PSA: Onstage iPad/tablet screen reflections

Bright lights reflecting off of an iPad screen. Credit: CNET

Today I attended a choral concert where my companion and I noticed something rather mysterious.  There were these big rectangular reflections on the acoustic shell behind the chorus.  And the reflections would move around in a strange and distracting way.

The reflections seemed too odd and random to be an intentional production element with the lighting.  And I couldn’t see anything on the set pieces or in the stage lighting that would cause reflections or lights like that.

Could it be caused by something in the singers’ attire?  There was nothing in the concert uniforms that would provide an obvious explanation.  Watches or other jewelry, perhaps?  The reflections were rectangular and big, and even the sopranos I know don’t wear jewelry THAT big.  😉

The mystery was solved when my companion pointed out that the reflections disappeared when the singers put down their choir folders and then reappeared when they raised them again.  We deduced that it must be the reflections from the screens of the singers who were using iPads or tablets – of which there were several.  The stage lights were very bright, making the reflections fairly prominent.

Unlike onstage iPad face-glow, I don’t know a good fix for this offhand.  You can get matte anti-glare films for your tablet screen (here’s the one I use) and they certainly help with readability of the screen under stage lights, but I don’t know if they help with this kind of reflection.  But it’s just something to be aware of and to try to avoid – an unexpected side-effect of tablet use onstage, that could add an unintended distraction to your ensemble’s presentation.

Related Posts:

• PSA: Onstage iPad face-glow is a thing
• Outfitting my iPad for rehearsals and performance
• Video: Using iPads and Tablets for Choir Rehearsal and Performance [via Schola Cantorum]
• Brainstorming iPad choir rehearsal guidelines on Twitter [via @Lorskyfink]
• Presentation slides on iPads for choir/music [via Tech in Music Ed]
• Using iPads for Choir Sectionals [via Technology in Music Education @techinmusiced]
• Tablets in the choir room [via Jeff Tillinghast at @ChoralNet]

Do-it-yourself magnetic iPad/tablet case to mount on a music stand

Ever since I saw a commercially-manufactured magnetic iPad case that mounts on metal surfaces (the KICMount), I have been interested in trying to make one myself to use on a music stand.  The iPad would attach to the music stand securely enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about minor bumps and jostles causing the iPad to crash to the ground.  I could also safely pick up the music stand and carry it around while the iPad is on it.

I finally got to try this project  – here are instructions on how I did it.  This project is easily adaptable to other kinds of tablet cases too.

Why iPad? Answers from Heather Roche, clarinettist

Heather Roche / Credit: MBZ festival

Recently I came across a blog post by Heather Roche, a clarinettist living in Germany, who shared some of her experiences with using the iPad for music and performance along with pros/cons.  I wanted to share her informative post along with some of my reactions.

Here’s the original post: why iPad?

From the post:

I’ve been known to use [the AirTurn Bluetooth pedals] when I’m reading a document on the iPad and knitting at the same time, thus dispensing with the need to ever put my knitting down!

Love it!  The AirTurn pedals seem pretty useful for hands-free page-turning of sheet music, but I had never considered their advantages for knitting!

There is also a stand attachment that attaches to a microphone stand, which fits the iPad perfectly (called the Gig Easy). I’ve never used mine, however. First of all, I’d have to carry a microphone stand around with me. Secondly, if I’m playing with an ensemble, it would look very strange if we weren’t all using similar looking music stands.

Credit: The Gig Easy

I’ve had my eye on the Gig Easy stand – I was going to ask for one as a birthday gift until I saw the price.  I’m not sure I can justify it when I already own music stands that will do.  I do wish I had a better way of securing the iPad to my wire stand or my Manhasset stand so I don’t worry about the iPad falling off.  That’s one advantage paper music still has – I can pick up and move the stand with the music still on it, without courting (major) disaster.  I did come up with this ad-hoc method of attaching the iPad to my wire stand – not particularly attractive, but it works.  Maybe the KICMount magnetic iPad case could be used to stick the iPad securely to the desk of a traditional music stand?

Also, I hadn’t considered the aesthetic aspect that Heather mentioned.  I guess you’d just have to persuade your whole ensemble to use tablets 🙂

Credit: The Gig Easy

Brussels Philharmonic / Credit: Samsung Belgium

Flemish Radio Choir / Credit: Bram Goots

It has taken some getting used to – the first few concerts I played felt a little more stressful than I would have liked. ForScore went through a phase where it crashed occasionally, which has happened twice in concert, though in hindsight it was no more disastrous or time consuming than some of my sheet music falling off the stand. […]  ForScore crashing during a concert was possibly one of the most frightening moments on stage. Although as I wrote above, it hasn’t happened for months now, so they’ve quite possibly sorted that problem.

Amen to this! I have had forScore crash a few times, but not during a performance.  What I usually do right before a performance or other situation where I need high reliability is to close all of the open apps on my iPad, including forScore, and then re-launch forScore.  I’ve noticed that it does help.  I’ve occasionally run into intolerable bugs on forScore – the worst being the one where annotations from one page would get “stuck” on the screen for all pages.  But it’s been many months since I’ve seen that one, so presumably they fixed it in forScore 5.

https://twitter.com/Tech4Singers/status/292216345196642304

https://twitter.com/Tech4Singers/status/292216728849641472

https://twitter.com/Tech4Singers/status/292216991656341504

A full day of rehearsal with hand werk can drain the battery of my iPad almost completely and an iPad takes all night to charge. It’s not a problem as long as one is prepared, but it’s another thing to get in the habit of thinking about.

I’ve been thinking that for a full day of rehearsals or gigs, I ought to get some kind of external battery/charger for the iPad – the ones that can use either solar power or wall power would be really sweet.

Discussing aspects of working off the iPad with your colleague who uses one will annoy the colleagues who don’t use it to no end. Oops. Sorry, guys.

LOL! So I’m not the only one.

Q. What about other tablets?

A. Unfortunately I don’t really have an answer here…

I’ve heard a few perspectives on other tablets:

• A choral singer weighs in on using an Android tablet for music
• A great post on choosing hardware for your music reading needs, via Going Digital for Musicians
• App review of ezPDF Reader for music reading on Android tablets [via Tech in Music Ed]
• Flemish Radio Choir adopts Samsung Galaxy tablets and neoScores music reader
• Brussels Philharmonic replaces sheet music with tablets [via @techinmusiced @BBCNews @CNET]

I also share my own perspective in “How I chose between an iPad and an Android tablet as a music reader, Parts 1, 2, and 3“.  The quality and availability of music-reading apps is an important consideration when choosing a tablet.  Read the Going Digital for Musicians blog and the Interactive App Recommender for music-reading apps and check out MobileSheets, Chromatik, and neoScores as non-iPad alternatives to forScore or unrealBook.  Regarding other tablets, I’ve also heard people express a desire for a bigger screen than the current iPad models provides, especially for reading full orchestral scores or large-paper-format orchestral parts.  Which leads to the next topic…

Q. Aren’t the notes often too small?

A. There are a few answers to this. Yes, often the notes are much smaller than one would expect or want with paper, but often, the smallness is made up for by the extreme clarity provided by the screen and its backlighting. Secondly, I often edit scores so that they can be more easily read. It doesn’t matter how many pages you have, as page turns are no longer problematic, and even though it takes some time to find the best process for you (I started by making .pdfs with keynote, pasting bits of the score into blank slides until I was done — now I create multiple copies of the same page in ForScore and use the ‘crop’ feature), in the end it’s faster for me than having to cut up a part for performance.

Definitely agreeing with all of the above.  It’s helpful to crop the margins of PDF scores using Briss or PDF Scissors or forScore’s built-in crop tool, because this makes the notes appear larger.  For musician with vision issues who need to take additional measures to improve readability, there’s this: Digital solutions for low-vision musicians [via Going Digital for Musicians]

I look forward to more of Heather’s writings on her use of the iPad as a working musician.  In the meantime, if you’re a musician who’s getting started with a tablet, or curious about what a tablet can do for you, the Going Digital for Musicians blog is a good starting point (it’s really an e-book, so start with the first post).  On my own blog, there’s an archive with several posts about how musicians can use iPads/tablets and a link to my forScore video tutorials.  The posts Using iPads and Tablets for Choir Rehearsal and Performance and Brainstorming iPad choir rehearsal guidelines on Twitter cover rehearsal/performance considerations and “stage ettiquette” when using a tablet, many of which are applicable to other musicians besides choristers.  And just for fun, there’s my Pinterest pinboard with sightings of Sheet Music on iPads and Tablets in the wild.

Related Posts:

• Philadelphia Orchestra’s concertmaster on paper music vs. digital music
• Exhibit A in the case for me ditching paper scores
• Annotating digital scores in real time during rehearsal is still a challenge
• More blog posts tagged “iPad”
• More blog posts tagged “Android”
• More blog posts tagged “tablet”
• More blog posts tagged “sheet music”
• More blog posts tagged “scanning”

Virtual music staff paper for your iPad/tablet, method #2: PDF files

This is Part 2 in a three-part series on virtual music staff paper for your iPad or tablet.  Read Part 1, Virtual music staff paper for your iPad, method #1: Penultimate.

Last time, we learned how to use the staff paper option in the Penultimate iOS app in order to be able to handwrite on virtual staff paper using an iPad.  In this post, I’ll show you how to import PDF files of music staff paper into your iPad so that you can write on them using the iPad.  Android users, you can easily adapt this method for your Android tablet.  Of course, if you need to do more heavy-duty music notation tasks on the iPad, you’ll probably want to use something like Notion or Noteflight – the methods in this blog post series are more appropriate for doing simple sketches or taking quick notes, or if you just prefer to handwrite your music notation.

Before we begin, a quick follow-up on the Penultimate post: Blog reader Brian reports that you can get free staff paper for Penultimate from ipadpapers.com, rather than buying it from the Penultimate in-app store.  (You can get other kinds of Penultimate papers from ipadpapers.com too, not just staff paper.)

Now on to the main topic.  To get started, you’ll need to install a PDF annotation app on your iPad such as Notability or GoodReader (and there are many other choices out there).  Android users, iAnnotate PDF is a possible option.

First, find a PDF file of staff paper on the web. There are various free sources of PDF staff paper online. Here is a good one with several kinds of staff paper, courtesy of Perry Roland, librarian at the University of Virginia:

• Blank music paper in PDF and PS formats

You can also make your own custom PDF staff paper at BlankSheetMusic.net.  This website lets you customize the staff paper by selecting number of staves, clef types, key/time signatures, bar line options, portrait or landscape orientation, and colors.  Note that the BlankSheetMusic.net website won’t work on an iPad, so use it on your regular computer and then transfer the resulting PDF file to your iPad using Dropbox or another method.

Since the websites above only generate a single-page PDF that’s printer-friendly, I created a PDF file that has multiple pages so that it’s easier to make your own “notebook” of virtual staff paper.  I also created a version with cropped margins that’s more tablet-friendly.  You can find them here:

• PDF music staff paper – 10-stave, 50 pages, full margins
• PDF music staff paper -10-stave, 50 pages, cropped margins

If you’re using a PDF from the web, bring up Safari on your iPad and tap on the link to the PDF file to display it in the browser.  Then tap “Open In…” in the top right corner and select the PDF annotation app you want to use:

(If you’re importing a PDF file from Dropbox, you can use the Dropbox iPad app to navigate to your file and access the “Open In…” menu.)

For example, here is how to import the PDF file into Notability.  Tap on “Notability” in the “Open In…” menu.  Then tap on “Create new note”:

Next, tap on “Ok” to accept the default page range:

Your staff paper will be imported into Notability.  You can then use the annotation tools in Notability to write notation:

Here is a screenshot of me using Notability’s zoom feature and palm guard for better precision and fewer stray marks while I’m writing the notation (I’m also using the Adonit Jot Pro stylus for better precision):

Note the microphone icon in the upper right corner of the screenshot above.  Notability allows you to record audio and link it to your notes – a feature that may be handy when you’re writing music notation.

Alternatively, here’s how to import the PDF file into GoodReader.  In Safari’s “Open In…” menu, tap on GoodReader.  The file will be imported, and you can use GoodReader’s annotation tools to write in notation:

The first time you attempt to write on the staff paper, you’ll get this prompt.  I suggest choosing the “Create an annotated copy” option.  That way, you can keep reusing your blank staff paper file in GoodReader to create new documents.

Like Notability, GoodReader also has a zoom and palm guard feature:

If you use forScore as your PDF music score reader, you could even import the staff paper directly into forScore and then use forScore’s annotation tools to write in music notation.  That way, your handwritten score goes straight into  forScore’s music library where you can organize it with the rest of your scores.

Related Posts:

• Virtual music staff paper for your iPad, method #1: Penultimate
• forScore Video Tutorials
• Trying out Notion app for music notation on iPad
• ThinkMusic Technology’s notation app is generating lots of buzz
• Outfitting my iPad for rehearsals and performance
• More posts tagged “apps”
• More posts tagged “music notation”
• More posts tagged “sheet music”
• More posts tagged “stylus”
• More posts tagged “accessories”

Virtual music staff paper for your iPad, method #1: Penultimate

This is Part 1 in a three-part series on virtual music staff paper for your iPad or tablet.  Read Part 2, Virtual music staff paper for your iPad/tablet, method #2: PDF files.

There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about up-and-coming high-tech ways to handwrite music notation into your iPad.  In the meantime, let’s discuss some lower-tech (relatively speaking!) methods for writing on virtual staff paper on your iPad.  Over the next few posts, I’ll cover some different methods for doing this, starting with the note-taking app Penultimate.  Here is my video demo of how to set up Penultimate with staff paper.  Note that this is an iPad-only app and it requires paying a few bucks for the app and the staff paper download.  [UPDATE 3/24/13: In the comments section of this post, blog reader Brian reports that you can get free staff paper for Penultimate from ipadpapers.com.]

Related Posts:

• forScore Video Tutorials
• Trying out Notion app for music notation on iPad
• ThinkMusic Technology’s notation app is generating lots of buzz
• Outfitting my iPad for rehearsals and performance
• More posts tagged “apps”
• More posts tagged “music notation”
• More posts tagged “sheet music”
• More posts tagged “stylus”
• More posts tagged “accessories”

Philadelphia Orchestra’s concertmaster on paper music vs. digital music

In this video (6:33), violinist David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, shares humorous horror stories about paper sheet music at gigs, and how it spurred him to go digital with his sheet music.  Good info here for those who are weighing the possibility of transitioning to reading music from a tablet and what it’s like:

(I also posted the above video to my Pinterest pinboard, Sheet Music on iPads and Tablets.)

He also has some basic how-to videos on getting started with sheet music on an iPad:

• How to get sheet music into your iPad (3:40)
• How to annotate digital sheet music on your iPad (3:25)

(For more in-depth tutorials, check out my video tutorials on forScore for iPad.)

Lastly, in the videos below, Kim talks about his user experience with the AirTurn Bluetooth page-turning pedal.  Disclosure: the videos are produced by the folks affiliated with AirTurn.  Regardless, Kim gives useful insights from a product review standpoint.

• David Kim talks about his iPad and AirTurn, Part 2 (5:30)
• How to pair the AirTurn BT-105 to an iPad (1:15)

Related Posts:

• More posts tagged “forScore”
• More posts tagged “sheet music”
• More posts tagged “iPad”

Review: Belkin YourType Folio + Keyboard for iPad, great for typing and very compact

I bought the Belkin YourType Folio + Keyboard for my iPad last month, before leaving for my holiday travels.  So far, I love it.  I’d been wanting a Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad to help out with occasional typing-intensive tasks like email and also

Tech for singers: An update from the trenches, Christmas 2012 (part 2)

Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Now that my music performance commitments for the holidays and the fall are behind me, I’m coming up for air and for a report on how things went from a technology perspective. (This is part 2 of a two-part post. Read part 1 here.)

3. Messiah duet + choral gig + more

My duet partner and my pianist colleague and I rehearsed and performed some duets for fall and winter shows, namely, the Barcarolle from Les contes d’Hoffmann and also “He shall feed his flock” from Handel’s Messiah. IMSLP was definitely my friend when it came to downloading sheet music for those pieces. During our rehearsals, I mused on how I might like to get a more compact portable music stand for my iPad. I like the combination of the CrisKenna Xclip2 mount and Mic Stand Concertino plus gooseneck extension, recommended by flutist Sharyn Byer when she was profiled on Going Digital for Musicians:

Credit: AirTurn

Here’s another photo from that blog post that shows a dramatic difference between the space taken up by Sharyn’s music stand, versus her colleague’s more traditional stand. To be fair, though, her colleague probably gets to view more pages of music at a time, and perhaps in a larger size, too!

TheGigEasy mic stand mount for iPad also looks good for my purposes, and a new, thinner, lighter version will be released in January 2013. The iKlip mic stand mount is worth a look too. Honestly, my current portable setup of a wire stand plus my iPad case with its securing strap is not bad, but I wouldn’t mind something with a sturdier build and slimmer profile. I’d feel less worried about knocking it over.

I also had a Messiah chorus gig this past Christmas. Unlike my regular choir, I was the only tablet-wielding singer there. The soprano seated beside me showed a great deal of interest in my iPad sheet music. She was considering a Kindle purchase and was wondering about using it for sheet music. Of course I directed her to this blog so she can check out a few different options 🙂 About the Kindle specifically, I am leery of it for sheet music at this time. A friend once showed me a music score on his Kindle DX e-reader. I liked the screen size and resolution, but we found the page loading and page turns to be slower than on my iPad, and I also thought the music was difficult to see on the non-backlit display. Perhaps the newer Kindle models perform better, though – I haven’t tried them so I don’t know.

Earlier I had asked the conductor for the Messiah performance whether it was ok for me to use my iPad for the music. Fortunately, she was cool with it (not all conductors are, so it’s not a bad idea to ask first). I used my black silicone iPad skin as the “black folder” for holding the music during the performance (same as I do with my regular choir) and no one voiced any concerns. But it did get me to thinking about having an iPad case that looks more like a traditional black choral folder for those times when a music director insists on it, or if I’m doing one of those Victorian period-costume caroling gigs where it would look anachronistic and silly to be obviously holding an iPad. And I’m tired of waiting for MUSICFOLDER.com to design such a case. Blog reader Loren F. recommends the DODOcase for this purpose, and blog reader Dick H. gave some tips on modding the DODOcase for use as a choral folder. However, the price of the DODOcase is a bit steep for me, so I’m probably going to roll my own and make an iPad choral folder out of an inexpensive folio case as a do-it-yourself project – stay tuned for details.

By the way, in the course of doing this Messiah chorus gig, I was informed that you can download PDFs of the choral movements from the Schirmer edition of the Messiah vocal score at this site (although I haven’t verified that all the page numbers, etc. match up with my printed Schirmer score, so caveat downloader). Schirmer is not the most scholarly edition of Messiah ever, but an awful lot of typical local Messiah performances use it, so it can be handy to have. (The Schirmer score on my iPad is one that I scanned previously from the printed score that I own.)

4. Preparing for the St. Matthew Passion

My choir is performing Bach’s St. Matthew Passion this coming spring. I bought a score and had the spine sliced off and then our de facto e-music librarian, Steve, scanned it into a nice slim 7MB PDF file for use with forScore. I ordered a CD of one of the recordings that the conductor recommended (I couldn’t find it as a download or in streaming format) and I also procured a different recording on iTunes. I found some excellent free diction/IPA resources for the St. Matthew Passion online that will be a useful learning aid. I also want to check out SingersBabel to see what diction resources they have for this work. I just got a Belkin YourType Folio + Keyboard for my iPad (more on that later) and I think that its Bluetooth keyboard will come in handy for typing the translation into my score. The Great Books Tutorial website has the text and translation of the St. Matthew Passion in PDF format, laid out nicely for either printing or viewing on a tablet. There are also some interesting background pieces and listening guides online: Bach 101: St. Matthew Passion from the Bach Choir of Bethlehem’s website, an introduction and annotated text/translation from Minnesota Public Radio, and A Visitor’s Guide to the St. Matthew Passion by NPR.

Test driving a locker shelf as an iPad scanning stand

A while back, I blogged about wanting an iPad scanning stand that was portable, inexpensive, and would work with bound books.  I was planning to make my own stand, but I got lazy and purchased this inexpensive locker shelf instead:

Magna Card Locker Shelf / Credit: Amazon.com

The locker shelf folds flat.  Conveniently, I already own a bag that is the right size for it:

Yesterday, I took the locker shelf and my iPad with the Scanner Pro app installed to the music library for a test drive.  This time around, I wasn’t scanning scores, but rather a few pages from the Nico Castel libretti books.  Here’s what my setup looked like (click any of the images for the full-sized version):

Here’s a sample of the image quality from the original camera image:

And here’s a sample of the image quality after Scanner Pro has fixed the color and converted it to a PDF file:

My observations about the scanning process:

• I ended up not using Scanner Pro’s camera mode for direct document capture because it does not let you make adjustments to the zoom.  Fortunately, you can take pictures using the iPad’s regular built-in camera app and then have Scanner Pro import photos from your camera roll to create a multi-page document.
• The library lighting worked well, and the light goes right through the grating of the locker shelf platform and illuminates the page nicely.
• I had to position the iPad so that the the wire mesh of the locker shelf platform did not block the iPad’s back-facing camera (just make sure the camera can peek out through one of the wire “squares” – not too hard).
• With bound books, I had to smooth out pages as best I could with my hand, sometimes even holding them flat with my fingertip while scanning.  Even so, the pages still had some perspective skew to them (with the side of the page closer to the camera appearing larger than the further side of the page).  This was acceptable for scanning text, but I wouldn’t want this kind of skew when scanning a score.  Next time I will try the TurboScan app for iPad – I’ve heard it has some deskewing features (can any readers out there comment on how well the deskewing works?).
• With bound books, the process was not as fast as using a copy machine or flatbed scanner, because of all of the fiddling and positioning and focusing that was necessary.  I think scanning loose pages with this method would be a bit faster, as you could just slide the pages in and out from under the locker shelf as you go.  Nevertheless, copying many pages from a large bound book would be pretty tedious with the method I used because you kind of have to balance the locker shelf on top of the book and then position the iPad just right to capture the entire page.
• I would like to get some kind of strap, like a small bungee cord or luggage strap, to fasten the iPad to the locker shelf platform and prevent it from slipping off while I’m positioning it:

Lewis N. Clark Add-A-Bag Luggage Strap / Credit: Amazon.com

• The mechanism for holding the locker shelf legs in place is not particularly sturdy.  It’s just a groove into which the leg fits:

In the future I might use something simple like small binder clips to secure the legs against collapsing while my iPad is on it:

• Lastly, once Scanner Pro generates the PDF of the libretto pages, it can send the file to Dropbox, where I can then import it into forScore and stick it in a setlist together with my score, so I can have all my music study materials together in one place.

Related Posts:

• Portable scanning of scores & reference materials: smartphones, iPad, scanners
• Preliminary experiments for do-it-yourself iPad scanning stand / document camera
• iPad scanning stand / document camera products
• iPad scanning stand / document camera DIY ideas
• Mixed results using PDF Shrink and PDF optimizer tools on sheet music
• Fast PDF Scores: Get fast, usable versions of scanned music scores
• More posts tagged “scanning”

Serendipity and a new iPad case

I got a new case for my iPad.  I usually keep it in a minimalist black silicone skin (cheap, lightweight, and grippy – the latter two being important during performance).  But I need a little extra screen protection for the times when I throw it in my backpack.  (By the way, I didn’t really buy this iPad case from Isle Royale National Park – that patch is just a piece of flair.)

The case has a velcro easel stand/strap thing on the back:

Ostensibly it’s to prop up the case for viewing the iPad in landscape mode.  (Note that I can put my iPad in this case without having to remove the silicone skin, a convenient feature for me.)

However, when I’m using the iPad on a wire music stand…

…it makes a great safety strap for securing the iPad to the music stand so it won’t fall off the desk!

Related Posts:

• iPad/Tablet Folders, Cases, & Holders for Choral Singers (via Pinterest)
• Outfitting my iPad for rehearsals and performance
• More posts tagged “folders & cases”