Play Piano with Sheet Music on iPad

Does anyone play or know how this works? I see musicians reading the music on iPad. And they don’t “flip pages”. The iPad app flips through the pages automatically. Ok got that.

Does the page flip happen according to a predetermined speed or BPM (beats per minute) or does the iPad listen to you playing the song and adjust page flipping speed to meet your playing speed?

In other words, if the musician pauses in the middle of a song for some reason (talk to audience or yell “put your hands up in the air, let me hear you!” or drink water or whatever), does the iPad pause or keep going?

There’s accessories via bluetooth that lets you turn the page via pedal.

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Just noticed some apps have a metronome that does it automatically.

“the forScore app has metronome that can scroll your music automatically”

I wonder which apps are popular in Taiwan for managing and playing sheet music?

A lot of a band use tablet and apps and I’m wondering what they use.

I use an app called “ForScore” with a Bluetooth foot pedal. I’ve used it in the pit and onstage for professional performances as well as just playing with friends or alone. (I always had a hard copy of the score available for performance “just in case” but have never had an issue.) I have all (yes, all) my sheet music on my iPad: piano, other instruments, everything. Once you start playing using a foot pedal for page turns you’ll wonder how you ever put up with manual page turning. Of course you can also turn by tapping or swiping the page depending on how you have the settings. I think there is something with metronome markings and timed turns but I haven’t ever done that. Should probably look into it though.

You can set up for whole page view or half-page – that takes a few more flips, obviously, but it’s larger and easier to see.

One of the nicest features is the ability to annotate music in color and erase cleanly later if needed, or to have a marked-up copy and a clean copy separately. If I’m hired for a show, I scan in the part and mark that up as the conductor wants (including adding the “jump” marks in the case of cuts --ForScore knows how to jump, handle repeats, etc.). You can also add duplicates of the same page into the PDF you’re marking up (like if a show uses a certain scene change in multiple places, as a bridge, etc.) Then I just hand the score back to the director at the end of the show – no more hours of erasing.

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ForScore gets great reviews. I’m also exploring some others.

MuseScore, Musicnotes, Noteflight, Mobilesheets.

Looks like the iPad with Apple Pencil is the way to go.

Seems like the cheapest online sheet music is around NT$150/US$5 per song.

Any ideas on cheaper places to get sheet music online? Looking for more contemporary music.

Just an idea but… why don’t you use a DAW with MIDI so that you can load a midi song and look at the score and playing along it?

I’m new to that aspect. Thanks for the suggestion. Where to find the MIDI songs?

I answered my own question. I see they’re easily available on the net.

Well, that’s exactly the reason why I suggested to go the MIDI way: they are all over the place! I don’t really used them, but there are sites… let me see:

MIDI files - Free download :: MIDIWORLD.COM → looks terrible but probably is good contents wise?
https://freemidi.org/ → they don’t like adblocker :smiley:
The Ultimate List of 199+ Free Midi Files for 2021 + [Free Downloads] → some bullshit songs here

Jeesh I guess I can just pull them into GarageBand and read them like sheet music.

Now the trick is finding good quality ones that match my level.

Dunno, probably there’s all sort of shit uploaded. Keep in mind that some of them will have several instruments… maybe you are interested in one!

MuseScore. I just realized this app has sheet music for most songs but not official versions. Can view online free or pay to download or screenshot.

In ForScore, I’ve just scanned my own music collection into PDF and loaded it. Especially using an app like TinyScanner or something similar, it’s non-destructive. I “archive” the print copies in a plastic box. (Not sure why, but old habit is hard to break. It’s hard to discard any book.)

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