Goodbye to bags and bags of paper
On discovering forScore for piano sheet music, it makes me smile as I remember all those years ago. As a student, I often played background music at dinner functions. I used to carry around two massive plastic bags of books, photocopies and all sorts of moth-eared bits of music with me.
It is now possible to have an almost limitless amount of sheet music with you wherever you are. Even better, no more hunting around through a great pile of spurious things to find the particular piece you need.
The iPad is the pianist’s friend
iPads and Tablet computers in general are a game changer for pianists. We now have something large enough to be able to read sheet music and yet the right shape to fit properly onto our piano music stand.
All we need now is a way of getting our sheet music onto our iPad.
There’s an app for that
That’s because, as you’ll have guessed, there’s an App for that!! forScore for piano sheet music. For me, this has almost totally removed my reliance on printed music. I know of course that for, many people an actual printed edition is something that cannot be beaten, however, even if you believe you fit into that category, please read on as also having digital version either as your main copy or a backup offers some significant advantages. This post accompanies my YouTube Video which you might find helpful to watch.
What is ForScore?
In a previous post, I mentioned briefly a fantastic app I use on my iPad – it is called ForScore. I first downloaded this many years ago – when it was still free on the iTunes store. It is now offered at $9.99 – and at that price I think is still incredible value for money. Just to be clear, I’m not being sponsored by ForScore – I simply think this is a great app that is most definitely worth having.
At its most basic, ForScore is a PDF reader. That is to say that you can load PDF (Portable Document Format) files into it and then read them with the App. Most things you download over the internet are PDF files and most scanners convert into PDF easily enough.
Basic Features of forScore for piano sheet music
The very basic features are the ability to:
- Import downloaded or scanned PDF Sheet Music – straight from IMSLP or other sources
- Categorise and Organise it – by Composer, Genre, Difficulty, Time Signature, Key Signature as well as adding other personal tags and labels (making finding it a breeze)
- Annotate it – make notes with a variety of pen settings, highlighters, ruler, text – all notes being ‘non destructive’ in that you can remove them whenever you want
- Create Set Lists – quick access to often used pieces of music like Playlists on your MP3 player
For the basic functionality I’ve listed above, there are other apps (such as iBooks) that you can use. You’d probably find ways of doing many of these things with pretty much any PDF Reader. However, now let’s look at the features that show why ForScore was developed specifically with Musicians in mind.
Let’s start with three such features:
iTunes Links:
A first feature is that you can add a link from any piece of music within ForScore to one or more files in your iTunes Library (or in fact any other file on your hard drive). I use this very often when I’m first studying a score as I can listen and read simultaneously – as well as play, pause, stop etc. without ever needing to leave ForScore. I can even make notes whilst listening! To be honest, whenever I’m on a plane or something similar I enjoy listening to music whilst following with the score just for pure entertainment.
Bookmarks:
When you are using music from within a Book (for example, Chopin’s Preludes Op 28), the Bookmarks comes in handy. This feature allows you to identify each individual prelude. Now you no longer need to first open the book of preludes and then look for the specific prelude you want within the book. You simply set the bookmarks and each individual piece is then available in its own right from your main menu.
Links:
A major pain on occasions is where you have music with lots of repeats or the dreaded DS al Coda type markings. With a paper score, turning from one page to the next is already challenging enough (and often pianists will have a person sitting there to turn the pages for them), however, needing to turn back 1, 2 or more pages to find another precise point in the music is extremely awkward. Within ForScore, you can actually set a link from one place to another and you simply need to tap on that link and it will take you forwards or backwards to where you need to go.
As if that wasn’t enough, how about 3 more bonus features that come in handy every once in a while:
Play Piano:
If you’re looking at an unfamiliar piece of music, sometimes it’s helpful to try out a few notes on the piano just to get a view of it. ForScore comes with a built-in soft keyboard that you can use to double check things.
Darkroom:
If you want to quickly scan a paper copy into ForScore, you can use the Darkroom feature to do this. Simply use your iPad’s built in camera to take the picture and follow the instructions.
Record:
You can also record your own playing direct into ForScore. If you’ve invested in an external microphone (such as the Shure MV88 I have talked about before and linked below for you), then it’s the external microphone that will automatically be used if it’s plugged in.
Finally, if you regularly perform and use sheet music whilst performing, ForScore has a couple of great features that will help you.
Perform Mode:
First, it has a dedicated ‘Perform’ mode. This basically disables everything except simply allowing you to turn pages or follow pre-defined links. This is to ensure that if you inadvertently tap on the wrong part of the screen, ForScore doesn’t go back a page or pop up any of its editing windows – which could be a disaster if it happened mid-way through a performance.
Page Turners:
Secondly, turning ‘digital’ pages is certainly much simpler than actually turning ‘real’ pages. A quick swipe on either the left or right side suffices to turn the page backwards or forwards. However, it doesn’t have to stop there. If you want to leave your hands totally free to concentrate on playing, then it’s possible to buy a Bluetooth, foot operated, page turning device.
I once noticed a Concert Pianist quickly throw something onto the floor near the piano pedals as he sat down to play. He then place his iPad on the piano. I later noticed that he was in fact using a bluetooth device for turning the pages on his iPad score. If you’re wondering why he hadn’t memorised the music (which is more generally the case), it was a piece of modern music and he’s not the first I’ve seen use the score when performing this type of work.
In summary, I highly recommend getting as much music as you can onto your Tablet. This way you can take it with you wherever you go. If you own an iPad, ForScore seems the perfect app for that. If not, then other solutions do of course exist.
Don’t forget, if you have data or wi-fi, then you can even download a score ‘on the fly’ should you ever need to. How often does someone want the one piece you don’t have music for with you …
Here’s the link to ForScore on the AppStore. Check it out. ForScore has many additional features to those I’ve described here – I’ve limited myself to the ones that I’ve used the most and found the most helpful – check out the full feature list to see what else might be useful for you.
If you don’t have an iPad, these are now available on Amazon … I’m convinced they’re a great investment for pianists of any level.
