Maybe someone’s already done this, but it’s new for me, and hopefully can help someone trying to achieve the same goal. This is sort of similar to Torsten’s LivePrompter scenario, my goal was essentially the same as his… but this is far more simplistic than LP, which is awesome… a very elegant, robust approach. (I tried LP but it had some attributes that made it not the best solution for my specific situation.) Thanks Torsten… your post got me thinking about this!
My goal was to link and sync another app with my notes, directly to Cantabile, so when I select a song in Cantabile, the other app displays my notes… as big or in whatever format/layout I want. I’m in 2 bands, playing 2 instruments and singing, learning new songs all the time, and my brain just can’t keep up. I’m also not a coder so I have to work within my limitations 
Please note that I also have avoided moving to C3, which of course has song note capability built in, simply because I have so many songs, and finding enough time to make a full changeover and full test is daunting. My current rig in C2 is bulletproof, so taking some steps backwards feels a little risky…but maybe some day I’ll get around to that.
Essentially, a short midi file is created with just one midi command, and stored with each C2 song/session. You select the song, hit Spacebar to play that short midi file, and your notes appear… full screen, or whatever configuration you want. So here’s how I did it… not the most elegant solution perhaps, but it works, and is really easy to set up:
All my song notes are in Word. I’ve added to them over the years, so it’s pretty extensive. 1 song per page, with a lot of formatting and color coded notes (midi sax are purple, guitar are yellow, overall song structure white, etc.). Page 1-3 are my Table of contents. And each song title in the TOC is actually a hyperlink to that page. All that’s pretty easy to create in Word.
So first I used loopmidi to create virtual midi ports, and make sure they’re active in Cantabile. Then I used Bome’s midi translator classic free, spent a while figuring it out and getting it to work, and got a simple midi pgm change # on an unused midi channel, converted to keystrokes. The incoming midi is pretty straightofrward, but strangely, it took a while to get Bome’s to capture the outgoing key commands correctly… not the easiest key capture utility I’ve used. So the Bome outgoing command is this:
Alt(Tab)F5 2 2 Enter Alt(F4 )Ctrl ) In this example 22 is my page number.
Tip: in Outgoing, check the option to “Enter Tab and Backspace” only while doing the ALT+Tab press, then uncheck it to complete the command. So… Alt Tab=change view to next window (Word), F5=Go To, 22=page, Enter, CTRL+F4=close the Go To dialog). This command is of course specific to my situation, but all you need to figure out are the keyboard shortcuts that achieve your goal.
Then all I had to do was create a very short midi file with that pgm #, and drop it into C2 for that song. Set that file to “start playback on Master Transport”. I don’t know enough about Bome’s yet, but I may have to create a different midi command file for each song, but that’s pretty easy. It would be nice to use that same midi file for all songs and jsut change the page number in the outgoing command, but I’m not sure about that part yet. Then assign the output of that file to the loopMIDI port. Done.
Of course, in C2 all my songs are in one master Set List alphabetically. Find the song, select it, and hit the spacebar to play the mid file (you won’t even realize it’s played since it’s so short). Bingo, there are my Notes.
My typical layout is C2 in a narrow window on the left of my laptop screen, just wide enough to see the set list. My Word document fills the rest of the screen. But you can change this around however you’d like… or you can go full screen too, which I will probably do going forward… just Alt+Tab to get back to Cantabile, to choose the next song.
Well, hope this helps someone. Now I just have to figure out the fastest way to change the page numbers on Bome’s for each song. It may be due to the limitation of the free Classic version, but I’m not finding a way to change only the page number yet.
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