V.com weekend vote: Have you ever performed using a tablet for sheet music?
Recently a reader brought up this question in a discussion: Can anyone fill me in on developments regarding tablet usage in orchestra?
And furthermore, they were wondering, if an orchestra uses tablets, what does that mean for the time-honored tradition of having stand partners? Since it shows only one page at a time, does everyone just have their own stand, when an orchestra uses tablets? What would the space requirement be?
So I thought this would be a good topic for our weekend vote: first, do you use a tablet (iPad) at all for sheet music? And if so, do you perform using a tablet? Do you use a tablet just to perform solos or chamber music? Has anyone been in a full orchestra in which the entire orchestra is using tablets? Please participate in the vote, and then share your thoughts about tablet usage in general, and specifically for orchestra or other performances. Those with more experience with using the tablets, tell us how it's going and what are the new practices evolving with this technology?
You might also like:
- The Virtual Musician: A Guide to Using Apps, Tablets and Technology for Performance and Teaching
- Discussion: Tablets//ipads for orchestra
- The Devil’s Instrument Meets the Devil’s Technology: Reading Violin Music on an iPad
* * *
Enjoying Violinist.com? Click here to sign up for our free, bi-weekly email newsletter. And if you've already signed up, please invite your friends! Thank you.
Replies
I have used an iPad with and Apple Pencil, ForScore and an AirTurn pedal for years—a fairly early adopter. At first it was mostly for piano music as I was a studio accompanist and it made page turns and eliminated the need to lug around multiple Suzuki piano parts and other sheet music around. My set up includes a spare portable battery so I can charge as needed as well as a long charging cable and plug to use in an outlet—but with one exception I have never need this backup power. That exception was when I was rehearsaing for several hours outdoors in Italy and it was a VERY hot day—I think the heat drained the battery extra fast (the iPad was new so it wasn’t age). Otherwise, I just make sure I have it well charged before going to a performance or rehearsal. I LOVE not having to worry about lighting (don’t need a stand light though I use a piano light to light up the keyboard) and only occasionally have issues with page turns—but that happens with physical sheet music sometimes as well.
I now use it frequently for chamber music when playing violin as well, especially now that IMSLP’s collection is so vast and also Henle has made nearly all of their catalog available digitally through their app.p, so I can buy very nice Urtext editions without having to scan hard copies.
I do still tend to use sheet music quite a bit still for my violin practicing (solo Bach, concerti, etc—stuff I’ve spent a lot of time adding bowings and fingerings but mostly because I haven’t bothered to scan it all in yet.
For orchestra, it depends on who I am playing with. If I am section leader and my stand partner doesn’t mind, I prefer the iPad. We never seem to have an issue sharing a stand, it’s like having one page in the middle of the stand. And if I am responsible for bowings it makes it very easy to send a PDF with the annotations. But most of the time I use hard copies, especially when we are playing from original copies vs xeroxes.
I have noticed a number of violinists in the Baltimore Symphony who use iPads on shared stands and I would be curious to know how they negotiate that as they sometimes rotate seating within the section from concert to concert.
The one big disadvantage is that you do need a good solid stand. Floppy black stands or wimpy wire stands are risky for an expensive device. But then again, crummy stands make it hard to use paper music as well!
An orchestra I am working for started using IpadsPro/ApplePencil/iRig blueTurn set up during Covid. We use Newzik app, which allows for easy access to music and sharing bowings through cloud (leader makes a change, and it appears in other parts). I also use Henle app for my personal practice.
The experience has been mostly positive. It is nice to not have to worry about page turns, and annotation tools allow to keep things nice and neat. It is especially helpful when dealing with scores of lesser quality that can be neatly cropped and clean up. With amount of music one churns through each week, it is nice to have it just upload to the iPad whenever it is ready, and one doesn't spend anymore half of the rehearsal writing in bowing changes. On top of that, with iPads one doesn't have to worry about insufficient lighting.
One downside comes from us not using iPads (or more specifically each player having an individual iPad stand, rather than sharing) is loss of a standpartner - the connection just isn't there when everyone sits with their own music.
When given a choice between a high quality, large format paper score and iPad, I would still go with paper, but I found iPads to be very handy for everyday use.
A question from one of the pre-computer dinosaurs; What are the electronic substitutes for the pencil and the eraser?
Joel, my Apple Pencil lets me annotate, erase, etc in as many colors as I want. And the marking will sync across devices so I always have the most up to date copy.
I used a tablet for performances in the first year after the pandemic shut down, when we were still seated apart on stage and there were no standpartners, so nobody to turn my pages.
I don’t like it. Even on the largest iPad Pro, the screen is not as large as most sheet music editions. I went back to using sheet music when we went back to standpartners.
The iPad is, however, extremely convenient to use for downloading practice parts, marking bowings, and teaching.
I don't possess a tablet but at home I would regularly play from a PC with a 27-inch screen while also recording myself.
Are you familiar with the "BiliPro" automatic page turner for tablets and PDF documents?
These days, with the advance in tech, using a laptop, tablet, even my smart phone which has apps that I can just hold my phone against/near a pickup or transducer for my stomp box/rack/mixer effects. Often, it's cheaper, even free, to get sheet music via online downloads.
I like that I can highlight and make notes. If I change my mind I can just delete my notes (if done by mistake I can go back and put them back via right click). I don't have to worry about wearing off the notes by an eraser. I also like that I can use different colors like a highlighter. And again, delete the highlight if I need too.
I thought of getting a tablet or a 2 in 1 (dual laptop tablet) but they are too expensive. I have too much paper everywhere and so are looking for alternatives. I tried a laptop on music stand and ended up causing a lot of damage to laptop - about what it cost in the first place. Any ideas?
The best thing about playing from an iPad is that you don't need a stand light. But if you're playing outside with sunglasses, you can't see the screen at all! I just use it when playing jazz or pop charts. For orchestral music, I'd rather see more at a glance, so the small screen doesn't work for me. ForScore is an amazing app for annotations and for maintaining a music library.
I recently performed the Florence Price quartet in A minor. The only edition available had really no page turn time, so I ended up copying and pasting portions at the bottom or top of a page to get turns. My daughter is head music librarian with the Met opera. She told me that the publishers feel that digital is the way things are going and are not even making an effort to format for page turns. We may all be there sooner than we like!
People are justifiably afraid of the cost, but tablets are more affordable than ever. You can be in business for around $300.
Ipad Pro 12.9 inch is kind of the industry standard -- and the good news is you can buy used ones very affordably. The 1st generation Ipad Pro can be bought for around $200-250 on Ebay and runs the standard app (ForScore, $20) very well. Buy a generic Apple Pencil on Amazon for about $25, and my favorite page turner is the Donner which is about $55.
Playing chamber music, I still deal with paper parts most of the time. But if I'm practicing just my part, or I'm trying out music and I'm not sure if I want to buy it, the tablet is great for that.
There are also really good Iphone scanning apps (the one I use is Scanner Mini) that enable your phone camera as a scanner. The apps clean up the scan and give you a readable part. I can scan a part typically in about 5 minutes in my phone and send it to the tablet for use.
There is a surprising amount of music with impossible page turns, where you're sacrificing a measure or two to get that page turned. The tablet overcomes that, and ForScore has a wonderful feature that lets you turn half a page at a time so you can manage the transition between pages.
And the Henle app is really cool because with certain parts, Henle has uploaded fingerings from famous players and teachers. For example Bach Sonatas and Partitas has fingerings and bowings from a variety of famous violinists.
The Henle app is not useful in performance because it can't do half page turns, but you can export PDFs from Henle and then handle the parts in ForScore.
I suspect the only reason I don't use a tablet for sheet music at all is that I haven't ever tried it. How close to A4 sixe can you get
1 in iPads
2 in E-Ink (e.g., Amazon offerings
3 in other makes of tablet?
I use and ipad pro and it allows me to see the music no matter what the lighting situation is. For important concerts (solo and chamber), I print an extra copy of sheet music to have in my case in case of tech failure (so far hasn't happened!). ipad has been a game changer for private teaching, I love it.
I don't use a tablet. However, check out this performance of the Dvorak Serenade: https://youtu.be/GOPsXJoatEI. The musicians' faces are relatively unobstructed because they are all using tablets and I think it contributes to visual enjoyment; the performance looks like a communicative act among musicians (as it should).
Lighting is a very good point!
I'm also increasingly finding it helpful for teaching, for example, if a student is working on some difficult orchestral music or an audition for several weeks, I can just put it into the iPad, then when it is over, I don't need to keep it - and happily, I don't need to throw away paper!
Saving paper is another nice thing, when it comes to orchestra practice parts - I no longer need to deal with a pile of 30+ pages of copied parts, once the concert is over!
I’ll comment on a few comments, I’ve been using an iPad for chamber music, orchestral, and solo playing for more than 10 years.
With a big tablet, it is feasible to share with a stand partner. Did so until Covid caused orchestras to spread out. If vision is an issue, it is probably also an issue for sharing a peper part, or will be soon. Music on the iPad can have better brightness and contrast, which makes it easier to read. I am reminded of this every time my aging eyes have to work from paper.
Using an iPad or other tablet in the sun will drain the battery quickly because the screen brightness will get cranked up to the max, and that drains the battery faster than anything. It might be nice to have a tablet made with the Amazon Kindle’s screen technology for use outdoors. I prefer to solve this by not agreeing to play outdoors in the sun.
A 12.9” iPad with the margins cropped has approximately the same area as the printed part of normal printed music new or old. If you leave an inch of white space around the music, then yes, it will be smaller, but you don;t have to do that! ForScore (the dominant app) has a Crop feature that non-destructively trims it off, lets you straighten the music if needed, and and best of all, you can share the final result with someone else who is going to print it out so they can have printed part with the music filling the page. And with ForScore;s half-page turn mode option, you can turn have the top of the next page visible while playing the bottom of the current page, which pretty much eliminates page turn issues with single page turns. For places where you might have to turn back multiple pages, you can easily just insert copies of the turned-back-to pages NEXT in the file, so you just keep turning forward. You can also draw bright red arrows, white out unwanted bars, etc. without getting anyone upset. There’s also a companion app for Forscore that allows you to sit a second iPad down on the stand and run everything as if it was one giant iPad showing both pages, no changing of the music required.
I have found that having an iPad with all the parts loaded has saved someone’s bacon countless times in orchestra - someone shows up without their music, just give them the iPad. Pontificate allow want about player responsibility, but in the end, I’d rather be playing.
Can bad things happen with a tablet? Of course. They can also happen with paper parts. I have 4,000 (yes, thousand) pieces of music on my iPad, ready to use at the drop of a hat. I can easily share a marked part with a student, and when they get a new piece, they can send me a photo and I can add it to my library. Student forgot to bring his orchestra folder the other day, discovered only after his mom drove off. Not a problem, we just got out the iPad copy. I am certainly not interested in having paper copies of all of the crappy orchestra arrangements that my students play in their school orchestras, but electronic copies are fine. I can even keep them in a separate library so they don’t clutter up my “real” music.
I’ve never seen someone take the time to learn how to do things and then choose to go back. Definitely helps to have someone who already does it to help you get started. Kind of like playing a stringed instrument!
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
Violinist.com is made possible by...
Dimitri Musafia, Master Maker of Violin and Viola Cases
Johnson String Instrument/Carriage House Violins
Subscribe
Laurie's Books
Discover the best of Violinist.com in these collections of editor Laurie Niles' exclusive interviews.
Violinist.com Interviews Volume 1, with introduction by Hilary Hahn
Violinist.com Interviews Volume 2, with introduction by Rachel Barton Pine
December 10, 2023 at 11:29 PM · I don’t use a tablet and, so far, haven’t owned one. My orchestra experience spanned only about 7 years, starting in early high school - although I’d started playing violin several years before. Tablets weren’t “the thing” back then. For small chamber groups, which are more to my liking, I prefer hard-copy sheet music, knowing that the pages won’t suddenly disappear or have a power glitch, as can happen with high-tech devices. For solo work - e.g., violin/piano, violin/guitar, unaccompanied rep - once I’ve learned my part, I set aside the printed score and play from memory.