Related story: I recently found a set of 6 volumes of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos at a great price. The first book was full of ball pen marking: fingering, dynamics, counting, even dates of assignment on each piece. Luckily, book 2 and the rest are as clean as new 
How do you annotate on sheet music?
Pencil markings.
Next sticky notes so you can remove them later.
Photocopy or scan the sheet into the computer and print a secondary copy. Leave the original unmarked and put all the markings on the copy.
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Scan it.
Edit it in software.*
Print it.
*) You can use photoshop, gimp, or my favorite:
An office suite (e.g. Libre office draw), drag the scanned file onto an empty page. Best practice is to disable "moving" and "resizing" option of the picture-element of the scanned page. This saves you a lot of trouble when misclicking.
Then add rectangles with white filling and line style to hide something. Feel free to add text, and whatever you like.
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iternabe The first book was full of ball pen marking: fingering, dynamics, counting, even dates of assignment on each piece.
In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Harry got an old, used and shaggy looking copy of the "Advanced Potion-Making" book. On the first page, someone wrote "Property of the Half Blood Prince". The book was full of hand-written scribbles on every page. But those scribbles helped Harry to be better in potion brewing than anyone else in his course - including Hermione.
This works much better. Although now I can see why the "Ped ❊" notation is more cumbersome than the bracket style.
Sort of off topic somewhat, but I saw this reference ages ago on the question of pristine versus marked up scores. This belongs to Yehudi Menuhin.
I also found this article where a guitarist is advising TO mark up one's score, but he also suggests making copies. I do often make one or more copies of what I'm working on. (I have a scanner because of my work so I'm spoiled.)
You could try using erasable colored pencil (Crayola sells them) to mark the wedges (which are what you want to keep). Use a bright or contrasting color to make the wedges stand out from the connecting lines (which you will be ignoring). After you're finished with the piece, erase the colored pencil marks. I use colored pencils all the time on my scores. They erase very well.
Stub You could try using erasable colored pencil (Crayola sells them) to mark the wedges (which are what you want to keep). Use a bright or contrasting color to make the wedges stand out from the connecting lines (which you will be ignoring).
That is a great idea!
I change the fingering markings so often from the printed ones that my brain now ignores any fingerings that aren't in my handwriting. So sometimes even if I'm doing the same fingerings as marked, I write over it in forScore. Same with pedal markings, the original ones are printed so lightly that I hardly notice them but if I want to pay attention I write P and X over them. Colored pencils might be able to retrain your brain to pay attention to only your markings.
If you do use forScore, there’s white in the annotation tools which you can use like white out. And because it’s digital, it’s erasable.
When I was still playing from paper, I used to always make a copy of the score and play from the copy so that I kept a clean version, and wrote only on the copy. (With multi-page scores, I had a system of taping them together like a booklet so the copies also served that purpose.)
These days I have my scores almost exclusively on the iPad though.
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twocats There is?!
Yes! I can't remember if it comes up as a pre-set option or you have to pick on of the pens and change the color. I just did a quick and dirty google image search, so these might help:
See where it says "hue"? If you don't already have a white option, I think you can change it here:
This is another photo from google image search, you can see that thick white pen mark, to the right of black? That's it. And you can change the line thickness (size) etc. I have used the white pen for all kinds of things, including to correct scores, cover up annotation I don't want to see etc. Oh and also for paper scores that I once wrote on and then made a PDF without erasing my earlier markings like fingerings etc, I use the white when I want to update fingerings etc.
I will look for it next time I'm at the piano!
twocats awesome! I’m pretty sure forScore has tons of functions I don’t know exist. Well, and probably some that only work with newer iPads or tablets maybe. I think my iPad Pro is from 2021 and I think I’m using the original Apple Pencil (I’m not exactly sure though, my memory is rubbish). But my piano teacher has a newer one, and I think he has the newest Apple Pencil, and I see him do stuff with forScore that I can’t do…
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ShiroKuro I think my iPad Pro is from 2021 and I think I’m using the original Apple Pencil
That would be Pencil 2! My iPad Pro is a 2018. I also have the first big iPad Pro from 2015 that uses the original Pencil, but the writing experience is pretty awful. The upgrade to get Pencil 2 was worth it.
I know the newest Pencil Pro has some additional features. I think one of the useful ones is to squeeze the barrel to switch between writing and erasing, which would be very convenient.
I have learned many useful tips for forScore here! Sgisela told me about the split screen feature for learning transitions across page turns. I should really sit down and write a post about backups because last week I figured out how (I think) it all works and how to back stuff up to Dropbox to avoid losing your notations if your iPad gets damaged or stolen.
twocats I think one of the useful ones is to squeeze the barrel to switch between writing and erasing, which would be very convenient.
Yes, that's what my teacher has!! I want it!!! But now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I have the Pencil 2, and it's fine.
I should really sit down and write a post about backups because last week I figured out how (I think) it all works and how to back stuff up to Dropbox to avoid losing your notations if your iPad gets damaged or stolen.
Oh yes please!! I need to do that! Yikes!!!
