GigBag Help & FAQ's

In your Checklist, LONG_PRESS to link a specific item to a specific Checklist.  For example, create one Gear item for 10M XLR Audio cable, set that cable to 10 items for Checklist 1, 5 items for Checklist 2.  Also add notes, for example a lighting controller setting for Checklist 3, a different setting for Checklist 4, both use the same lighting controller Gear item

MIDI is not available with the free download.  You have to purchase a subscription, or the Lifetime In-App purchase.

Therefore, if you want to test the MIDI functionality without paying, get a subscription (first month is free) and if you do not want to proceed, cancel your subscription before the month is out.

SETUP

Home/Settings/Midi Setup

Select up to 16 pedals, layout up to 8 columns.  If you reduce the number of pedals, the settings for the lost pedals will be deleted.

Pedals can be freely assigned to any CC or program changes.

If you try to program using the same MIDI commands, you will get an alert and will be prevented from adding a duplication.

When a pedal is assigned, you can test if it is correctly setup by pressing the external hardware pedal/button and the assigned pedal in settings should light up for one second.

MIDI commands recognised;-

omni only (all MIDI channels)

Program Change nos 1-128

Continous Controller (cc) messages 0 to 127

cc data 127 only - all other cc data values are ignored - make sure your pedal cc setup is set for cc (0 to 127), data 127

You can set your pedals to

* Play-Pause

* Metronome

* Speaker

* Previous Song, Next Song

* Setlist Toggle

* PDF Page Forward*,  PDF Page Back

USAGE

Gig/Setlist/Play

MIDI commands are only recognised in the Setlist Play tab (and midi setup as previously described)

**PDF Page Forward/Backwards.  Multi-page pdf documents are stepped through one page at a time.  When the end of the PDF is reached, the next pedal press loads the next song and starts stepping through pages.

When stepping back through PDF pages, when the 1st page is detected, the next pedal press loads the previous Song, starting with the last page of the PDF.  In other words, just 2 pedals will take you through all your songs, one PDF page at a time.

Only for CONTIGUOUS PDF songs.  If your setlist encounters a text song, the PDF stepping function will halt.

There are 3 levels to this

• Apple Music Catalogue.  Apple have over 100 million songs available on the web! (if you have a subscription)

• Your personal Apple Music Library - Contains songs you have marked as "in your library" in Apple's Music App.  These songs can be searched in GigBag

• Apple Songs Registered in GigBag - Apple Music songs you have search and loaded using the GigBag App.  You can play these alongside your song text/PDF entries.

No Apple Music subscription?  It still works.  If you have a DRM free song collection, you just need to drop them into the Apple Music app on a computer and connect your iOS device to load/register and sync your songs with the Apple Music Library on your iPhone/iPad.

Currently there is no Spotify Integration on the radar, but that depends on future demand (and a lot of effort!)

When Apple song is registered in GigBag, you get these benefits.

• You can load a song title, artist, duration, album art automatically when creating a new song.

• Digital Rights Management:   You can see if your song is  ✅ DRM Free  (purchased by you) , or ⚠️ DRM Locked (you need a subscription)

• Downloaded?  You can check if you Song is  ✅ Downloaded to device or 🛜 On the web (streaming).  To download a song, do this in the Apple Music App.  This allows you to play without a network connection.

• You can Preview your Apple Song in sync with your text/chords and accurately adjust your BPM, scroll rate, start delay, and text size.

• You can use Setlist functions to create a setlist and play all through your songs in order.

Apple Music Integration can be globally switch OFF in Settings.

Apple Music playback can be globally silenced in the Prepare Setlist/Live Setlist areas.

The original thought to integrating Apple Music songs into GigBag was to help rehearsal - playing along with your song, adjusting the scroll speed of the text etc. then play live with just your text scrolling without the song playing.

But... nowadays many intrepid (and brave) solo musicians play their backing tracks directly from a mobile device to a bluetooth P.A.  Good luck with that!  And GigBag can help you as songs in GigBag can even be backing tracks to sing/play along with, hence the play function is also in the Live Setlist functions.

Using Apple's Dynamic Text feature in iOS15 you can change a single App text zoom (See images below).  Dynamic Text is fully implemented throughout GigBag in v2022.7 (May 2022)

Setting up dynamic zoom

You can access this iOS function via Settings/Accessibility/Display & Text Size/Larger Text

But the better way is to add Text Zoom to your Control Centre

 (Settings/Control Center/aA icon)

Then, if you start by running GigBag and swipe down to access the Control Centre/Text Zoom you have the option to change the zoom FOR GIGBAG ONLY

FAQ's

Q. I've paid for GigBag, but my new device is on the free version

A. If you have bought GigBag and want to use it on other devices with your Apple account, simply download onto your new device from AppStore and in GigBag go to Settings, Purchases. Restore Purchases.

Which Checklists contain a particular gear item?

You can also view Gear items in the same way (above) , and see what Checklists they are allocated to.

Q. Can I SHARE a Setlist?

A. Yes, and No

You can share Gig details from the home page reports in GigBag Pro (and filter/select Setlist) as a simple pdf file (to anyone).

As far as sharing the setlist (GigBag file) to another GigBag user, - currently no.  The way GigBag works is by a master Gig object linking setlist/songs/everything! together, so to share a setlist it would also have to copy over the songs to the other person’s song library and also include other elements of the Gig.  It would get pretty messy and confusing if songs already existed and were set up differently on their device.

The future may be collaboration - i.e. having a shared Gig library separate from your personal Gig setup.  Something on the growing ToDo list!

Q. How do I get my song chords and lyrics displayed Live?

A. Each song has a "Text & Scolling" section for you to paste in what you need for a GIg… Lyrics, chords, reminders, your own shorthand.  That’s how many musos work, with just simple memory jogs and notes before or during a performance.

To get this info into your live setlist you need to do 3 things.

1) In the LIBRARY (songs), create/edit a song, and populate the Text & Scolling section.  There are helper web links to point you to chords/lyrics and you copy and paste in what you what.

2) In PREP mode, select your song for your Gig Setlist

3)  In GO LIVE your notes are now available (You can toggle the bottom centre button between SetList and Live Notes.  You can adjust text size using the Text Formatter in the menu.

Q. Do you support ChordPro, Tabs, and other advanced song formats?

A. No.  There re a lot of things GigBag doesn’t do.  And it’s not really what GigBag was designed to do.  But... maybe one day!

We are exploring the future of GigBag all the time.  We will probably bring some or all of these features to GigBag. After all, ChordPro, Tabs, auto-scrolling, visual metronome, auto page turn, MIDI foot pedal sync etc. ....this kind of stuff excites us!

But don’t hold your breath on these features! …for now maybe use another App (and there are some great ones out there)

Q. Can I stop my screen from dimming/going to sleep?

A. When playing in Live Setlist mode, your screen stays on, and sleep mode is disabled. Be pretty enbarrassing if this didn't happen!

For all other screens/modes (including Live Checklist) GigBag will follow your iOS device's default "Display/Brightness Auto-Lock" time.
Nb: There is now a global setting to override this and keep the display on all the time GigBag is running