The death of sheet music ?

sev112

Went into Hickies in Reading this morning.  All the sheet music has gone, rows and rows of it !

apparently Hal Leonard have decided to go all digital and turned up a few eels back and took all the stock !?

I love sheet music,

topdog91

The Rose Morris book shop on Denmark Street has been closed for weeks if not months. And they took over from Argents who vanished a couple of years back at least. Not sure why, but a pretty obvious sign of the times...

Time to get a tablet which will serve me well for music (reading, charts, triggering and / or playing samples) and aviation. Problem is I dislike Apple with a passion but can't see anything other than an iPad Mini in my future.

sev112

I’ve got an iPad, but I still find it too small to play on; I can get 3 A4 pages on my music stand

mrkb

I use guitarpro and a lazer printer to make my own drum notation sheets. Can usually get a song in 2 pages which makes playing much easier than the commercial ones that think 5 pages is useful!

TeleKinesis

sev112 said:

Went into Hickies in Reading this morning.  All the sheet music has gone, rows and rows of it !

apparently Hal Leonard have decided to go all digital and turned up a few eels back and took all the stock !?

I love sheet music,

Ah, that's a shame. Sheet music (or anything on paper) is great. Doesn't unexpectedly lock the screen, run out of battery, or distract with notifications. Ok, you can mitigate all of that with some planning, but for me I need a no-distraction way of reading music.

That said, I can't remember the last time I actually went into a shop and bought some. Periodic attempts at learning new songs on piano involve downloading sheet music from e.g. Musicnotes. Probably loads of other sites available, if you've got a printer you can have hard copy that way. Appreciate not everyone has a printer these days though.

digitalkettle

sev112 said:

Went into Hickies in Reading this morning.  All the sheet music has gone, rows and rows of it !

apparently Hal Leonard have decided to go all digital and turned up a few eels back and took all the stock !?

I love sheet music,

Eels, ya say?!!

fretmeister

sev112 said:

I’ve got an iPad, but I still find it too small to play on; I can get 3 A4 pages on my music stand

Turn it landscape and use Forescore and a foot pedal page turner. It will show just the top half but then It will move down the page with a foot press, and then turn the page with the next press.

It’s much easier to read.

DefaultM

fretmeister said:

sev112 said:

I’ve got an iPad, but I still find it too small to play on; I can get 3 A4 pages on my music stand

Turn it landscape and use Forescore and a foot pedal page turner. It will show just the top half but then It will move down the page with a foot press, and then turn the page with the next press.

It’s much easier to read.

This is what I do with a Donner bluetooth pedal. The PDFs are usually cheaper than the print version, and you can still print them out if you want.

fretmeister

I use the Donner as well. Very cheap and has been completely reliable so far. I've had it for about 3 years I think.

thecolourbox

I'm a wedding pianist and certainly for that scenario, physical sheet music was an absolute nightmare for that - whether using books or printed out PDFs. Playing around 20 songs or pieces per hour for 3 or 4 hours straight was really hard with printed out bits of flimsy paper flying about all over the place as soon as there's a draught, or somebody walks past too quickly, or you're playing outside. I don't have a printer (and consumer level printers seem really poor quality, and gets pricey when buying good quality paper which isn't see through etc) so used to have to go to the printing shop for each booking then put stuff in a folder in order, was a right royal pain in the arse.

I appreciate most sheet music is for home playing but I can see why they'd go online/digital only to be honest as they can't be selling many books if the stuff the shops usually have in stock is anything to go by. With digital stuff they've no material costs, just the hosting of them via servers which I guess is often paid by the individual shops anyway. 

I use an ipad pro, the big screen one which is more or less a4 sized, and use forscore. I bought a screen protector that illustrators use so it's more like a matte paper effect, and turn the brightness right down and it works for ages. I've done full day wedding gigs and only used about 30% battery! And whilst I like to setup setlists/playlists for each wedding, i also have access to every sheet music I've ever had at a few taps of the screen so when you get that clown who comes over and tries to through you with an obscure request (there's always one) then you're often good to go. I also use Musescore so even if I don't have it, a quick search on there can sometimes do enough.

It's a shame as I do like books (and have an absolute tonne of them in a box in the garage). Moreso the classical books though, they were much more nicely bound and able to turn pages without too much hassle I find most modern style books and guitar books etc are really impractical and you end up wrecking the books trying to flatten out the binding to turn pages smoothly

Littlejonny

thecolourbox said:

I'm a wedding pianist and certainly for that scenario, physical sheet music was an absolute nightmare for that - whether using books or printed out PDFs. Playing around 20 songs or pieces per hour for 3 or 4 hours straight was really hard with printed out bits of flimsy paper flying about all over the place as soon as there's a draught, or somebody walks past too quickly, or you're playing outside. I don't have a printer (and consumer level printers seem really poor quality, and gets pricey when buying good quality paper which isn't see through etc) so used to have to go to the printing shop for each booking then put stuff in a folder in order, was a right royal pain in the arse.

I appreciate most sheet music is for home playing but I can see why they'd go online/digital only to be honest as they can't be selling many books if the stuff the shops usually have in stock is anything to go by. With digital stuff they've no material costs, just the hosting of them via servers which I guess is often paid by the individual shops anyway. 

I use an ipad pro, the big screen one which is more or less a4 sized, and use forscore. I bought a screen protector that illustrators use so it's more like a matte paper effect, and turn the brightness right down and it works for ages. I've done full day wedding gigs and only used about 30% battery! And whilst I like to setup setlists/playlists for each wedding, i also have access to every sheet music I've ever had at a few taps of the screen so when you get that clown who comes over and tries to through you with an obscure request (there's always one) then you're often good to go. I also use Musescore so even if I don't have it, a quick search on there can sometimes do enough.

It's a shame as I do like books (and have an absolute tonne of them in a box in the garage). Moreso the classical books though, they were much more nicely bound and able to turn pages without too much hassle I find most modern style books and guitar books etc are really impractical and you end up wrecking the books trying to flatten out the binding to turn pages smoothly

Yeah I do wish publishers would ring-bind the big books. 

I love sheet music - I have shelves of it, and always need more. 

How does it work getting obscure stuff onto the iPad, and is it possible to draw on it with a stylus to add fingerings and mark in cuts etc.?

Whistler

Littlejonny said:

How does it work getting obscure stuff onto the iPad, and is it possible to draw on it with a stylus to add fingerings and mark in cuts etc.?

Sheet music is usually stored in PDFs and all the sheet music song library apps read PDFs, so there is no issue there.

As for drawing on the sheet music, certainly OnSong and forScore can, whether with a finger or with a stylus. I expect many others will but it is worth checking which features your chosen app has.

sev112

Anyone got a recommendation for an iOS ODF editor/compiler which doesn’t cost a fortune or cost an annual subscription

Littlejonny

Whistler said:

Littlejonny said:

How does it work getting obscure stuff onto the iPad, and is it possible to draw on it with a stylus to add fingerings and mark in cuts etc.?

Sheet music is usually stored in PDFs and all the sheet music song library apps read PDFs, so there is no issue there.

As for drawing on the sheet music, certainly OnSong and forScore can, whether with a finger or with a stylus. I expect many others will but it is worth checking which features your chosen app has.