Sheet Music For Amazon Kindle DX Gets Rid Of The, Um, Sheet

I think page turning is too slow on the Kindle. You could miss a lot in the couple of seconds it takes for the next page to display, even if you had a convenient way to tell it to turn the page.

jdale

@psychiccheese:
I had in this post made a sonnet,
This battle, with which, I'd have won it.
But the post nears page two,
What am I to do,
But hold of and make 'nother run of it

Con Seannery

@Margatron: I am not a musician, so I can't say for sure, but my guess us that this is not intended for orchestral musician use as it's primary market. There are probably thousands of times more amateur musicians (guitar,mostly) that read sheet music to get the chords but aren't the sort who would have to draw little pictures of glasses on the side. So when you say "useless" remember that's useless to you.

It would make changing the page much easier, especially if you create some sort of foot pedal to control the page-turning.

MePerson

This would be fine is the chart was linear - i.e., no repeats, DS, Coda, etc. But alas, most charts do have them. You may be at page 10 and then need to jump back to page to, then at page 4, jump to page 11. You get the idea.

bruceb17

@Margatron: You are clearly a classical musician. This would be great for jazz/pop musicians - Imagine getting a one page lead sheet over the air. I agree, annotating sheet music is a must, but I never write anything on lead sheet.

goo2

This would be good if you're at an opera and you have a libretto or score for an orchestra. Otherwise, pretty much useless, as others have noted.

I emailed Jeff Bezos about this in April and got a reply back from one of his assistants. I was bummed because they liked the idea but didn't offer a kindle DX to be a tester. :(

kwjayhawk

@Xterm11_is Rhyming:
It's hard to turn pages while you play
They should have thought of this, back in the day
an autoscroller
would be way cooler
than having your music fall away

I've decided to follow you around
and reply to your comments abound
You've got a head start
but you deserve a heart
*click* you are now renowned

psychiccheese

@frigg: Not a great reader. Both have an incredibly small screen and neither are affordable. Most music does not come formatted for them, so it will require quite a bit of scanning, which is fine for soloists or small ensembles, but larger groups (orchestras, concert bands, etc.) will never use these until publishers like Hal Leonard and Alfred Publishing start converting everything. OCR is pretty unreliable too. You would be better off playing the parts in manually instead of correcting OCR mistakes.

donlphi

@SAfiftyseven: It would allow them to enlarge their in-office putting greens.

Probably not the best sheet music reader out there, but an excellent feature for the Kindle to have. So you're saying that those wall-to-wall law textbook bookcases can be replaced by one handheld Kindle...what are lawyers going to do with all that empty space?

Wow Im in my high school band and I just realized how great this would be for storing music. Instead of carrying around a huge folder of music thhis thing would be much better

the problem is that reading music is not like reading a book. often times it is necessary or at least helpful to be able to see what comes on the next page... especially in a fast paced piece. how else will u know when it is safe to get that itch on your face!?

obbie

The idea has a lot of potential. Digital sheet music readers are not new, but the Kindle has the potential to make it more accessible. But a really practical digital sheet music ready needs a touch screen so that you can mark up your music.

LPAkira

as a bassist, this would be great. also as a bassist, most of our sheet music is made up of rests...still though this would sure beat a huge folder full of tattered and taped originals. plus, imagine having the real book on one of these... yay i want one now (with a foot switch)

thehamsterman

@frigg: That is pretty cool. If I were a professional (or heck even a semi-pro), I would seriously consider this.

But I'm at below-average status here with my dwindling talent at the violin and piano.

lilyHaze

It's a great idea until you want to take a note on the music.

trtrunner

@OMG! Ponies!: Yeah - imagine discount law commercials in the future. No bookshelf full of leather-bound books, only a Kindle DX.

@frigg: I second that - but even though I own (and love) a Kindle, the page turning mechanism seems like it might make sheet music far more difficult to navigate than regular paper, especially after years of practicing the lightning-page-turn.

I love my kindle. And I'm a musician. Yet I have NO desire to put the two together. (Though I am tired of large music books that refuse to stay open on the piano without some creative propping...)

Alexander Yellen

@bosskev: http://www.sadtrombone.com

Alexander Yellen

@Topcat: Actually, you could get around that by scanning the music off the Kindle, using music notation OCR, bringing it into Finale or Sibelius, printing it out and then marking it up, or just altering it with the notation software before your print. Not that I'd ever advocate such a thing....

@TalKeaton: That would be nice.

As long as you're building it, you might want to look at MAX (http://www.cycling74.com/products/max5) which can listen and respond to music in real time.

@frigg: That looks like a great reader other than the fact that it's $900.00!

reddingofish

@KefkaticFanatic: maybe someone will come out with a foot pedal to advance the page, like the one made by freehand systems.

Why the hell not, man.

Loonie

@Margatron: Pssshhh...guess someone here has never heard of a dry-erase marker...

T-Will

@Margatron: There's already a sheet music reader that lets you easily advance to the next page (www.freehandsystems.com):
I believe they're solid enough that Broadway shows use them. There's a foot pedal option for advancing the page, don't know if something like that could be made for the kindle. But even without it, getting easy access to sheet music via the Kindle would be great. Granted, being able to print it out would be even greater.

@SemantiGalumph: ... SO, then it needs to have the ability to be a "sheep", all of the musicians pair up with a leader that dictates changes like that! Could even be done on-the-fly really.

@Margatron: Duh, you need to buy 5 Kindles and place them side by side. That's what the sales rep. told me and I'm totally going to do it. Jokes on you people who don't think about the stuff you buy.

Hello Mister Walrus

As a musician, this is GREAT!!!

Sheet music is increasingly hard to get.

If the library is legitimate, this would get me running, not walking, to the nearest amazon bodega, buy me a bigass kindle, and never say another bad thing about it.

This is a good idea for gigging musicians It save having to bring a bulging library around with you and if you are requested to play something its ideal. i think though going one step further, It you could intergrate it into the construction of an upright piano, Make it touch screen with a subscribtion to music publishing and then use midid messages from the keys being played to enable automatic turn of pages. Could be very handy for student or performers

Eamon O'Malley

This would be great if you could simply set the tempo on the kindle and than it will flash a little black dot at you, like a metronome - but silent, and than, based on the metronome, it would know where you are and have the option to flip the page at the end or keep the current measure at the top of the screen, scrolling once after the end of each measure.

that would make it perfect.

tsdexter

@Nauthiz: I'm pretty sure the kindle does not provide the ability for you to scribble notes on it. Even if it was just text notes, that wouldn't be enough. For example, a common notation I use in orchestral music is a little drawing of glasses to remind me to look up at the conductor during a certain passage. I would never pay $3 for music I couldn't write on.

@Margatron: Winner! First thing I thought of when I saw this (as I am a classical musician as well) is that I can't make any markings on it. Pretty well useless.

@Margatron: Agreed, I'm always penciling in marks of various sorts on my sheet music. Highlighting accents, counts for difficult passages, etc.

@OMG! Ponies!: Not only that, but the thick binding and dense cover is extra painful when tossing it at obnoxious colleagues.

Kaiser-Machead

@bosskev: What does a banana peel on a sidewalk have to do with music? You have to see sharp or you'll be flat.

Aren't Kindle pages smaller than the 8.5x11 or 9x12 pages we're used to reading music from? So, now, we have to lean in even more?

@KefkaticFanatic: Being able to connect a foot pedal would be the way to go.

Pesti-Esti

@Margatron: I thought about this too. But if there was a way to automatically "turn the page", it could be good for performance.

@Margatron: I was totally going to ask about making notations on the Kindle. Never used one, so I dunno if you can or not. But if you can't, totally a no go. I was always scribbling all over my music when I played regularly.

Nauthiz

Just the other day I was thinking I should try converting a tab to see how it would look on the Kindle. It'd have to be on the DX, though. My original Kindle's screen is too small to display enough notation to make it worth it.

@bosskev: Terrible. Just terrible. PS. Keep up the good work. PPS. Edit? I can actually edit now?? Kewl...

Agreed. A band director will change things up on you, such as dropping whole sections, or they'll change the dynamics of a piece. The tangibility of sheet music is REQUIRED until touch-screen variants exist.

SemantiGalumph

CAUTION! Do Not Read Further Unless You Like to Groan at Stupendously Bad Puns.
•••YOU'VE BEEN WARNED•••

My instrumental talents are so bad, whether learned from Kindle or paper, any song I'd play would still sound like sheet music.

I think the ideal way to do this would be if the Kindle had a microphone and could tell when you reached the end of the page, then turning it. Which would basically make it a different device. Hmm... *runs off to build it*

This needs some sort of auto-scrolling to it... but I would definitely be into this if they sold some guitar tabs in this format.

@waaronw: That is exactly what I was thinking. Make the Kindle DX price a little more reasonable (it will happen in a couple years, just through market forces), and make sheet music priced reasonably, and I could see myself getting into it. Be so much easier than lugging around a bag of music everywhere you go, for sure.

farcedude

@32ndnote: True, but if you're playing a rather quick piece and are used to quickly swatting to the next page, that could be a bit of a problem. It would definitely be something to get used to.

But I love my hardbound law textbooks. They render any bookcase completely immovable with their weight. Not only that, they are an excellent (albeit expensive) way to decorate the office.

This is only good if your sheet music is one sheet long. But as any other classical musicians know, sheet music is in sheets so you can tape five of them (or more) together across your music stand and not have to turn the page so many times during a performance. I would hate to accidentally break a Kindle by knocking it off the stand in an attempt to turn the page quickly.
EDIT: Almost forgot, this is an even worse idea than I previously thought because you can't pencil in fingerings or notes of any kind. Totally useless.

Being a pianist/violinist, I can actually see how this is a decent idea. I don't like that you can only see one page at a time, but hitting a button is way less sloppy/loud than a page turn.

that is a pretty excellent idea actually. Now if there was a way for the kindle to hear you playing and know when it needs to flip the page it would be perfect.

It would have been an ok idea if they had left the page forward/backward controls on both sides so you could page easily with either hand while playing. As it is you'd have to use your right hand or reach in front of it with your left hand.

The problem here is that if you actually want to be playing this music, you have to stop and turn the page. Which is incredibly annoying and a waste. Also, the normal paper look isn't the ideal style you want to look at. It's much easier on the eyes to be reading one of the nice yellowed sheets like in the henle urtexts. I would also be worried about the size of it and the safety of the device while playing some crazy Rachmaninov piece. Oh, and having it play through the sheet music like one of the composition programs would do (Sibelius, Finale), then that would also be a nice addition.

Rig up a foot switch (or other) for changing the pages and I could see some musicians jumping on this.

waaronw

Now if you could set that up so that it slowly scrolled through the music at a pace that you could set, this would be gold!

If I will be playing an instrument, I'll probably be somewhere at home or at a place with an accessible laptop so I could get on the internet and use the sheets available on the web.

This feature is a great addition for anyone who already has one, but I dont see it being a decision maker for anyone who is thinking about getting one.

If I were a great composer,
I would be a disposer,
Of many sheets of paper,
I'd be a tree raper,
I should go green,
and keep our world clean,
Ill go buy some Kindles,
but now my faith dwindles,
because it runs on electricity,
going green isn't simplicity.

If you had a pedal-operated page turning button, it might work. Hmm...

Marcus

OMG FINALLY they came out with law books... lol

@frigg: Yeah that's sounds really efficient and something you can do in mere yoctoseconds.

rockhopper