Going digital: Comparing 2 iPad music reader apps - Music Reader PDF & forScore

Written by sharelle taylor
Published: February 23, 2014 at 2:39 AM [UTC]

I have over the past two weeks started to transfer my music to my iPad - at present it is around 80 different scores. This is a 64gb, and I also have a LOT of video since I try to get video from youtube of any pieces I play for orchestra + favourites, but also apps since I use it for therapy with ASD and kids with learning difficulties. There is still about 40gb left, so so far storing in pdf is not a big space user.

I had started with MUSIC READER PDF, (MR) but for reasons as explained in the review, then switched to FORSCORE (FS).

Cost (US):
MR is .99 for basic but that is useless as it limits the annotations, so the professional upgrade for 4.49 extra was immediately needed.
FS is $7.49, so more expensive, but the app was suitable without any in app purchase or upgrade.

I have priority needs for an app to:

Other possibilities such as:

Import of scores:
both were done easily in itunes by adding desired scores from my hard drive folder to selected apps and sync. took seconds to do multiple scores.

Finding scores in the app:
MR was confusing, click on the symbol that represents a music stack, or the one next to it (play list, looks almost the same) everything opens up with the name of the composition.
FS is also unintuitive, but easier when I knew what to do - click the 'note' button in top left brings up the library where you can select via composer, title, genre - a much cleaner interface once accessed. Even after some hours of use, I found I was still navigating to a playlist button on the MR app by accident, or adding my existing score to the playlist by accident. Just not an intuitive interface for me.

Exiting from score
Exiting from that score with both apps is just a click back to the library / stack button or exit the app. any changes to the score were saved reliably.

Saving different versions
MR had instructions for how to 'save as' so that different versions could be saved - this would be useful if for eg you were using a piece for lessons and giving different markings or advice to different students, each version could be 'saved as ...' with different markings. I don't know if it was the non native English that made instructions sometimes not match the real life experience, but when I tried to save-as it didn't work. The instructions for a start told me that I could "create folders to save files in a separate map" which sort of makes sense until you try to determine what is meant by 'map' in iPad / app speak. then when I clicked as required, none of the expected things happened so I didn't know how to proceed. In FS this process has been more like save-as in any other application, just ask it to save and give the file a new name, then there it was. I preferred FS for the finding and saving aspect.

Annotating:
I use a JOT CLASSIC FINE POINT STYLUS for iPad writing as it has a hard fine line that I know will go where I put it.
Ease of annotations was one area where I noticed a big big difference between the apps.
In MR, editing menu is at the top of the page:
click to enter annotation, but from there I had to click out of annotating to turn to the next page. If I didn't do that, I got pen markings on the page from tapping or swiping the page turn. a little thing, but I was marking Dvorak 1, and 57 pages is bloody boring, and it all had to be marked, so it was a frustrating time waster.
There are lots of colours and pen width is selectable, but if I chose to erase or highlight or change colours it was not an automatic process to ensure that I would return to my red skinny pen to for bowings, so again a frustrating few moments of stuffing aroudn would follow when I would be clicking through options trying to get what I wanted to select.
With the upgrade version in MR you also get stamps which could be used for up/down bows, music markings etc, but i did all by hand as I didn't realise until I had bowed the first movement that I could pay for the upgrade and get them, and then I just kept going as I had a system. they would not be any easier to use, since you would have to alternate in and out to get ups and down stamps for bowing.
FS, annotation is accessed via 'edit' menu tapped on the top left.
set pen colours + a highlighter and pen that are colour selectable (and renamable). Much better than the MR choice, I realised, as I mostly used the red for bowings, green for fingerings, and then I highlighted all the very numerous editing errors (extra bars, forgotten bars, demi-semis that should have been semis, wrong notes). Line width was still as selectable, I could turn the page from within annotation, and I could select the eraser and back to pen without the app forgetting what I had been doing. So I preferred FS for this.
Again there were stamps that could be selected, and again they wouldn't be that useful for bowings. FS did include clear instructions for adding my own stamps for frequently used markings to the music - i tried with the glasses, and my own version of down bow, and it was fine. I could also select for colour when using stamps in FS, which I don't think i was able to do in MR (but willing to stand corrected there, as I didn't give that a chance).

Coda/repeats
MR does have a system for dealing with Coda / repeats etc but I didn't get to that. I have used FS system, it took about 8 goes to get it right - the procedure is that you click to 'link', and 2 corresponding pages of the score will open up, one with an orange dot and the other with a blue dot. By default, the blue dot was on the RHS and the orange on the LHS page, and they get dragged to the points where the coda / returh begins and ends. Trouble was, that 1. the default was opposite to what I needed - I needed the orange dot on the RHS page so I could tap it and it would take me back a couple of pages to my coda (where I eventually got the blue dot) 2. when trying to get to the correct pages, I kept placing the freaking dots instead of page turning. I need to do this a few more times to work out how to do it efficiently. Probably something that can be improved in subsequent app upgrade.

Overall