Digital sheet music for sight reading

rogerch · 2024-07-10T02:21:04+00:00

I've been investigating switching to my iPad for sight reading sheet music. Up until now I have been ordering printed copies of various anthologies of easy...

rogerch

Hey Gombessa I'm not worried about giant anthologies on paper. I'm interested in giant digital anthologies! The issue is that the ones I've found are available for Kindle, Apple Books, or the Hal Leonard web site in proprietary formats. This defeats my idea of importing PDFs into newzik unless I do as @WieWaldi suggests and take screenshots. Screenshots make sense for a piece I'm going to learn to performance level but are less attractive for a piece I'm going to play once.

For now I'm using the Kindle app on my iPad for a digital anthology and so far so good!

Your dedicated iPad setup looks really cool! I saw your other thread about the printed parts you used to accomplish that. Awesome! I'm probably going to just continue to stick my iPad on the music desk but we will see... 🙂

Gombessa

rogerch For now I'm using the Kindle app on my iPad for a digital anthology and so far so good!

I think you have the best solution. You practice site reading enough to simply switch to a different app as needed, and most PDF reader apps like Kindle will support Bluetooth page turners as well.

I also suspect that if there are pieces out of anthologies that you want to keep, he will be able to find ways to convert the proprietary formats to PDF, rather than reliance screenshots. I previously screenshotted sheets, and in some cases, had to stitch them together by line, and it can be a huge pain, not worth the time If you have to do it more than once or twice! I think using different apps in this case makes perfect sense.

rogerch

My new AirTurn DUO BT-500 came today. Wow, this is great! Even on the first piece I played I was able to sight read a piece smoothly across a page turn. Not every page turn, but at least one of them. With a bit of practice this is going to be amazing!

It looks like Struggling with Sheet Music is in the past for me!

WieWaldi

rogerch My new AirTurn DUO BT-500 came today.

Congratulations. I never played with tablet, nor did I use a pedal to turn pages. But I always wondered how this works, because you can turn forward or backward...
I see yours has 2 pedals (problem solved), and a few buttons (but what are they for?).

I was always thinking a single page-turner pedal should be enough. The only thing you need to do as preparation, is to tell the sheet-music app in which order the pages are turned. Like a programmed list, including all the back-turns for repeated sections.
Can you tell if a typical app like newzik is able to do so?
In this case, I would think about mis-using my center pedal as page turner via midi-sigal, but would still be able to use the other 2 pedals as intended.

Gombessa

WieWaldi But I always wondered how this works, because you can turn forward or backward...

Most Bluetooth page turners are just seen by the device as wireless Bluetooth keyboards or mice. In fact, some actually just send keystrokes, and you tell your reader app to turn the page on seeing the mapped key—MobileSheets works this way. In fact, I don’t even bother with a dedicated pedal device. I just stick a BT keyboard under the piano and assign keys like spacebar to turn pages, and I press the keys with my foot.

In my opinion, you do need previous page as well as forward, as mis-turns do occasionally happen, but more importantly it’s so convenient and effortless to turn pages via foot that it’s just easier to go back and forth that way. And if the page turner has extra buttons, it is pretty helpful to have other functions like return to index or return to the first page of the piece as well, but definitely not as critical as next and previous page.

rogerch

WieWaldi Congratulations. I never played with tablet, nor did I use a pedal to turn pages. But I always wondered how this works, because you can turn forward or backward...
I see yours has 2 pedals (problem solved), and a few buttons (but what are they for?).

The panel with the buttons in the middle can be detached. This enables its use as a slide advancer for a presentation. The buttons are left, right, up, down, although they can be programmed to send other keystrokes. The device has lots of different modes and an app for programming it. Out of the box it works great. I think it's acting as a keyboard and sending left and right arrows or page up and page down. Since it worked the first time I haven't dug deeply into what it's actually doing other than to download the app and see that there's all kinds of fancy stuff that it does that I hope to never need.

I was always thinking a single page-turner pedal should be enough. The only thing you need to do as preparation, is to tell the sheet-music app in which order the pages are turned. Like a programmed list, including all the back-turns for repeated sections.
Can you tell if a typical app like newzik is able to do so?
In this case, I would think about mis-using my center pedal as page turner via midi-sigal, but would still be able to use the other 2 pedals as intended.

For a performance I think it makes sense to replicate sections that repeat to avoid having to hit the backwards pedals a few times to get back to the beginning of the repeated section. I have some experience assembling PDFs in various orders but never with sheet music. I would think any PDF editor could do this, and likely at least some of the sheet music apps as well. With sheet music apps and MusicXML I would expect even more control over sheet music editing, but I have no personal experience with MusicXML.

I downloaded newzik and played a piece with it but haven't explored its capabilities. Since most of my playing is either improvising or sight reading it may be a while before I need to figure out how to stitch together a piece with repeats for performance... and since I'm a memorizer I may never really need to do that either.

WieWaldi

Gombessa Was just wondering if conventional sheet music software can be programmed like:
page 1 2 1 2 3

Your approach with space bar is nice 👍, but all other keys are quite small to hit for turning back.
(Hit with a toe)

FrankCox

WieWaldi Was just wondering if conventional sheet music software can be programmed like:
page 1 2 1 2 3

Yes.

I use Mobilesheets and you can tell it that the "next page" is any page number you want it to be.

Gombessa

WieWaldi Was just wondering if conventional sheet music software can be programmed like:
page 1 2 1 2 3

Yep as Frank mentions, there are several ways to do this, including adjusting the page turn behavior or changing the pagination to go back and forth (presumably for repeats and codas, right?).

Your approach with space bar is nice 👍, but all other keys are quite small to hit for turning back.
(Hit with a toe)

I use blocks of keys for this. MobileSheets lets you assign multiple triggers for a single function, so while spacebar is big enough for a foot, I have most of the numpad keys mapped to “go back”, and a ctrl/alt/fn block mapped to “skip to beginning of piece.” There’s a debounce feature to address multiple simultaneous keypresses too 🙂

twocats

Oh no, I thought I could just buy digital music with Henle credits from now on, but two of the chamber works that I want to work on aren't available on Henle or any other digital format except IMSLP, where there aren't good scans available. I had to purchase paper scores and have them on the way.

Now to decide whether to scan them using my flatbed scanner to get the cleanest images or just take photos to make the PDF using my iPad. I'll probably use the scanner, will need to rotate some pages to get them the cleanest but it looks like I can do this in forScore. I am so spoiled by having the perfectly clean digital edition!

rogerch

twocats Oh no, I thought I could just buy digital music with Henle credits from now on, but two of the chamber works that I want to work on aren't available on Henle or any other digital format except IMSLP, where there aren't good scans available. I had to purchase paper scores and have them on the way.

Now to decide whether to scan them using my flatbed scanner to get the cleanest images or just take photos to make the PDF using my iPad. I'll probably use the scanner, will need to rotate some pages to get them the cleanest but it looks like I can do this in forScore. I am so spoiled by having the perfectly clean digital edition!

Darn! This is consistent with my experience so far. Digital music seems awesome, until you can't actually get the music you want without buying paper and scanning. Maybe someday anything you would want to play will be available digitally for a reasonable price...

ShiroKuro

When I first learned about newzik, I remember thinking that it sounded expensive, but now I don't know why. Does it require a subscription (maybe that's why)?

Nevertheless, I use forScore, it has a one-time fee and then you can use any PDF you have. IMSLP, for one thing, but also in the future you might want to digitize the anthologies you already have (you could do it yourself, but I bet a copy shop would do that for you for a small fee).

Anyway it sounds like you're already settled on newzik, but definitely give forScore a look!

rogerch

ShiroKuro When I first learned about newzik, I remember thinking that it sounded expensive, but now I don't know why. Does it require a subscription (maybe that's why)?

Nevertheless, I use forScore, it has a one-time fee and then you can use any PDF you have. IMSLP, for one thing, but also in the future you might want to digitize the anthologies you already have (you could do it yourself, but I bet a copy shop would do that for you for a small fee).

Anyway it sounds like you're already settled on newzik, but definitely give forScore a look!

Thanks for sharing your experience! I haven't paid anything for newzik so far, in fact I have barely used it. I'm sight reading from an anthology using the kindle app!

It looks like I have a lot to figure out when it comes to obtaining and managing scores. I really appreciate your input!

ShiroKuro

Ahh, if you're not committed yet, definitely try forScore. It's hugely popular with musicians.

You can add buttons to a score to jump to a coda or jump back a page for a repeat. Writing on the score works really well. You can then print your marked up score or save it as a pdf with markups, should you want to share with someone. You can make setlists, you can add composer info, difficulty info...

And if you have a multiple page item, like a 50 page book or exercises or an anthology, you can create bookmarks to jump to the spot you left off.

There are probably tons of other tools, but these are the ones I use regularly.

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