Members trevcda Posted September 13, 2015 Members Share Posted September 13, 2015 Thought you guys might get a kick out of a project I've been working on this summer. While lyric monitors are certainly nothing new, creating a working system on a budget is. I was looking something better than an iPad strapped to a mic stand and came up with this. I'll put links to various things at the end, if you're interested. The whole system is based around a program called Digital Fake Book, made by a guy called Mike Warren. His program uses two windows, a lyric display window and a song/set list window. It allows various configurations, but basically one page at a time. I use two to three pages, a title page and one or two lyric/chord pages per song. Once you've got the songs entered, you create set lists. Doing this on a repurposed laptop, I keep the navigation window open on the laptop and extend the monitors out to several 24" monitors in portrait mode around the stage, using a VGA distribution amp. There were many out of the box wireless buttons available, but they were all really expensive and they all felt really delicate. So I bought a cheap 2.4 Ghz wireless Power Point controller and immediately voided the warranty by ripping the guts out and putting them in an old Behringer foot pedal that uses the same Boss/Roland buttons we're all familiar with. That took two tries, as a closer look at the two designs revealed a floating ground, so I had to cut a trace or two on the pedal to get it to work with the circuit board. The other side is just a USB dongle. My original plan was to put the monitors is a wedge box, but I wanted to do a proof-of-concept run first so I put together some basic two angle frames to try them out. Frankly, after I painted them black and put some wire chases in them the look and work great and don't weight anywhere near as much as what I'd originally planned on doing. I think I'm sticking with these. They work great. I put a title page before the lyrics so everyone knows what's coming up. The text size is adjustable so it can be easily seen. Two shows we do each summer have a guest singer who used to be a performer. He typically came and stared at an iPhone for lyrics and he loves these things. I love them for songs we just learned or don't typically do. The software is somewhat in its infancy and free. It could use some added features and it isn't real conducive to changing things up on the fly, if you need the lyric sheets for the song. But we decided that as we were being more selective about the gigs we did, we could put together a specific show which wouldn't need to be deviated from and that's were these things shine. I just love digging into a project like this. It keeps me off the streets and somewhat sane. Here's a list of items used: Old laptop (must be able to extend 2nd monitor in portrait mode) $0.00 Digital Fake Book Software (PC only) 0.00 Three old 24" monitors (very used) 60.00 VGA DA and Cabling (Monoprice) 45.00 Wedges and paint (from woodpile and shop) 0.00 Behringer foot switch (from junk pile) 0.00 Electronics for foot switch (Amazon) 17.00 AC Cables (From cord box) 0.00 Total 122.00 http://www.mike-warren.net/digitalfakebook/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LNP3VMA?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted September 14, 2015 Members Share Posted September 14, 2015 a neat solution with (used) electronics so cheap, such projects can be easily done today think about 15 years ago and 3 19" crt monitors not only being that expensive but also weight a ton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members trevcda Posted September 16, 2015 Author Members Share Posted September 16, 2015 I can only imagine! My original plan was to gut some cheap monitor wedges and install screens in them, but they would have been really heavy. I remember seeing a "band" a long time ago, that used karaoke tracks for backing tracks. A side benefit was that they could place a couple of 27" CRTs on each side of the stage and have lyrics displayed. It was long before the crowd figured out they were faking most of it and they were done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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