These days I’ve stopped using paper music entirely and have gone completely digital. In this video I talk of upgrading to the larger 12.9 iPad four years ago and offer some thoughts on whether using a tablet for sheet music is something you want to do.
Definitely check out my other videos talking about iPads (and about forScore, which to me is the best app for reading sheet music and the reason I got an iPad in the first place).
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Support from my patrons helped make this video possible – if you would like to help support future videos you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/joshlayne
Since getting a larger size iPad pro 4 years ago I’ve gone completely digital with sheet music.
As I talked about in a video looking at what iPad to buy as far as using it to read sheet music goes, we don’t need the power of the “Pro” (and this is even more true now with the M series chips). So I think it’s fantastic that finally the large 13 inch size is available as an Air and not just as a Pro.
In this video I try to compare some various options, as well as talk about the new “Pencil Pro”. If you end up getting one of the new iPads and the pencil pro I’d love to hear about your experience!
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Support from my patrons helped make this video possible – if you would like to help support future videos you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/joshlayne
I use the app forScore when reading music on my iPad (and I love it). Here are four things I’ve discovered over the years that I thought were worth sharing!
1. Save sheet music in a cloud service first, then download it from the cloud service into forScore for extra backup/redundancy. (Here’s how to backup your forScore data that is on your iPad, something else you should do regularly! https://forscore.co/kb/backing-up/ )
2. Single tap to turn pages, rather than a swipe. Some pluses and minuses to this, I think, but to my mind it’s the fastest and most efficient way to turn pages. Set this in the “gestures” options under settings.
3. Make use of the multi-finger gestures. I have a two-fingered tap set to do a half-page turn, a great timesaver if I’m in full page turn mode but want to see both the end of the current page and the start of the next page. I also like the (default) option of a single finger long press to enter edit/annotation mode. Set this in the “gestures” options under settings.
4. Using bookmarks to “extract” a portion of a many-paged pdf file. You can use the bookmark tool to make it easy to navigate to certain areas of a book or long pdf. In addition, once you’ve tapped on a bookmark, you can go to “rearrange” and have the option to save just those bookmarked pages as a separate pdf!
Support from my patrons helped make this video possible – if you would like to help support future videos you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/joshlayne
Get free sheet music and stay up-to-date on what I’m doing by signing up to my email newsletter at http://eepurl.com/nBSlz
In this episode I take a look at the “Face Gestures” that forScore pro offers and explain why the gestures, as well as the motion based page turns via AirPod Pros (I haven’t tested them, since I don’t own AirPods, but the motion turns are available to all forScore users) are not something I’m interested in using – fun to test, but not a usable option from my point of view!
I love the forScore app for organizing, reading, and marking music: https://forscore.co/ (not sponsored!)
Are you thinking using an iPad for reading sheet music? In this episode I try to answer the question of which iPad you should get! I also give a review of my experience upgrading this year from an iPad Air 2, to a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, as well as using the Apple Pencil.
As far as using an iPad for reading music, the short answer is that any of the current iPad offerings (iPad 8th Gen, iPad Air 4th gen, or iPad Pro) are easily capable of doing so. The question comes down to screen size – if you want the 12.9 inch size (so nice!) you’re forced to get an iPad Pro. If you think you’ll be fine with the smaller screen size, then the iPad 8th Gen will be fine.
If you’re trying to figure out what screen size you want, here are three PDFs I created. One shows the dimensions of the current set of iPads (as well as my old iPad Air 2), the other two show what a piece of music would look like, on the 12.9 and 10.2 size, respectively. (The music is my freely available arrangement of a Bach cantata – https://www.harptuesday.com/jesu/ )
I’ve found half page turns to be a super useful thing when working with an iPad and digital sheet music. It helps allow you to do both pedal changes and bluetooth foot pedal page turns, as well as reading “across” the page when practicing.
I’m using the forScore app for iOS – I highly recommend it as a way to view and manage sheet music on an iPad. https://forscore.co/
In this episode of Harp Tuesday I talk about my experience using the forScore app on an iPad air in place of physical sheet music. (I’ve found it very useful).
