Before: 
After:
I have 2 cabinets filled with music. A dozen 3 ring binders, of various colors, filled with music. And a floor with tubs and music spilled on the floor- whatever music I happen to be working on. That was then.
Now, I have an iPad pro, an Apple pencil, and a foot pedal. No more paper. No more ink. No more copying. It’s pretty incredible and I feel like my life has changed immeasurably.
All it took was one time getting halfway to my rehearsal and realizing I had picked up the wrong binder of music.
I’d been thinking about this for a while, but a) it’s expensive and b) I already have all this music. Copied, marked up, and in those 3 ring binders. Well, now all my music is in this one device. The floor is clean and I’m thinking about boxing up all those binders.
More about this delightful life changing event to come!
Paul Houston (from UA Adult Strings Weekend) says:
I’m really glad to see this post, Nancy. I am making the move to digital, too. I recently bought a foot pedal, but I need to upgrade my iPad Pro to the version with the bigger screen. What app are you using? Right now I’m playing around with forScore. I really like it because I can link it to my Dropbox account, so as I scan music it’s saved in my Dropbox and I can import it as needed into forScore. My parent’s house was hit by a tornado in 2011, and all the music I had collected since I was in high school was destroyed. So, I’ve made sure ever since to keep a digital copy of everything. I scan all the accompanist parts too so I can email those out when I need to.
Thank you for these blog posts, I read them all!
nancymack says:
Hi Paul! Thanks for writing. So sorry about losing all your music (and the house as well) in the tornado. I remember driving to Tuscaloosa after that and seeing the remnants. Your point about keeping the piano accompaniments is a good idea. I am using ForScore and I’ve written another post where I detail more of how I’m using all of these tools. The Pro is fabulous. Full sized music beats the smaller iPad any day. Get the Apple pencil as well. It makes everything so much easier. More to come in next post!