Sheet Music On The iPad

The iPad really excels at being a document viewer, and I particularly like reading PDFs in GoodReader. For some reason I didn't think about the idea of having sheet music on the iPad until I saw a New York Times article titled, Reading Music On The iPad. The article briefly covers four different applications, two that I decided to check out, Musicnotes and forScore. Musicnotes.com is a web site where you buy sheet music that you can download and print. The web site provides a free iPad app for displaying sheet music. I play french horn, so checked out the french horn solos, found 12, and decided to buy one. Next, I started the Musicnotes app, logged in, and it automatically detected that I had new music and offered to synchronize it to my iPad, after which the music appeared in my sheet music list. Music displays very nicely in Musicnotes, and you can pinch to zoom and make the notes larger; a double tap resizes the sheet to display within the entire screen. You can configure the software to either swipe or tap to change pages and you can chose different backgrounds for the music. Musicnotes provides a way for you to write notes and to place accidentals near notes. While Musicnotes includes a store where you can buy sheet music, forScore is designed for displaying sheet music stored in PDF files, and costs $4.99. While you can simply display PDF files on an iPad using Safari, or programs like GoodReader and Dropbox, forScore includes an audible and visible metronome and the ability to annotate the music by drawing on the screen with three different pen colors, a marker, and a highlighter. After you install forScore an option is added to the Mail app so that when you tap and hold a PDF you see a forScore option in the Open In menu, and a similar option is available in Dropbox's Open In menu. You can also use iTunes to transfer sheet music files from your PC to an iPad. The only real way to test this type of software is to sit down and play the music. While the iPad screen is considerably smaller than a sheet of paper, I still found the notes legible enough to read with the iPad siting on a music stand. You can make the notes larger in Musicnotes but you cannot adjust the size of music in forScore. If a piece is on multiple pages you tap and swipe on the iPad screen, which I think works fine but could be a problem with repeats or codas that may require you to jump around pages. I think the ideal situation is to have some form of a hyperlink in the music for repeats that you could tap and the program would automatically turn the page back to the beginning of the section. A benefit of using the iPad to display the sheet music is that it eliminates the need for stand lights in dimly lit rooms. I am not sure I would use an iPad to display music during a concert, but it is definitely handy for practices, particularly if you have a lot of sheet music to carry around. The metronome in forScore is also very handy for practices, as is the ability to annotate the music. Music majors might find the forScore app along with a scanner to be very handy for them as I am sure they can carry a lot of sheet music, and the price of the application is very affordable for college students.

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Sheet Music On The iPad

Frank McPherson

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Frank McPherson