A musician friend is transferring his sheet music books to his computer so that he can quickly summon up thousands of songs. He’s using a tablet PC, which is essentially a laptop with a touch sensitive screen. (Kinda like a big Windows iPad.)
Now he’s wants to know the best way to control multiple tablet PCs from his own. He’d like to put tablets in front of the horn player and the bass player, and have those tablets display whatever music he calls up on his machine.
This is not part of my computer experience. Suggestions?
I know there is a class of software (that may include some hardware ) that allows a class of student with computers on their desk to all see what is on the teacher’s desktop.
However, I cannot make any recommendation or if it would be appropriate for your planned usage.
Yepper (although I don’t know what the choices are there.) But would setting it up in a temporary location (like a bar) require the laptops to be hard wired together?
I’m pretty sure it’s the same sheet music, so mirroring the main monitor on two other machines would probably be the ticket. Is there an easy, practical way to do that on location?
I’ve been using AirDisplay which does that for iPads (the iPad can either mirror the laptop’s screen, or as a second screen) but I dunno if it works for more than 1 iPad, or if there’s similar software laptop to laptop (I expect so).
Still, throwing it out there while there aren’t any good answers yet.
If he just wants to share a screen, he could use some sort of remote control program, like a VNC server on his tablet and a VNC viewer on the other ones.
The specifics will depend on what kind of tablet he has.
In day to day use, however, it’s unlikely that a jury-rigged setup like this will be easier to use than saying “Okay, now moving on to Song 2…” and have everyone click a few buttons to pull up the other music.
(What you really want is a custom sheet music or PDF reader that can sync the current file across multiple devices over WiFi. I don’t know if anything like that exists.)
Do the other people require tablets? I know newer phones have something called ‘mirror mode’ which will take whatever is on the phone’s display and put it on a regular display device via HDMI cable.
I would assume a tablet could do the same thing, either nativity or with an app. From there, I’m thinking he could just get a couple of cheap LCD monitors for everyone. Of course, those would have to be plugged in and, frankly, not be as cool, and probably heavier. Also, he’d have to find someway to split the HDMI signal.
It seems to me, the best way (and I see Reply said it) would be for everyone to just have their own copy of the music. No worrying about network problems, battery issues with the main tablet, someone losing their place because the lead person turns the page at the ‘wrong’ time etc.