Cassia My question for anyone who has converted to digital: how do you organize your music library? What naming convention for the files have you found works best for you?

forScore automatically sorts by composer, although there's probably other options. When I import a new PDF only the title is populated from the title of the file. I usually update the title to the name of the piece and then populate the composer field in the metadata. I think forScore may re-name the file to whatever's in the title field.

If I have multiple movements in the piece I use bookmarks. It looks like if you create a PDF of a collection of pieces (e.g. your Chopin book) that includes a table of contents, you can tell it to import the TOC and it'll try to be smart and create bookmarks for all the individual pieces. By default each bookmark is listed like a separate piece under the composer. If that works out it could be a good way to manage your catalogue.

Seems like you have a ton of work ahead of you!

      Thank you everyone!

      Animisha Oooh, folders! That keeps things neat and tidy, what a great idea!

      pseudonym58 Yes, I will definitely be keeping my paper scores, and honestly will probably still buy them. I very much prefer physical media, but the promise of easier page turns and the ability to mark and unmark scores convinced me to switch to digital in this case.

      twocats I do have a ton of work ahead of me! But winter is coming and this will be a great project for rainy, gloomy days.

      Yamaha C5X

            I've been working on perfecting my scanning setup over the past few days and think I'm pretty dialed in now. Using the instructions from my link above, I built a book cradle out of a cardboard box and duct tape, bought a piece of glass from the hardware store, and turned a music stand into a makeshift tripod. Then I tried several different ways of scanning the music: the scan function on my iPad's camera; forScore; and an app called QuickScan. They all function pretty much the same, all only let you scan 24 pages in one go, and all produce similar quality PDFs. However, it is much easier to rearrange pages in forScore, so going forward, that is what I will use.

            As far as organizing files, I am saving everything to the cloud and then importing them to forScore. In the cloud, I’m using folders and tags, and files are named with the title of the piece and then opus # if applicable. So for example “Ballade No. 1, Op. 23” is tagged Chopin, saved in my Frederic Chopin folder. In forScore, I’ve filled in all the relevant metadata.

            Here’s a pic of my scanning setup. Now to get busy scanning!

            Yamaha C5X

              @Cassia - I would recommend using a dedicated app for your sheet music. ForScore is very popular. I use Newzik and I like it a lot. These apps are really designed with musicians in mind, so they’re pretty intuitive to use.

              In Newzik, you can set up different lists and things, so you can have different organizational schemes. You can bookmark music. But you can also just have your main library list and use the search function to quickly find things. It is much, much easier than leafing through paper books.

              My piano teacher has different lists/folders for all of his students, so he can just go to a given list and pull up the pieces a particular student is working on.

                Cassia that looks like an awesome setup!

                  Sgisela I am using forScore but I’ve been experimenting with the best ways to scan my music. I had come to the conclusion that all methods result in the same quality, but after scanning more, I think the Quikscan app is producing the best results. So I’m now using that, saving my files to the cloud where everything is nice and organized, then importing them to forScore.

                  Eventually, I would like to build a sturdier book cradle and get a proper tripod, but until then, my makeshift setup is working quite well.

                  Yamaha C5X

                    5 months later

                    Just installed forScore and it is quite nice! Still consider myself a paper person, though. But I do like options.

                    After downloading some scanned scores, I realized the need to straighten the page inside PDF. Luckily Adobe Acrobat Pro now has this feature. There was also one PDF that scanned double-page and needed to be split to single pages (for easier reading on iPad). I found an online tool at sejda.com that did the split job wonderfully.

                      iternabe when you crop the page in forScore you can drag the corners to line up with the score which will rotate or straighten out any perspective issues (like if you took a photo of a page at an angle). It's pretty great!

                          twocats That's neat! Thanks!

                          In my case, the downloaded PDF is a book of 200 pages. Acrobat Pro straightened all of them after a single click and a long wait 😉

                              iternabe Acrobat Pro straightened all of them after a single click

                              Whoa!! Very cool.

                                pseudonym58
                                I recently recycled a copy of the Schirmer edition of complete Mozart Sonatas because it was falling apart.

                                This was a book of scores my father used in his studies as a teenager pre-WW2. It was cool to see the start and end dates for the study of each sonata and his teacher's comments penciled in. It is unclear if I would have had that 90 years later had he used a tablet and digital format.

                                  a month later

                                  Reviving an old thread to report something new I learned about Forscore. I was watching a livestream from Tonebase about music technology and learned that Forscore supports tabs. I never knew this before. You can have more than one score open at the same time and they appear as tabs across the top.

                                  I use collections for sightreading, like the complete Scarlatti Sonatas - just 500+ of them. But I always reopened it each time, and then had to scroll through to find the next one to read. Or make a bookmark each time which is a pain. But with the tabs I can just open it and leave it open, and when i open the tab it is right where I left off.

                                  I'm studying Bach's Italian Concerto. I have two editions, a Henle and the one by Roslyn Tureck. I have them both in Forscore, but it was always a pain to look back and forth. But with the tabs, it is super simple - just open them both, and with the tabs I can jump back and forth and compare fingerings.

                                  That is just awesome - makes my practice so much easier - surely the other programs do something similar.

                                    Sam But with the tabs, it is super simple - just open them both, and with the tabs I can jump back and forth and compare fingerings.

                                    Whoa, I need to start using that! I created a "setlist" to manage the pieces that I'm working on, but tabs would be much better.

                                    I was actually thinking the other day that we need a thread dedicated to forScore tips and tricks. It has so many features and I'm sure most of us only know a very tiny fraction of that. @Sgisela shared how to do split screen which has been really helpful for learning transitions across page turns, and recently @ShiroKuro told me about the "whiteout" pen. If you don't start one, I'll create one later.

                                        Sam thanks for sharing. I use Mobilesheets and have a similar problem with a method book. Everytime I open it, I have to find where I was. I was using bookmarks but they're clunky. After seeing your post I've searched if it has tabs as well. And it doesn't... but it has a button to go last seen page and also a setting to open last seen page when opening the piece. That will be much easier. Thanks.

                                          twocats Whoa, I need to start using that! I created a "setlist" to manage the pieces that I'm working on, but tabs would be much better.

                                          I tried this out, it was a little unintuitive until I figured out what was happening. Each tab is like a web browser tab, and when you're on a tab and open up a new piece, it opens it up in that tab, overwriting whatever was previously there.

                                          So the trick is to click on "new tab", which will open up a new tab with the same piece as the previous tab (a duplicate), but you can open up the next piece while that tab is selected and then you'll have two tabs with two different pieces.

                                              twocats I use Newzik, which I think has slightly different functionality than ForScore. But I thought I’d mention that it has something that may be helpful to you for your chamber music work (if the rest of the ensemble is into tablets). That is that you can have your score continuously synced with other users, and you can designate layers as ‘shared’ or ‘private,’ so that shared layers can be visible/shared by all, with immediate updates for any score markings. I am not sure if Forscore has this option.

                                              This is also a useful tool for teaching/learning (your teacher can mark up your score in specific layers). My teacher doesn’t do this (I write things in myself during class), but I think it’s potentially quite valuable.

                                              Newzik can also transpose scores (and my guess is that Forscore can do this, too). The transpositions are not always the most polished things (could use an editor), but the ones I’ve done have been usable.

                                              Random feature that I haven’t found particularly useful but that others may… or if not useful, you may find it to be a novelty. A couple years ago (I think), Newzik introduced this feature where it uses AI to convert your score into and audio version (with a piano sound). I’ve done this with a few pieces I’ve worked on, and there are some aspects that are quite impressive — it takes in the dynamic markings, tempo markings, and key signature, for instance, and if you adjust the metronome settings in the app, it will play it faster or slower. But it seems to just ignore some notes, it struggles quite a bit with rhythms, and has absolutely no capacity to deal with polyrhythms. And the outputs are pretty wooden. Anyways, I put a lot of effort into learning pieces, and they’re never perfectly learned. But they’re still better than the AI! (For now…)

                                                  @twocats I use the setlists feature a lot! I have setlists for "in progress pieces," "sightreading," "Christmas" etc.

                                                  I'll have to check out tabs...

                                                  Sgisela This is also a useful tool for teaching/learning (your teacher can mark up your score in specific layers). My teacher doesn’t do this (I write things in myself during class), but I think it’s potentially quite valuable.

                                                  Oh, I didn't realize that you don't use forScore! I don't think the sharing option would be very useful for me (for one thing, all the parts look different, I am the only person who sees everything and everyone else only sees their string line).

                                                  I do know that forScore has the option of multiple layers and while it is not currently useful to me, I could see it being useful in the future. Someone (was it Molly Gebrian?) said that she does a layer of technical notes, then a layer for interpretive text (sometimes all over the page), and maybe even a third layer for something else. If I participate in a masterclass I think I would want to do a separate layer to take notes.

                                                  I recently discovered the "highlighter" so that's already making my scores more interesting!

                                                      twocats I do use different layers — I could be better about it but try to have layers for things that are more ‘working notes’ that have things like how to move, pay attention to this note that I frequently mis-play, etc; vs things that I want to be always visible (fingerings, some additional dynamic/phrasing considerations). But I think you could organize things lots of different ways with layers, depending on your needs. I tend to mark things up a ton, so the layers can be helpful to organize things and not have the score feel perpetually super cluttered!

                                                      I believe that Newzik in its promotional material indicates that orchestras use the ‘synced/shared markings’ functionality, but I’m not sure exactly how this works, since as you say, everyone is working from a different score and only the conductor sees what everyone is playing…

                                                          Tabs in forScore is amazing! Thanks @Sam for the tip. It wasn't immediately obvious where to find the New Tab menu, but this will make practicing the same few pieces every day easier.