by Erica Garcia

Across the country, more and more musicians are utilizing iPads and other tablets for all their sheet music needs. Gone are the days of forgetting your music at home, and losing your precious pages in a big stack of pieces you will never play again. With a tablet, you have your entire sheet music library available to you in a few short clicks.

How To Use the iPad for Sheet Music

There are many apps you can use to read sheet music off of an iPad, the most popular being forScore and IMSLP. In both of these apps, you can easily upload PDFs of your sheet music into their library. ForScore is functional on IOS, iPadOS, and macOS, making it perfect for a musician already accustomed to the Apple ecosystem. The app offers many useful features, such as annotating, highlighting, along with an in-app tuner and metronome. The app allows musicians to organize their music into folders and bookmark certain pages, so you are not swiping endlessly through a book to find the perfect spot to practice. IMSLP is available for both Apple and Google users, making it more accessible! Here you can easily import pieces from the IMSLP library to the app, providing a great convenience for the player. Like forScore, you can easily annotate the music. To complete your techy setup, a foot pedal such as the PageFlip Butterfly is perfect! This foot pedal will allow you to turn the page of your music without your hands, allowing you to seamlessly play through a piece without any breaks in sound.

Double-Edged Sword?

Along with the popularization of iPads for musicians, is also the increased commonality of iPad related instrument damage. IPads are heavy, leaving them prone to fall off of music stands. In addition to damage to your entire sheet music library, chaos can occur if the iPad knocks into your precious wooden instrument. Instruments have been completely totaled due to an iPad accident, as is the case with this violin one of our clients brought in this summer. To protect your instrument, the Long Island Violin Shop recommends using an iPad specific stand such as this K&M Tablet Holder, which will securely lock your precious tablet into place, protecting everyone and everything involved from undesirable injuries.

IPads are the perfect accessory for a musician on the go. Whether you are a student or an advanced professional, having an iPad will provide an ease of experience that will only enhance your music making.