Is it possible to use a Kindle/iPad for sheet music?

Tech
1

My computer is on its last legs and blinking fast.

I’m wondering whether it’s possible to buy a kindle, and upload all of my digitised sheet music onto the kindle, and carry the kindle around instead.

Does it have a zoom or automatic scrolling function, to move the page at a rate per second?
Is it possible to upload from one’s own hard-drive, rather than have to get specific types of sale items from music/book stores?

I wonder whether an iPad would be better in this respect. I’m not a fan of carrying more heat generating electronic gadgets, but the weight of all the music books I carry around is getting to me.

Anyone doing this already? Any feedback?

Thanks in anticipation.

2

Have Kindle 2 and have done this using scans to PDF. Is better than nothing, but font size is rather small for a full tune. Mostly only good for a memory aid, which is all I try to use it for. My kindle does not have autoscroll. Maybe gen 3 does, it has a slightly larger screen. You can also put mp3 of the tune on your kindle, but with a pad you could presumably stream video or even Skype with a teacher. Of course kindles are lighter and hold a charge forever. Both have their plus side.

3

I don’t have a kindle so I don’t know what types of files it can handle, but it wouldn’t be as flexible as a tablet as it’s mainly designed for reading books in a certain format. However I think you’d be better off with a tablet PC, I would not recommend an ipad as they are overpriced and over-hyped. Personally I’d go with an android based tablet. What I have is a Hannspad which only cost around $200. These things are like laptops, you can do anything on them. Whatever format your sheet music is on your PC, you’ll be able to view it on a tablet PC.

It’s the same file system as your PC, I just copied across my entire “Tin Whistle” folder which has all sorts of files, mp3’s, downloaded youtube videos, sheet music in all formats from pictures to pdf. They all open on the tablet just like your PC.

I have to ask though, why do you carry around so much sheet music? Hardly to a session? If you’re teaching with it and you need to show a number of people a piece of music, you could always use one of those small portable projectors. They can store all your sheet music in image format too.

4

I use my iPad and the forScore app when playing at church and it works great. Just go to the app store and search for “forScore”. It’s not cheap, but I find it perfect for my purposes. It can import PDFs directly (most of which I create in Finale); it allows you to annotate the music (which verses to play, etc); it lets you keep setlists (I have Irish, church, etc); half-page turns; LOTS more. I love it!

Pat

5

The iPad can display music in a variety of ways and play the music in many ways.

Tunebook will play, print and/or display from abc files very well, though the music display is a bit smaller than I would like.

I use Good Reader for PDF files. If you have a big file of tunes you can trim the display to remove the white space on the edges and the result is notation very much the same size as on a 8.5 x 11 sheet.

It is a fine tool for music, particularly for tunes which almost always fit on a page.

Good Reader was free when I got it, but may cost now. Tunebook is quite inexpensive.

There are other tools too. Nothing wrong with the Android tablets I suspect, though I don’t use one. The iPad is just fine for this though.

The one problem with the iPad is the display in bright sunlight can be hard to read. Readers like the Kindle are much better in that sort of light situation, but to my knowledge the screen size is a detriment.

6

I have used a Kindle with PDF files generated from ABC; they are more compact than PDFs with scans. You just upload them via USB. I was going on a trip where I had to travel light so I reckoned that uploading several old collections downloaded from the web as ABC, and throwing in a whistle and small mp3 player would be plenty to keep me amused and productive in spare moments. I didn’t have many spare moments but it didn’t take up much room. An mp3 player seems easier for mp3 and will have more capacity (or have they re-introduced memory cards on Kindles ?).

I am still not confident enough at sessions to take it along as a joke.

7

I haven’t seen those here in France. I saw a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 at the store and it compared very nicely to the ipad. The problem is the android phones don’t have as many apps as the ipad. On my iphone I have a metronome and a tuner, both are free. It’s hard to give up all those apps to get android, but at the same time I like the idea of copying over files instead of messing with itunes. I hate itunes and all the junk Apple forces on people.

I plan to get either ipad or android for christmas, still not sure which. I’m hoping prices drop before then, or right after.

8

Might be best to wait until after Christmas as the prices will drop and new models will come out. The Galaxy is Apple’s main rival in both phones and tablets, but they are not the best value for money either. The best value android tablet for the hardware you get is the one I have, the hannspad. Cheapest dual core 1Ghz on the market. Anything negative said about it in reviews is based on stock models but you can root the device with new firmware and put the latest versions of android on it and everything works perfectly. The only real negative about it is that it doesn’t have a camera built in, but it does have a mic.

Don’t worry about apps there’s more than enough of them on the Android market and that’s growing even quicker than Apple’s store. Here for example you can see a free metronome and free tuner, one of many:

https://market.android.com/details?id=gabriel.metronome&feature=search_result
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.cohortor.gstrings&feature=search_result

Here’s the tablet, I paid 204 Euro including shipping from another site but they’re out of stock at the moment. You should be able to find it from a French online retailer, if you do make sure it’s the model 53 and not 33, Manufacturer ID: SN10T1-1653:

http://www.ebuyer.com/271191-hannspree-hannspad-tablet-pc-sn10t1-1653

Plus you don’t have to mess around with iTunes, you’ll have no problems with Flash! and you can extend the memory with SD cards.

9

Hi Guys,

I had barely glanced at the replies, but figured as soon as I read what you all said, that I definitely didn’t want an Apple iPad thing!

Apple stuff is great - I predominantly use Mac, but they seem to be a little pricey (although Sony Vaio computers are very expensive, and aren’t as well spec’d out recently). Plus I couldn’t figure out the difference between wanting an iPhone, iPod or iPad, or iMac, or Airbook arkgh! My laptop is running 7 years old and so …

I was a bit impulsive and ummm… I went out today and bought errr… a Samsung Galaxy Android SII. I’m just taking it out of the box now, and I realise that there’s no way I’m going to read music from it, being less than 7inch screen.

So what was the point of buying it?! :boggle: I think I just swooned and handed $$$ over because it was so much more portable than lugging a 17" laptop around just for emails and things…

10

You’ve received some useful advice here but, with all due respect, some of it is grossly inaccurate particularly that about the iPad. iTunes is not required. Overpriced or overhyped it’s not, IMO. Thats like saying that a particular whistle is overpriced or overhyped. That’s your opinion. Value is up to the individual.

I use both a Kindle and an iPad and a couple of different Android based tablets since I manage an IT department among other things. I have music scores on Kindle, iPad and one of the Androids. The Kindle works fine if the music is not too elaborate since, as previously noted, you can’t scroll the screen.

The iPad is wonderful for music. You can not only scroll but you can zoom the screen. And I want to correct one grossly misstated argument against the iPad. It is not necessary to use iTunes to manage your iPad. Once activated by connecting to a Mac or PC with iTunes (which they will do for you at the Apple store), everything else (software applications, music, video, pdf files etc.) can be added directly by downloading from the iPad itself via the internet. I won’t explain it all here but if you want to contact me via PM I’ll explain it to you. Five minutes searching Google will explain it as well.

There are also wonderful apps like Soundhound, Tunepal and Capo to help you learn music which are not ubiquitously available for all platforms.

Flash is fine in iPad with the imminent release of Flash Player 11 and if you’re talking about Youtube video, then “there’s an app for that” now. And how much memory does one need? I have 32gb of storage. That’s an enormous amount of sheet music and mp3 files.

When IOS 5 comes out later this month, even activation can be done without connection.

I have no beef with Android or PC tablets. They cost less. But let’s don’t state a fact unless it is a fact. Otherwise it’s just your opinion.

ecohawk

11

Thanks Ecohawk.

I’ll see how I get on with the Samsung Galaxy SII. Sheet music can wait lol. If anything, I might find the camera function useful, as well as the Skype function!

I’m so fickle :laughing:

12

Ouch, it’s the 10 inch we were talking about, that would have been perfect, can you not exchange it?? I didn’t even know the Samsung Galaxy came in 7".

13

lol

The Galaxy S 2 is the mobile phone, not the tablet

David

14

LOL might be difficult to read sheet music from that so, 4" screen! Thought he bought a 7" version of the tablet which is bad enough.

15

Let me get back to you on that as I obviously have to dig up the facts for you and I’ve busy days ahead. But I stand by what I said that both iphones and ipads are in fact overpriced and overhyped.

16

Oh for goodness sakes!

I say tomato you say tomahto. Let’s call the whole thing off.

There is never going to be an end to the “Apple is great,” “Apple is overhyped and overpriced” argument. Either side can amass lots of “facts,” but truth to be told it is the interpretation of the facts that most opinions are based on and folks differ in those interpretations.

Rather than turning this into one of those arguments (which rage without end on various tech sites) let’s stick to saying what we like about the tool we use.

Off the soap box… Sorry if this is out of line.

Note to MT: Is this still the war rooom :slight_smile: ?

17

There is a very good ABC-rendering program for the iPad.

How useful it might be for creating ABC I don’t know - the iPad seems designed to stop you authoring documents on it, but maybe somebody’s found a text editor that works on it.

18

I spent 1 hour reading reviews today and I thought I’d share what I found:

The Samsung Galaxy has a lot of reviews on amazon written by people who had it either die on them, or get the oil slick problem (forgot what they called it) where the screen has rainbows on it. Look at the 3* reviews on amazon. Lots of people say it lags. Overall my impression is it’s not quite up to par with the iPad 2 although I’m sure that will change in the future with improves in the Android OS.

The Samsung Galaxy has 10.1" screen but it’s widescreen. This is great for watch movies but not so great for reading PDFs and sheet music. The 4:3 format of the iPad sounds better for reading.

I love my iPhone but I really dislike iTunes and how Apple controls everything. I boycott buying any music from itunes, instead buying it from amazon or cdbaby which are usually cheaper anyhow. However, iTunes is something I put up with in order to have the iPhone which I really love.

So I’m leaning towards an iPad. This will be from Christmas so I have plenty of time to decide.

The question I have left for iPad is this: How easy is to it put PDFs files on the iPad? I have lots of books and scans of sheet music in PDF form that I’d like to read on the iPad. I don’t want to download them to the iPad every time I want to read them. I know there is PDF software for the iPad and I don’t mind paying for it. This will be my main use for the iPad, with internet browsing & email secondary.

I think Android tablets can be better than iPad in a year or two. But I think they’re not there yet. The Hannspad mentioned earlier seems like a bargain. But one would have to be adapt to install the latest Android OS, etc. Most of us probably just want something that works when we turn it on.

19

I just found this video which shows how to sync PDF files on the ipad. He copied over a digital camera user manual and it looks quite good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUt8cUblRO4

So I’m heavily leaning towards the iPad. I’d like to hear from people using it for sheet music. I really hate printing out tons of music and the song books I’ve purchased won’t stay open very easily, which is very difficult for piano pieces that are many pages long. With the ipad I could just click the screen once to go to the next page. Sure beats fooling with a book that won’t stay open.

20

Hi Guys,

Well this is my first day on the Samsung Galaxy S2. Here’s what I’ve been doing with it:

Skype…internet browsing…uploading music files…uploading PDF files from scans of my music books, finding my way around using the GPS (it seems to tell me I’m at home lol. Fair enough - I’ve barely moved from the kitchen into the living room :laughing: ); finding out how to use the digital camera, and making some videos

:smiley:

Now with a 7 inch screen, yes you can increase sections of the text by spreading finger and thumb apart on the touch screen. It is more for studying music, rather than playing as sheet music. However the great thing is, I can carry it around with my music stored in it, and just send the files across to a computer screen somewhere else to read via bluetooth once I learn how.

A friend of mine has a iPad 2: the Galaxy S2 is wayyy quicker for navigating. Not sure why -since it is only a 1.2Ghz ? Anyway, i’m really happy with it. Perhaps it didn’t do what I wanted. I don’t wish to carry a 10" screen around with me - I’d definitely rather have a Macbook Air, or at least a Macbook Pro, once it gets bigger than a book sized novel.

Cunparis - if you prefer traditional book/sheet music like I do, you just need to buy a few hardware clamps with rubber spongy ends, to clamp a book onto a music stand. I’ve never gotten into the Amazon Kindle thing, and I’m not so sure I’m going to like the iPad. I like the idea of an iPad, but I will still need a professional laptop at some point (remember my laptop is 7 years old). With a lifestyle unit like the Galaxy, being able to use skype (free) from an internet cafe, is just so fantastic when you’re in a foreign country, trying to call home. This way, when I go travelling, I just slip the tiny little Galaxy S2 into my pocket. Btw: the Samsung 10.1" Galaxy has both widescreen and 4:3 capability. My 7" screen has as well. It has a 8Megapixel camera, which is very detailed too. The bit I like most, is that I can just dock it into a keyboard dock, and type really fast on a normal keyboard. I think you can do that on the iPad too.

I don’t understand why people are worried about the .pdf issue. On a Mac, you can just save any .tiff (scanned) or .jpg document or .doc document as a .pdf, and then upload it onto a Kindle, Galaxy, or iPad. It is a shame I won’t be able to read music from the Samsung, but given that the battery would dim the lights for energy saving, by the time I get through a slow air, it’s probably best I just stick to paper :slight_smile: