10 Reasons Why Pixels Are Better Than Paper
Ten Reasons Why Pixels Are Better Than Paper
Cutting-edge display technologies aside, here are 10 reasons why using computers and tablets to read music is better than paper by Hugh Sung
1. Eliminate bulk
A single 1.2-pound, 16-gig iPad (the smallest and cheapest model available) can hold the equivalent of 60,000 pages of paper. That’s comes out to 600 pounds of physical paper! Next time you lug around your heavy binders and gig books, I promise that your aching muscles will remember that fact (I’ll give you the names of my massage therapist and chiropractor).
2. Never lose music
Classical composers wrote works that ranged in length from 1-2 page miniatures to massive symphonies filling hundreds of pages. If we average each work of a classical composer to be 20 pages each, a single 16-gigabyte iPad would contain all the compositions of Vivaldi, J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, with room to spare. Imagine, all that genius in an approximately 9.5x7.5x.37-inch tablet! With that kind of storage, it becomes easy to simply carry your entire music library with you wherever you go, and never worry about misplacing your music or remembering to bring a part.
3. Find music instantly
I used to have these huge wall units to house my paper sheet-music collection, with all the works catalogued in boxes alphabetized by composer. Even then, it would take a considerable investment in time and effort to find all the pieces I needed for the day’s rehearsals, lessons and performances. By the end of the school year, I’d have to search through a ridiculous mountain of music stacked on top of my piano.
A friend of mine watched a phenomenal jazz set come to a screeching halt as the drummer scrambled for five minutes through a stack of sheet music the size of a New York City phone book looking for the next number. With digital music, you just type a few keystrokes and, voilà, instantly there’s any piece in your collection you need. We’ll talk more later about ways to organize your digital collection. You can pull up all your works by the name of a song, the composer name, or even the key signature, tempo, genre/style, and other descriptions practically before everyone else is done wetting their finger.
4. Make automatic set lists
Ever have your set list (that list of the songs or pieces to be performed in order at a gig or concert) blow away in a strong breeze? Or spill your drink on it, making it read like recently unearthed hieroglyphics? That’s so yesterday. Now, rather than having to shuffle books or physically re-order pages in a binder, you can easily search and select your set list songs on your digital device, change their order on the fly, and have the songs appear automatically in order during the show as if they were part of a single book. All you need is a digital music-reading app. We’ll go into more detail about setting up set lists with various apps in chapter 24.
5. Transpose music instantly
One of my biggest fears as an accompanist was to have the singer I was working with come down with a cold and ask to transpose down a couple of keys right on the spot. With certain types of music (text-based lyrics and chord charts) and reading apps designed around dynamic music notation (Sibelius, Finale, etc.), changing keys on the fly is as simple as a few taps on the screen. You’ll come off a genius. Chapter 30 will cover apps for reading text-based sheet-music; chapter 27 will cover proprietary sheet-music reader apps, many with the ability to transpose music purchased from online publishers; and chapter 33 will go over music notation software and their accompanying reader apps.
6. Mark up your music with rainbow colors
Brain scientists point out that the use of bright, contrasting colors contributes to faster learning and better memory retention. Digital music makes it easy to add brightly colored “ink” and transparent highlights to your music. And it can be easily erased. Ready to throw out your collection of color sharpies, White-Out, and lead pencils with worn-out erasers? Jump to the start of the digital rainbow in chapter 20.
7. Eliminate blind spots
If you are reading music that requires at least one page turn, you have a “blind spot” – you can’t see what comes next until you turn the page. With certain apps, you can set up the page turns so that the screen shows the bottom half of the previous page and the top half of the next page, creating a continuous “look-ahead” view. How much better would that be for learning music, and keeping a smooth sense of flow and phrasing? For a sneak peak ahead, go to chapter 21.
8. Enlarge your music
Have the wrinkles around your eyes become as deep as desert arroyos from squinting at your sheet music under a low-wattage light? When your music is in a digital format, your view of the music is only limited by the size of your screen and the application used to display it. Some programs even give you the option to see zoomed views of your music half a page at a time (this works particularly well for screens that are horizontal, such as laptops or desktop monitors). Other apps can work with music that has been digitally cropped to show even larger views of your music – as little as one or two measures at a time. Text-based music readers give you the option to change font size and properties. Sound like a godsend, Mr. Magoo? Start your musical growth spurt in chapter 19, and then for more giant goodness, look at appendices A, B, and C.
9. Turn everyone else’s pages
With the iPad, there are several apps that enable a master iPad to control any number of slave iPads, so that the master can open the same song on every slave, and in some cases even turn pages for everyone. Talk about keeping everyone on the same page! Talk about power! Just think of how you could mess with their heads! For the super-secret skinny on megalomaniacal musical control, jump to the evil laugh in chapter 24.
10. Turn pages hands free
Ever wish you had a third hand? If you use both hands to play an instrument, you have – for all intents and purposes – a disability when it comes to turning pages. With digital sheet music, not only do you have a wide variety of software options for viewing and working with your music, but you can get hardware for turning your pages hands free, either with wireless digital page-turning pedals, or even other controllers such as bite and tongue switches – rather like eating the score! Now you can keep your hands on your instrument and your focus on the music. And, yes, we’ll get into more detail about setting up hands-free page-turning options in chapter 35.
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