@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.
I cannot begin to imagine how much trouble my Gigi would get into if she had actual thumbs!
Enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.
Beatrix left, Marlowe right. Shelter/rescue cats, five year old siblings, blessed with extra toes on their front paws, which we like to think of as evolutionary traits, i.e thumbs. Both hate music. So, I have some nice headphones to keep them happy.
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!
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+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.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).
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...Besides the name of the composers in alphabetical order, I also have file folders like "Folk Songs", "Jazz n Blues", "Pop", "Classical", "Easy Piano".
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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!
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.
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.
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... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...- Edited
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Wow, that is amazing photography! I think I would buy that coffee table book if they made one.
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Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
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This is an article about the ca. 8000 parts that make up a Yamaha CFX grand piano. Yamaha arranged and photographed them. Some of the photos are shown here (apologies if this has already been posted):
https://www.designboom.com/art/yamaha-photographs-concert-grand-piano-cfx-design-laboratory-03-28-2024/Sophia
I actually have a piano de voyage for travelling. It does have 88 semi-weighted keys when you put all 4 pieces together. For around US$1400 it has a very basic design with very few knobs & buttons but can be a serious performing instrument when plugged into external speakers.Here's one @TheBoringPianist mentioned in another thread: https://pianodevoyage.com
The cost makes me cry like an onion, but it sure looks nice!
Still haven't bought anything though, not even a toy piano
Thank you all!
@Rubens I am not a beer drinker but I was told I absolutely had to try the local beer. I said "just a little for taste" and they poured me almost a full cup haha. I was definitely tipsy!!
The coaches all came to tell me how much they loved my playing
I told the cello coach I'm done because it's too hard and she said no, I am just starting, I have to keep playing it! Maybe I need to keep it fresh every month and then I'll finally get those two tough pages? I feel like putting it behind me but it's also a shame if I lose it by not playing it anymore!@Ithaca I will post the performance video once I get home and on my computer where I can figure out the face blurring on YouTube again
It's done!! The violinist and I bombed a bunch of our entrances but the playing was very exciting and at least we all ended together!! People loved it and keep coming to congratulate me
