Jumping on the digital sheet music bandwagon

Cassia

Hey everyone. After so much deliberation, I finally decided to get an iPad and pencil so I can start switching to digital scores. I have a lot of sheet music, including some precious books that my last piano teacher, 20+ years ago, made extensive notes in that I very much want to preserve (he had a talent for fingering and breaking down difficult passages). So my big project coming up is to digitize all my paper music. I found some instructions to build a book scanner that I’m going to give a try so that I can get the best quality scans without breaking the binding on some of my more unruly books (looking at you, Beethoven sonatas). The instructions are here for anyone else who may be interested: https://www.instructables.com/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/

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? Is there anything you wish you had known when you first started converting? Any advice or tips you want to share?

twocats

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!

Animisha

I never converted (that is, I used digital from the start), but I have organised my sheet music in folders and subfolders: Classical, First half 20th century, Contemporary, Pop, Film, Collections. Within each folder, there are sub-folders, for instance Classical starts with Attwood, Bach JCF, Bach JS, Bach-Busoni, Beethoven etc. Then within those folders, there can be even more folders, for instance Bach JS has Bach Inventions, Bach Notenbuch, Bach Preludes.
I am truly pleased with my system. 😊

Cassia

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.

ShiroKuro

I use forScore so in that you can enter meta data, including title, composer, difficulty level. So I enter that info. Then forScore lets you search by title or composer (and probably other things as well but those are the ones I use).

Since all apps should facilitate word searches, choosing good file titles and entering meta-data will be the most important thing you can do.

For books, I make bookmarks to jump to specific pieces. I also will make individual PDFs of pieces that I want to keep as repertoire pieces, rather than leaving them inside a multiple page PDF of a book.

For things I’m actively working on or playing, I make playlists. I have an “in progress” playlist and a few different repertoire lists.

pseudonym58

The only thing I would suggest is to keep in mind that imaging technologies tend to be somewhat ephemeral, and ultimately the copy that is most easily retrievable 25 years from now might be the paper. If at all possible, save the originals!

Pallas

My file names are composer's last name (or Various, if appropriate) and the name of the work, then like twocats says, I fill in the metadata to sort them a number of ways, and add bookmarks and playlists. When I sit down to practice, I click the playlist, and don't have to go searching through scores.

Animisha

Pallas When I sit down to practice, I click the playlist, and don't have to go searching through scores.

I make a pdf "book" with the music that I practise. I also write down my teacher's feedback in that book, using Open Office Writer that I convert to pdf. Then I "glue" the book together in Preview (app in Mac).

thepianoplayer416

Besides the name of the composers in alphabetical order, I also have file folders like "Folk Songs", "Jazz n Blues", "Pop", "Classical", "Easy Piano".

Pallas

Animisha That sounds very handy.

Animisha

Pallas

Yes it is! Also, I really enjoy making the book. 🙂

ZigZagStory

+1 for forscore.
After my pencil broke (and can’t be fixed) , I recommend using a case that has a pencil holder.
I scanned a few past scores , and for most cases I downloaded the score again and use it without my notes and fingering.
Must say - I enjoy it so much that I’m not considering going back to paper.

Cassia

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!

twocats

Cassia that looks like an awesome setup!

Sgisela

@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

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.