Digital sheet music options

stickyfiddle · February 2023

As titled. Our piano player has a shitload of sheet music on paper which is a *big* challenge for playing live outside when it's windy.

What are the options for an ipad (or similar) -based solution. Auto scroll? Bluetooth page turner? Something that can rearrange the whole thing so she doesn't need to worry about repeat signs etc?

How about medleys? Is there anything that would let me rearrange the score for e.g. the first half of song A then a couple of choruses of song B then back to finish with the bank end of song A?

mrkb · February 2023

She should probably just learn the piano properly. You don’t see guitarist staring at the tab when playing

and whats wrong with those classical orchestra type players staring at sheet music all the time…..thought they were professional.

IGMC

stickyfiddle · February 2023

mrkb said:

She should probably just learn the piano properly. You don’t see guitarist staring at the tab when playing

and whats wrong with those classical orchestra type players staring at sheet music all the time…..thought they were professional.

IGMC

I have suggested it (mostly lightheartedly..) but she's 1) classically trained, 2) really really good, which makes me want to play nice

Roland · February 2023

There are a couple of iPad apps which do this. My experience is limited to SetList Maker. I think OnSong does something similar. There are two ways of scrolling. You can use a Bluetooth or cable attached pedal. I use an Airturn. Some apps also offer autoscroll, where you can set scroll rates.

ArchtopDave · February 2023

The App forScore allows you to load your own scores, and build your own set lists. It's also bluetooth enabled, so you can use a bluetooth page turning device such as an AirTurn. If you want to use Musicnotes for music, then there's a direct download option in forScore.

maltingsaudio · February 2023

I use on song and there is an import pdf function (which I’ve never used) and you can start the song and it just scrolls through to the end. There is also a foot switch option

stickyfiddle · February 2023

Cheers chaps. I’ll have a look at all of thes

Blueingreen · February 2023

I use an iPad with Piascore (free app) on a swing band gig and really like it. It can be used with autoscroll but I never have. Mainly because with effects I don't want one more thing for my foot to be doing.

I set it up with two pages on landscape and to go forward one page with a touch. I can usually find a break in most charts where I can flick to the next page. Plus there are other tricks: scope for writing on the charts is limited but useful. One way or another I can usually find a way of not needing autoscroll even if it's just a place where the guitar dropping out for half a bar won't be noticed.

For me it's a big improvement on paper because everything is just so much easier to organise once you've loaded your charts on. It's easy to create separate set lists for different gigs, rehearsals, practicing etc. It's lighter and easy to load everything onto another machine to take as back up.

(Before anybody has a go about why I'm too lazy to memorise everything, here's a not entirely untypical 4 bar passage from one chart:

lA7 Adim A7 Em7b5lC9 Bb9 A7b9 /lDm6 Edim Bb7 A7l Dm7/Gm7 C7l

Anybody who can memorize 40 songs worth of this sort of stuff for instant, mistake-free recall has my utmost respect. I certainly can't.)

fretmeister · February 2023

Forescore app and a cheap Bluetooth foot pedal page turner.

Forescore will import scans and even knows of a page is portrait so landscape so the foot press won’t just flip a page but will move to the bottom of a page first before the next one.

I moved to this set up a while ago and it’s great.

thecolourbox · February 2023

I bought an Onyx Boox Max Carta 13" ereader for this purpose (piano music) as the normal iPad is too small and the big one is too expensive for a pdf reader. Also i imagined that an ereader screen would be easier on my eyes.

It's not been great. Can't page turn without touching it with a specific pen, nowhere clarifies if normal Bluetooth page turners work with the reader app (one i asked on Amazon about said it would not work), but most importantly the power button is on the bottom of the reader so it just puts itself to sleep or switches off when stood on a music stand.

Very infuriating process trying to find a decent solution to this

mike257 · February 2023

I'm on an orchestral tour at the mo and almost all of them are on iPads with Bluetooth page turners on the floor. Seems to be the most elegant solution.

Roland · February 2023

The nice thing about an iPad, compared with a specialist piece of equipment, is availability. It’s relatively easy to borrow one if yours gets broken.

flying_pie · February 2023

Why not just use a folder with poly pockets?

TheBigDipper · February 2023

flying_pie said:

Why not just use a folder with poly pockets?

I used to, and of course it works fine on the day. But as I developed material, changed set order, added new songs, altered arrangements and just did things on the fly it becomes a pain to be continually changing the contents of your A4 folder. And if you're sharing with others so they can work from the same songsheet, it's easier to email the softcopy to them and let them get on with it. And softcopy inside something like OnSong (which is what I use) is easy to backup and run on more than one device.

Roland · February 2023

flying_pie said:

Why not just use a folder with poly pockets?

individual sheets blow away, or slips off the music stand, and sheets get out of sequence. Folders burst, and are too heavy for light stands.

thecolourbox · February 2023

For my piano playing wedding stuff i use a folder with wallets designed for sheet music but it is a huge faff swapping them in and out every time. That said, it would probably also be a huge faff trying to quickly switch between pdfs while I'm playing (I don't tend to use a rigid setlist for receptions and breakfasts) so there's faff there as well whether it's iPad or ereade

stickyfiddle · February 2023

flying_pie said:

Why not just use a folder with poly pockets?

This is the interim step she's just implemented. I still think she'll go digital for now but I don't want to push too hard - she's not a techie person and I'd much rather she focusses any energy for digital shit on getting to grips with her new synth!

flying_pie · February 2023

Roland said:

flying_pie said:

Why not just use a folder with poly pockets?

individual sheets blow away, or slips off the music stand, and sheets get out of sequence. Folders burst, and are too heavy for light stands.

Yep. And ipads run out of charge, or crash, or the sun makes it impossible to read the screen....

There's a compromise with every solution suggested. It would definitely be easier just to learn the songs without the sheet music

Blueingreen · February 2023

flying_pie said:

Roland said:

flying_pie said:

Why not just use a folder with poly pockets?

individual sheets blow away, or slips off the music stand, and sheets get out of sequence. Folders burst, and are too heavy for light stands.

Yep. And ipads run out of charge, or crash, or the sun makes it impossible to read the screen....

There's a compromise with every solution suggested. It would definitely be easier just to learn the songs without the sheet music

This argument gets made every time this subject comes up. It depends how easy the set is to remember. Nobody would try to memorise the book for the swing band gig I play.

(Not strictly true. I tried it for the first gig. I put in a silly amount of time trying to memorise everything and just about got away with it. By the time the second gig came along I realised I'd forgotten about 3/4 of it and I'd have to go back and more or less do it all over again. That was when I accepted I was just going to have to learn to play from a chart.)

And it's easy to bring a back up iPad to every gig so crashing is not a problem.

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