I was looking around for an Elvis song, Where Did They Go, Lord
I couldn’t find it on Music Notes dot com. So I was searching for a songbook that might have it.
Instead I find the actual sheet music in Kindle format. For $3.99 that’s cheap enough.
I’m not sure why they’d sell it this way. Its too tiny on a Kindle to play on a piano or guitar. You can’t print from a Kindle either.
I did find an online kindle to pdf converter. I’m going to try that. Then print. I just hope theres enough resolution to print something big enough to read. I figured at 4 bucks its worth trying. I haven’t found a songbook with this song.
Anyone else run across sheet music for a kindle? This is so strange. Good luck propping a kindle on a piano and playing.
Kindle apps on bigger ipads and android tablets would probably be usable instead of music on paper. I imagine they would sit just fine anywhere you would prop up sheet music. The images on book only kindles (as opposed to the kindle fire tablets) tend to suck and would probably be unusable as sheet music.
Are Kindles the same size as iPads? I honestly don’t know. I ask because I make my living playing piano, and I have all of my sheet music on my iPad. It took yeaaarrrsss to transfer, but once I finally finished it really was a life-changer. No more carrying tons of books around, no more trying to turn pages quickly, no more worrying about adequate lighting. The iPad doesn’t change weight when you add more songs, a simple tap or a press of the Bluetooth foot pedal turns the page for you, and the backlight provides all the light you need.
The go-to app is called ForScore. You can make annotations, you can type text onto the music, hell, you can even use a white highlighter and “erase” the parts you don’t need! So for example, in songs that had annoying structures, such as multiple repeats or D.S. al Codas, I simply duplicated the first few pages or whatever, then moved them to the end and erased the parts I didn’t need to see again, so it’s all one flowing song instead of one with jumps or backturns.
I suppose someday my eyes might decide it’s too small to read, but honestly, once you zoom into the page and get rid of all that white space normally found around the actual music, it’s really not that much smaller after all.
+1. I don’t play as much as I used to, but the iPad (and I would assume any similarly sized tablet) has just been incredible for sheet music. So much better than dealing with paper (IMHO), plus it’s backlit so I don’t have to worry about having proper lighting around. It also fits nicely on my piano and I don’t have to bend the hell out of the spines of thicker piano sheet music books just to keep the pages from flopping over. And turning pages is a breeze.
a Kindle screen is just a little bigger than a paperback book. LOL It’s fine for reading a novel. Trying to read musical notes on the Grand Staff is not so easy.
I take my sheet music to Fed Ex Kinkos to copy. Then use the copies on my music stand. As someone else mentioned, the spines of songbooks can be ruined trying to use them on a music stand or piano.
Digital music is really nice. Places like Music Notes offers it in multiple keys. All you have to do is click and it’s in the key you want. Makes life a lot easier than a paper songbook.
I could see reading music on a kindle if it were formatted correctly, and there was a fast way to turn the page. You’d turn it sideways, and get maybe half a sheet music page per Kindle page. (Paper back books are usually the same height as the width of a piece of letter paper.)
My ideal system would hook into my keyboard and know where I was at and keep up with me. One that would work with other instruments, as long as the tempo is steady, would be to set a tempo and have it scroll the music for you. But, of course, a basic Kindle isn’t going to to do that.
How did you do the conversion? I’m a pianist as well and have some music in music.notes viewer, but there’s a lot sheet music and songbooks I have that I’d love to have in the iPad.
I’m interested too in how to move sheet music to the IPad
I’m currently looking at Musitek Smartscore. Music can be scanned and then manipulated. Change keys, print, and even let the computer play it, Seems like a useful tool. I’m still researching before buying anything. I especially need to change keys for the separate vocal line. It would be great if the computer would only play the vocal (the melody). That would be such a great aid for learning a new song.
ForScore is essentially a glorified PDF reader (and I say that with all due respect, because it’s glorified in all the right ways), so all you have to do is scan everything. You can either use an oversized scanner and keep the book intact, or you can rip the pages out, trim the white edges, run them through the paper feeder, and recycle the book. The latter is faster, but the former is pretty much the only option if you plan on keeping the books.
Alas, because it’s just displaying a PDF, it cannot change keys for you. I believe that is possible if you download the musicnotes.com app and buy the song from them directly, but I already owned well over a thousand songs before they ever came along. And I think if you needed the computer to play the music for you, you would have to use a program like Finale or Sibelius and input the music in the first place.
I know, I’ve said that before too; how cool it would be if the iPad could “hear” the music and turn the page when you’re at the last measure (or whenever you programmed it to). The next best thing, though, is that ForScore has a metronome app that will turn pages based on the number of clicks per page. So if you’re playing a song with a steady beat (as opposed to a classical piece, for example), you can tell it how many measures are on each page, turn the metronome on (either with an audible click or a visual light cue), and it will turn the page when you get to the last measure. A reasonable compromise for the moment!
But unfortunately, it only works with scores you buy from them, just like the transposing thing from musicnotes only works with the scores you buy directly from them. So the 1,000+ pdfs I already have would only function as regular pdfs.
The PDFs you have are just scans of sheet music. They don’t have any real data, just an image of the page. It would take a lot of computing power to be able to listen to your playing and interpret what’s in the scanned pages in real time.
You may have noticed that notation software that can import from scanned music tends to be pretty pricy (Finale 2014 is $600.00, SmartScore pro is $400.00, PhotoScore is $250.00 and requires Sibelius, which is $600.00), and even then usually requires a lot of manual fixing of things that didn’t quite get interpreted correctly.
Tonora works because their scores are are already in a format that is data and not just an image, but that means you have to purchase the music from them.
Well… that’s what I just said. We’re saying the same thing; I’m just lamenting the fact that it can’t be done (yet) with standard pdfs. I was fantasizing about a world where that would be possible, but as I said before, I know it’s not.
And yes, I own Finale too, and the technology just isn’t there yet, either. It’s not as simple as scanning a sheet music book and expecting Finale to spit it out perfectly, because it won’t. So in the meantime, all we can do is play from our iPads and either tap the screen to turn the page, or use the Bluetooth pedal, or set the metronome to turn it for us after a set number of measures go by. Still worlds away from pages sticking together or getting a paper cut in your haste to turn that page. :o
I’ve been poking around at many different sheet music apps. I play guitar but want to branch out into playing/reading piano music also.
I’ve fiddled with Sibelius and it seems to do just about everything. Way pricey though.
Musescore is free and does most of the same with less power-user functions. It does support .pdf export also, so it is easy to dump a score onto my phone or tablet for viewing anywhere. They also have a growing database of songs.
If you’ve got an iPad…and IMHO the music apps totally justify owning for them alone…check out the paid version of Music Studio which is quite a powerful sequencer. It allows you to create realistic tracks. I use mine to lay down tracks for instruments we don’t have at church and drums, etc, and I play my Midi keyboard through the amp and amplify via the earphone jack. Works wonderfully and you needn’t have a degree in musicology or be a computer guru to be up and running within minutes of downloading the app.
I’m a jazz singer, and I have two or three “real books” in Kindle format for display on my iPad (via the Kindle app) when needed. I’d never try to use an actual Kindle to read sheet music.
The whole reason I got an iPad was for sheet music/charts/lead sheets: I’m a huge fan of iReal Pro (I have it on both my iPad and my Android phone), and I also transfer my own PDFs (via Google Docs). Between iReal Pro, my files, and the Kindle sheet music, I have everything I could need for a gig in one place. I still bring hard copies with me, because typically I need at least two copies of a given chart/lead sheet (one for the pianist and one for the bass player), but having an “extra” digital copy has come in very handy. When I hit the lottery maybe I’ll get a couple more iPads and ditch the hard copies altogether.
That’s what I use to make my own lead sheets. The built-in “jazz lead sheet” template is perfect. It’s not extraordinarily user friendly, but so far it’s done everything I’ve needed it to (sometimes with help from the user guide). And the price is hard to beat.
I figured at 4 bucks its worth trying. I haven’t found a songbook with this song.
We’re saying the same thing; I’m just lamenting the fact that it can’t be done (yet) with standard pdfs. I was fantasizing about a world where that would be possible, but as I said before, I know it’s not.