Maintaining a Repertoire

[NickC]

I have my sheet music organized into stacks. The first stack is created by combining several other stacks of loose pages when I'm trying to clean up the house for guests. Then that stack is eventually dispersed into a sub stack system created by searching through the first stack for a particular tune. Once that is found, it goes into another stack on the music stand until there are too many pages and they start falling off. Then the ones on the bottom go into a separate stack and the ones that fell off sometimes get stored neatly under furniture. Once I have enough separate stacks, or if we are having company over, I will then arrange them into the combined stack and start over again. I know where everything is.

OK, it's not that bad. I have several bins that are loosely arranged by genre. Then I have another bin that are the ones that I am currently working on. Some are in binders, but others are stapled together in collections. But, I do know where everything is, and I try to only have the music out while I'm learning the tune. The one's that are on my above mentioned 'set' list, I try to commit to memory. Of course, that list isn't super long, so I may have to come up with an alternate plan, but it works for now.

 

[JeffJetton]

Does that program have play back features where you can scroll through the music on the screen, turn pages or "follow the bouncing ball" as in older programs such as Cakewalk ?

Yes, you can have it play back a chart, and there's a vertical bar that moves along to show you where it is at it plays. Could that be used as a robot page-turner? Maybe. Seems like it might be tricky to always stay synced up without hearing it though.

But heck, it's a free program, so it won't cost anyone anything but their free time to try!

 

[JeffJetton]

One of my "to do " tasks would be to remove the Bass cleff from the pages in order to remove the requirement to turn pages, either manually or via a bluetooth pedal. I can dream, can't I?

Well heck, you can do that without any fancy note-recognizing software. Back in the day we'd just photocopy the music, cut out the staves we wanted with scissors or an xacto knife, them tape or paste them back together on a blank page. This is when "copy and paste" literally meant copy and paste!

You could then go the extra step of photocopying that pasted-up master to get a nice, clean page if you wanted, but it wasn't always necessary if you enjoyed living on the edge.

Of course, nowadays you could do the same thing all in your computer. Copy and crop out whatever staves you want and paste them into a new document. Save as a PDF. Done.

 

[olivigus]

My dream is to know enough songs to struggle with all the things you guys are discussing!

 

[Valski]

Well heck, you can do that without any fancy note-recognizing software. Back in the day we'd just photocopy the music, cut out the staves we wanted with scissors or an xacto knife, them tape or paste them back together on a blank page. This is when "copy and paste" literally meant copy and paste!

You could then go the extra step of photocopying that pasted-up master to get a nice, clean page if you wanted, but it wasn't always necessary if you enjoyed living on the edge.

Of course, nowadays you could do the same thing all in your computer. Copy and crop out whatever staves you want and paste them into a new document. Save as a PDF. Done.

If it was only that simple. Cutting every other line out of a page of sheet music only works if you can find a lot of time to do so. Even then the results can be of poor quality since it's very difficult to get straight lines and some of the notation will be hard to cut out since the treble and bass have cleffs sometimes borrow space from each other. The same goes for the electronic version of copy and paste, that is also super difficult to properly align.

The software seems like a more logical approach because you can make corrections for a professional looking final product. I'll report back on the results but don't feel that $39 is too much to invest.

 

[Monty [IIIII]]

Yes, you can have it play back a chart, and there's a vertical bar that moves along to show you where it is at it plays. Could that be used as a robot page-turner? Maybe. Seems like it might be tricky to always stay synced up without hearing it though.

But heck, it's a free program, so it won't cost anyone anything but their free time to try!

Thanks. And Free is good too!

 

[jozz]

I guess my only problem with converting my collection of sheet music to PDF files is the inability to make notations about fingering and such as I get more familiar with a tune. I think there are computer tablets with stylus to solve that problem. Just one more thing to figure out. Probably worthy of another thread.

You can do that without stylus in an app. I use this: https://pdfviewer.io (Android/free). It lets you type or sribble with your finger.

More importantly it has a toggle switch to keep screen on, while displaying for prolonged time. Samsung tablets use front camera for this, but that is not always practical everywhere.

BTW, a simple free alternative to Adobe as PDF editor is LibreOffice (Draw). This lets you add stuff like interactive annotations, example URL's or index pages inline with your PDF collection / booklet. This can be useful if you're stuck with a static PDF without source, but want to enrich it.

 

[Pipemajor]

Yes it's probably a lower quality bluetooth pedal but it turns the pages perfectly. Not sure what is going wrong sometimes but I suspect it is probably to do with the original format before it was converted to pdf.

Had another play with it and found that, if I use the tablet in vertical mode it works perfectly.
Because I found it easier to read, I had been using it horizontally where it turns half a page at a time which would sometimes cut a stave in half.

 

[Pipemajor]

I guess my only problem with converting my collection of sheet music to PDF files is the inability to make notations about fingering and such as I get more familiar with a tune. I think there are computer tablets with stylus to solve that problem. Just one more thing to figure out. Probably worthy of another thread.

MobileSheets Pro allows you to add text etc. to pdfs.

 

[Monty [IIIII]]

You can do that without stylus in an app. I use this: https://pdfviewer.io (Android/free). It lets you type or sribble with your finger.

More importantly it has a toggle switch to keep screen on, while displaying for prolonged time. Samsung tablets use front camera for this, but that is not always practical everywhere.

BTW, a simple free alternative to Adobe as PDF editor is LibreOffice (Draw). This lets you add stuff like interactive annotations, example URL's or index pages inline with your PDF collection / booklet. This can be useful if you're stuck with a static PDF without source, but want to enrich it.

Thanks, Jazz. I've got the necessary equipment. Looks like I just need to learn how to use it! Same with accordion.

 

[JerryPH]

Well heck, you can do that without any fancy note-recognizing software. Back in the day we'd just photocopy the music, cut out the staves we wanted with scissors or an xacto knife, them tape or paste them back together on a blank page. This is when "copy and paste" literally meant copy and paste!

Haha... so true!!

 

[Valski]

Haha... so true!!

You can also copy out the songs by hand, note for note, using your quill pen and ink on your papyrus scroll. Every day new technology appears and you have to adopt the things that work and overlook those that don't work. Don’t buy technology for it's own sake.

I've tried writing out music by hand like I used to many years ago, but it's very tedious and my penmanship is disappointing. When I photocopy the pages it still looks messy and my music collection looks poorly prepared so I suggested a solution that could give better results. Everyone is free to choose what works well for them, not trying to dictate what you should do.

I've seen people's song books with stained pages, torn pages that were taped together and variously sized pages. It worked for them but for me that was distracting and it took away from my sense of enjoyment.

With 23 songs you could photocopy the pages and everything works fine. When you have considerably more music I believe that you might want to be better organized and have a professional looking repertoire. The entire point of this discussion was to assist each other at doing something better and I can always find some fault in how I've organized things and therefore feel that the electronic method provides more flexibility to do things better every time.

 

[Dingo40]

Valski,
"I've seen people's song books with stained pages, torn pages that were taped together and variously sized pages."
It's when my tunes reach this stage of dilapidation I know I'm close to having learnt them!?

 

[Corinto]

Usually it's normal to find more than one arrangement for lots of popular tunes, so after looking at these, I choose the one or two I prefer and re-notate in EasyABC notation, with or without my own little arrangements till it sounds the way I know it or I remember it ... and then in EasyABC I print a pdf. One can choose portrait or landscape and scale it so everything fits in one or two pages. ymmv.

 

[NickC]

This thread had me thinking about digitizing all my charts. I'm kind of back and forth. On the one hand, it would be super convenient. On the other, I like having a hard copy that I can keep through the years. I have etude books (double bass) from college some 20 years ago. I still pull them out and play through them. I have complete orchestral parts, spiral bound, with my bowings and fingerings written in. I haven't looked at the Mahler book in a while, but I did pull it out when we performed Mahler 1 a few years ago, and my part was already marked up. I wonder if I would have transferred these to new devices over the years.

 

[Johnny]

One interesting technique is the "Leitner system". Basically, you put the names of pieces from your repertoire on separate index cards (or Post-It notes, or I guess you could use a spreadsheet, etc.) You then organize them into some number of different boxes (or stacks, or whatever) based on how well you can play them now. The "terrible" ones you work on every practice session, the "solid" ones you only dredge up every now and then, and the ones in the middle you work on at some frequency in-between. You could also have a box for brand-new material that you're still initially learning.

This is a great idea, Jeff. Thanks for sharing! I'm using a weekly practice sheet to help organize my sessions and I think this would fit right in. The practice sheet is from Gerald Klickstein's book The Musician's Way (great read, btw, especially for university student musicians), and is divided into 5 'practice zones' to work on over the week: New Material, Developing Material, Performance Material, Technique, and Musicianship.

The thing I like best about the weekly format is that I can easily glance over and quickly plan out individual practice sessions in my notebook. Obviously, this is all about personal preference and practice styles. But as somebody with a limited time to practice, I've found this keeps me more focused.

Good news: Klickstein made the weekly practice sheet template (and other resources) available for free on his website: https://www.musiciansway.com/downloads/

PS - Jeff: I think somewhere on this forum you recommended the book First, Learn to Practice and the ideas in that book have also been very helpful. Thanks!

 

[Valski]

This thread had me thinking about digitizing all my charts. I'm kind of back and forth. On the one hand, it would be super convenient. On the other, I like having a hard copy that I can keep through the years. I have etude books (double bass) from college some 20 years ago. I still pull them out and play through them. I have complete orchestral parts, spiral bound, with my bowings and fingerings written in. I haven't looked at the Mahler book in a while, but I did pull it out when we performed Mahler 1 a few years ago, and my part was already marked up. I wonder if I would have transferred these to new devices over the years.

Hello Nick,
The thread started with the question on how to manage a play list with 23 songs and then my imagination exploded. While I love paper copies of my music it looks a little ragged when I print out those scanned pages and since most of my music is from song books there is a need to preserve the original. Everything is in a different font and format which to me detracts from the finished product.

This has lead me to believe that by uploading the scanned documents into a program like Musescore where I could clean up the final product as something desirable. To achieve this possibly deranged aim, I would have to use another program that allows you to import a scan and make corrections and changes which would then go into Musescore. Let's call this program Scanscore.

It sounded innocent enough for this forum and I was surprised how much people are attached to their scissors and glue. Just thinking out loud here and trying to bounce ideas off of my co-instrumentalists. ?

 

[NickC]

Hello Nick,
Everything is in a different font and format which to me detracts from the finished product.

I immediately thought of The Real Book. The font is so distinct and ingrained in the style that it might actually feel strange to play a straight ahead jazz gig with a different font. But, other that that, I know what you mean. Some charts and scores are not as clean as they can be, and it is nice to have everything uniform.

To go back to maintaining a rep, I've found that learning common bass progressions makes it easier to memorize more tunes. Instead of looking at the changes, it's a lot easier to recognize a iii-vi-ii-V7-I progression. There are a lot of progressions that are common to specific genres.

 

[JeffJetton]

In case anyone's interested, here are a few shots of one of my gig books (making sure to only show public domain music, of course). Most tunes are one page, and if I have a two-pager I make sure it's on facing pages, so no page turns are needed.

I suppose I could join the 21st century and put these on my iPad. But that would make everything smaller, and I guess I would need a foot pedal for the two-pagers.

Although there are a few pages in the book that are just photocopies of existing sheet music, most are like this--scores I notated myself in MuseScore. I think the first one is from some two-part Zither music I found somewhere, where the parts were originally on separate staffs. The other two are transcriptions from recordings, so there wasn't any sheet music to scan even if I wanted to!

 

[JeffJetton]

The software seems like a more logical approach because you can make corrections for a professional looking final product. I'll report back on the results but don't feel that $39 is too much to invest.

I'm interested in your review if you do wind up buying it.

My confidence is not very high that any software could do an accurate-enough job of recognizing scanned notation that would make it worth the effort involved in dealing with it. You could wind up having to do so much manual tweaking that you would have been better off just getting a cheap MIDI keyboard and putting it all in by hand in the first place. (It's actually a fairly quick process once you get the hang of it.)

But it's possible the state-of-the-art has progressed more than I'm giving it credit for. For longer pieces at least, it sure could be a time-saver if it works. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed!