This page provides info to help and assist with Shag Evans sheet music technical issues.
UPDATE: Video song files are working (if you see the YouTube green screen go to browser settings and turn off "hardware acceleration").
ATTENTION: The sound quality of Shag Evans sheet music Sing-A-Long Soundtrack demos is hugely improved by using earbuds, headphones or any other external speaker desktop setups. There are specific technical reasons for this discussed at length below on this page. The mismatch between my sheet music creation software and the tiny built-in cellphone speaker systems is, unfortunately, EPIC.
Rotate phone screens to landscape before loading the videos. Even better: Use a big desktop screen and enjoy the show much more!
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HOW TO PLAY SHAG EVANS PDFs & MUSIC VIDEO FILES
Firefox
This free web browser is more powerful than ever. It plays Mp4 and other files smoothly. Desktop version is awesome. Phone version is very good. Great PDF rendering.
VLC Media Player
This free open source app is fantastic. It works on any platform and plays most any file. Has huge array of features. I can't recommend this app highly enough to music lovers. Open source software generally is a hit & miss proposition and this one is a big hit. My files work flawlessly and sound good on both the desktop and phone versions. The desktop version has a deluxe package of sound personalization features: EQ, compressor, spatializer, stereo widening etc. And it's all high quality and not gimmicky. Yes, you can tweak your sound like a pro with this app.
If you absolutely must listen to music through a tiny built-in cellphone speaker then this app is your best bet for improving the situation. (But really the solution is to step up to earbuds for only 10 bucks).
Brave
This awesome free browser struggles with my high res Mp4 videos. Visuals are a little dark and they are glitchy because HD requires a lot of horsepower. Brave sound is good though. Also Brave does really excellent PDF rendering of the Happy Birthday song and Christmas song sheet music.
Windows Media Player
Older versions struggle mightily with Mp4 files. Good for playing Mp3 files though and this proggie was the Original Gangster for playing Wav files and I guess it still is. But all in all it's still not as dependable as the VLC Media Player.
FREE trial versions of software apps
Shag Evans song videos and sheet music are high resolution files that frequently won't play or render correctly on freeware. Watch out for cheap PDF viewers especially. They almost always suck.
Acrobat
Unfortunately I can't recommend Acrobat because it's slaveware that you rent (subscribe to) but can never, ever, fully own. My advice is do not put your personal files on anybody's "cloud". Certain corporations are trying to turn everything into a permanent monthly payment contract deal. It's a cynical revenue streaming strategy that is fundamentally predatory IMO. Don't be fooled by the marketing.
So this is key: Many phone manufacturers have a second layer of hi-fi internal sound tech which applies to the headphone/earbud circuit only. (Cheap phones might not have this feature.) I don't carry anything but the phone itself and I also get enough headphone sound exposure working on music -- so I don't make use of earbuds very often. But earbuds are a proven workaround for the built-in phone speaker lo-fi hellscape. (You can get a great pair of earbuds from Sony at Wally World for only $10.)
Samsung
Overall I get mediocre results with this brand. Awesome video displays but the internal speaker sound system architecture is usually not very good. I have tested different media players on Samsung each with their own EQ presets and it's pretty crazy how the presets are all struggling to interact with the EQ and compression that is already built into the phone. Some settings are very nice but only for individual songs!
Having said all that: If you switch to earbuds on an upmarket Samsung phone suddenly the sound quality is 1000% better.
Motorola
Pot luck. Mostly not good. Apparently this company expects music lovers to use earbuds or headphones.
LG
Nope. Not so great. Once again the company expects music lovers to use earbuds or headphones.
Apple
Better! Seems like this company has always been focused on video and audio excellence. They put more R&D and investment into the internal media system architecture in their devices. I am mostly stuck in PC world and it seems clear Apple is the best bet for music lovers. Even the tiny built-in speaker can work well. Apple definitely encourages users to do the earbud thing but they also seem to prioritize higher built-in speaker quality.
I will keep adding feedback/info to the above list of brand experience but the bottom line is the cellphone makers expect music lovers to use earbuds or some sort of external speakers for their lounge pop bible rock dance music enjoyment.
I've been testing the various downloadable video/music apps with three different devices and mostly the apps suck. If your device is newer and high quality some of the apps seem to work well -- but just for videos. But nothing seems consistently great for music. Be careful as this entire industry is shady IMO. The apps are all mostly interested in your personal info it seems to me. Many of the companies make it hard to research as to where exactly they are located and who controls them.
So, obviously, the songwriting and sheet music goal here is to satisfy everyone. I want to deliver a consistent semi-pro level of music quality to all users but it's a tough nut to crack. The reason is the cross-platform tech issues.
Besides the three major software operating systems there are MANY different kinds of hardware devices that people use to listen to their music today.
Right now my files sound pretty good on Windows desktop computers even with the most basic speakers. But only if the installed programs are relatively up to date. Example: I have an old Win7 machine that is rock solid dependable and I use it for certain stuff. But the old Windows Media Player version on the harddrive can't handle high res Mp4 video files well.
Higher quality cellphones get you the second pathway to deliver hi-fi signals via the headphone/earbud speaker system. Cheap phones will deliver the same poor signal that goes to the cheap built in speaker. Also remember that many phones today still have a mono speaker system and not a stereo speaker system. Also every cellphone manufacturer has their own frequently inferior software compression architecture for protecting the tiny speaker system inside the phone.
So, for songwriters and music creators it can become a nasty black box problem to successfully interact with all of these different devices. All I can recommend for music lovers is trial & error experiments. Let me crystallize the main issue: I can't deliver uncompressed bible song sound files to you. The only format in wide use that does that is the .wav files and they are awkward and huge. (There is a new format .flac that uses compression but doesn't suffer the ill effects of compression supposedly -- it's not in wide use yet so let's wait and see what happens).
What this means is that sound files go out from me with some form of compression and by the time they reach your ears they have been compressed a second time and maybe even a third or fourth time. And the multiple layers of compression generally create audio weirdness.
Example: If you go to YouTube and play my video files in your phone you might be hearing 4+ layers of compression going on!
1) My initial recording/exporting software compression
2) YouTube software compression algo
3) Your internal phone circuitry compression
4) Any media player compression from software downloaded and installed on your phone
5) #4 is compounded if you have the media player equalizer feature activated
So -- that is to say -- my lounge pop original music files will generally sound mediocre or worse on built-in cellphone speakers. There are ways to solve the issues but it takes $$$. I am on a tight budget and have no money for the studio production equipment required for awesome media delivery thru the cellphone gauntlet. My files do look pretty good on the modern phone screens though.
But I was just reading an interesting story: Apparently people who watch videos are extremely sensitive to the soundtrack quality in the video! So, believe me, I am seeking solutions to this problem but I am afraid it will take time and money to solve the issue for all listeners.
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