the search list were displayed in a dark font on a dark background and could not be read. I tried reinstalling this app and resharing the individual tune books to no avail. The next morning I opened it and everything displayed correctly.
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Doesn’t combine Barnes volumes
I purchased both Barnes apps (vols. I & II, vol. III) then purchased the Tune Librarian app. The “share” button does not appear anywhere for me to combine the Barnes apps. Extremely disappointing.
A Great App but a bit difficult to use
I have this app on several iPads and was able to add all the collections to the Tune Librarian. Then I quit playing music for a while. When I next picked up the app I got a “Missing File” error message for most of the tunes I tried to access. Apparently the app had changed from the previous time I used it so as a fix I went through the purchase routine again (but didnt get charged as I already owned the material) and added each of the books back as if it were my first time using the app. It took a long time to light onto the solution. But here’s my question. I created a Medley on one of my iPads. Is there a way to share this Medley from the one iPad to my others? While creating the Medley was easy it would be quite tedious to go through the exercise for each of my iPads …
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