Digital score with Bluetooth pedal

It's worth mentioning that there is a huge library of scores on IMSLP, including critical editions such as the Bärenreiter Neue Mozart Ausgabe. There's also a growing number of scans of first editions and composers' manuscripts.

I've cropped thousands of pages with ForScore: it's no big deal. I've set up a gesture (press and hold with three fingers) which brings me directly to the crop screen. ForScore immediately and automatically crops away any empty margins. It's usually fine like this, but if I want, I can adjust it manually. Staying in the crop function, I go through the score and crop each page in turn, then save the whole piece. It's a matter of seconds for each page.

I was considering going digital but I already invested a lot into paper sheet music. If I have Henle books do I have to buy the scores again digitally?

I have a very old tablet but I doubt it will be good enough for reading sheet music. For personal reasons I have a deep dislike of Apple products (no offense to the fanboys ) and I'd like to know if anyone has some different tablet suggestions for that purpose.

BartK I'm not a fan of Apple either, but I do have an Ipad Pro. The only thing I use it for is ForScore. If Android supported it, I would have probably got a Samsung tablet. I recall reading thought that the Samsung has an aspect ratio that wasn't ideal vs the Ipad. That what was a while back and could certainly be different now. Even so, if I got Android instead of Ipad, the tablet would only be used to read music.

Note, you can run pianoteq on an Ipad and I've played with that from time to time, but not consistently to say it's a use case for my Ipad.

BartK I am using a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 + with Mobilesheets, and very satisfied with it. Especially since playing in a Big Band with lots of music and some of the songs having 8-10 sheets of music. (This was the reason I started using a tablet). I use a Moukey bluetooth pedal with some delay set up, so I don't accidentally turn 2 pages in a row.

I use a Samsung tablet and Mobilesheets.

Wouldn't be without it.

I can find stuff instantly rather than fanning through a pile of paper, "I know it's in here somewhere" flip flip flip...

My wife appreciates the lack of piles of paper on and around my piano.

When I did my little Christmas concert at the dementia home I just carried my tablet along with me and had "everything".

What's not to like?

It occurs to me that i took a picture of my tablet on my piano the other day for someone else who asked what it looks ike.

Here's the photo.

Gosh, it actually worked.

I had an old smaller iPad with ForScore on it. I had printer scanned all my lesson music onto it, but it was too small for me to read. A couple of weeks ago I bought a refurbished 2018 iPad Pro 12.9, a Donner wireless page turner foot pedal and a 2nd generation generic pencil. I'm loving this setup. I got everything from my old iPad moved to the new one without a problem. I have taken it to lessons the last two weeks. Because sometimes I forgot things my teacher has said, I asked her if it was all right to tape our lessons. So now I use Voice Memos for that. You do need to remember to turn that off when you are done with your lesson (ha, ha). Currently I am taking my physical music just in case. The evening of my lesson I do take notes from the Voice Memo recording. I really like being able to do this.
I'm still getting used to using the foot pedal. For most pieces I leave it on turning the whole page, but one piece with 6 pages I use the half page turning. As I was having trouble remembering just when to hit the pedal I put a marking in the margin just when I need to pedal. You also have to remember to hit the page turner pedal and not the piano pedal (Ha, Ha). I did that once or twice when I first started using it.
I also put the name of the book that the piece of music came from into ForScore under Reference. I have the Composer, Genre and under Label I have the date I finished the piece with my teacher plus the Key of the piece. I also have all scanned music saved to the cloud as well as the full backup of ForScore.
There's this one piece "Love Theme" by Catherine Rollin that has D.S. al Coda and then to Coda. So in ForScore I copied the pages and then deleted the parts I didn't need. So now I use the full page turning without having to go back and just see what I need to play. Pretty Cool!

I also switched to digital scores many years ago. Now I use an iPad Pro and a bluetooth foot pedal. The rare times I play something from a paper score, I find myself tapping the pedal and wondering why the page doesn't turn!

I still often buy paper scores and make PDFs of the pieces I want, although depending on the piece, I sometimes just by the digital version.

If money and tech were no object (tho they both are) I would love to have a bi-fold digital score reader so I could see two pages at once.

Mobilesheets has face gestures (though I've never used them) and works on Ipads.

BartK If I have Henle books do I have to buy the scores again digitally?

What I do with my books is I use a scanning app on my phone or tablet to take a picture of the sheet music and then convert it into a pdf. Forscore and Newzik both have a scanner built in as well… not sure about MobileSheets. But I find the dedicated scanner apps give me better results with not much more work. Anyways, I don’t scan the whole book, just any pieces I’m going to work on. But over time, the library builds up!

twocats I’m not sure how it works in Forscore, but in Newzik, when you want to add a new piece, you get 3 options: import a file, scan a piece, or use a template. So it’s kind of built into the ‘add piece’ functionality. it’s easy enough to use, but I find the dedicated scanner apps are just a little more flexible.

ShiroKuro If money and tech were no object (tho they both are) I would love to have a bi-fold digital score reader so I could see two pages at once.

twocats I actually looked into this, but it costs too much and also then you have to charge two devices and it just seems like a lot of hassle

In 2020, when we cancelled our summer holiday because of Covid, I used some of the money we saved to buy a second iPad. Since then I've played many concerts using both iPads with ForScore. It's no hassle and the dual page feature in ForScore is very robust: I've never had a problem in a concert.

Here's what it looks like:

MRC I would love that! I just can’t justify the expense, not right now any way.