Digital sheet music for sight reading

rogerch

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 music, containing dozens or hundreds of pieces. The anthologies I've been using are from Hal Leonard or Alfred. Each day I sight read for between 10 and 20 minutes, which usually involves multiple pieces per day.

I was thinking I would buy digital copies of these anthologies and read them from my iPad. Going into this I was thinking of using a dedicated sheet music app such as newzik to store my digital scores. My thinking is a dedicated sheet music app should have great features for managing my annotations.

I've hit a snag though. I haven't found a way to obtain PDFs of Alfred or Hal Leonard anthologies. It looks like I can get them for Kindle and/or Apple Books, but then I can't use newzik.

It looks like I can get PDFs for individual pieces in at least some of the anthologies, but it's prohibitively expensive to pay two or three dollars or more for each piece I sight read for 5 minutes.

This leaves me thinking that I need to treat music for sight reading and music for learning pieces differently on the iPad. For sight reading I'll use the Kindle or Books app, depending on the available formats of the anthology I'm using. I don't annotate music that I sight read, so I probably don't need a dedicated sheet music app for sight reading.

For learning a piece I'll pay the money to get the PDF and import to newzik (or whatever app I settle on). Learning a piece takes weeks or months so paying a few dollars is no big deal. Before buying a piece I'll check IMSLP, especially for classical.

I'm looking for suggestions based on your experience with digital sheet music. What am I missing? Thank you!!!

JB_PT

I have found a lot of anthologies on IMSLP for sight reading. For me it’s just for fun so I haven’t been looking for low level stuff specifically - I can’t say how much easy stuff is there (or how easy you are looking for). On IMSLP have you noticed the row of tabs along the top when you are looking at a composer’s works? I didn’t see them for a long time! One option is ‘collections.’ So if you search a composer you like, you can review the collections and there might be some compilations that catch your eye. Some examples I downloaded are a couple anthologies of both French and German piano music, various children’s albums, short classics, classic keyboard music…

rogerch

JB_PT Thanks, this is really helpful!

thepianoplayer416

Over the years many including myself collected piles of repertoire books & sheet music. I still kerp some paper copies. The rest can be stored online on a cloud drive.

Music already on paper I wouldn’t pay to download a digital copy. I have a scanner to turn printed music into picture files. I can compile the pages into PDFs with Photoshop or another program.

WieWaldi

I can convert (any) ePaper into pdf by taking screenshots.

I have a windows PC and use the following software:

screenpresso Screenshot-tool that allows to select a custom frame on the screen. With a keyboard-shortcut you can repeat the same screen-selection. Most of the manual work is:
|: [Shift+Print], next page, repeat. :|
After that you save all screenshots into a folder and make a pdf with
NAPS2 Software for scanning and arranging pdfs.

On the hardware side I recommend to have a monitor with a big resolution. I have two 4k monitors and stack them on top of each other, so the total screen resolution is 3840 x 4320. And even with cropping away browser borders and empty space, it has plenty of resolution.
If you have only one monitor, I suggest to use it in portrait mode while making the sceenshots.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if you are violating copyright protection. But I think, if you don't share copies of the pdf with others, you might be in the gray zone and nothing bad happens.

lilypad

I've only purchased individual pieces from musicnotes in the past, but they've been advertising digital books. I'm not sure what format they're in. https://www.musicnotes.com/?cmpid=sem_roirevolution&gclid=Cj0KEQiAzNfDBRD2xKrO4pSnnOkBEiQAbzzeQaTvcs05vYER-PH9URm65VRR5w1xg2pFz5eUjpP6lnMaAiRk8P8HAQ

WieWaldi

lilypad It allows to transpose to any key => It might be a proprietary format, only to be used with their app, website or whatever. But you can print it, so it is not important what format they use. You can always print to pdf. ✔️

Btw, thank you for this site. I found the sight-reading books I already own. But unlike the kindle ePaper it is interactive and plays for you. Furthermore you can transpose the music to anything, giving you 12x more training material - in theory.

navindra

WieWaldi Indeed, MusicXML is amazing. I try to get every piece of digital sheet music that I buy in MusicXML format so I can get player functionality and easily edit or annotate the music.

On the sites that provide the key transposition feature you mention, the underlying music format is MusicXML but they try to hide and obfuscate it. However, since I'm buying the music, I feel OK with extracting the MusicXML as part of my purchase, even though it's a bit involved.

rogerch

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

Thanks for the tip about music notes! The digital book I looked at there was 10 pieces for $20, which is still not cost effective for sight reading. I ended up buying the kindle edition of 150 More of the Most Beautiful Songs Ever (Easy Piano) for $20. I played the first few pieces today using the kindle app on my iPad and it was much easier than dealing with paper sheet music. I ordered an AirTurn today and hopefully that will make things even better.

MusicXML sounds awesome! I would love to be able to transpose pieces I'm sight reading so that I get experience sight reading in more keys. I'll keep looking for anthologies in MusicXML format for sight reading.

I don't see myself converting from ePub to PDF for sight reading, but for a piece I'm learning for performance I would definitely do that! Thanks for the tip!

Again, thank you all for the tips and helping me along on my piano journey!

Gombessa

I'm a huge advocate of switching entirely to tablet if possible. I've done this for my own meager music library, and actually made the ultimate commitment - I've retired my music desk completely and just have the tablet mounted to a dedicated holder on the plate:

I don't know the best way to handle large anthologies on paper though, breaking the binding and scanning all those sheets would be a huge pain that I feel probably isn't worth it. I suspect a copy shop might be able to do the scanning for you? They definitely can chop the spine to spiral-bind it (something I've done before too).

But if you're really just spending a few minutes to sight-read, I presume you're not committing to the piece. In that case, just keep using the paper book. If you find a piece you really like, you can photograph/scan it and use it in your preferred sheet music reader, and you can save those digitally for posterity.

Like @thepianoplayer416 and @WieWaldi I also use PDF format, and I use MobileSheets Pro as my reader, mainly because it supports nearly everything--cropping, repagination, annotation, synced multiple tablets, multi-platform (windows/android/chrome/ios) support and syncing, bt/remote page turning, has local, cloud and local-network backup options, AND it even supports intent triggers so I can work Mobilesheets into my dumb home automations 🙂

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...