Multitasking using Player

[dflat]

The iTunes iOS app store has a number of PDF viewing apps for musicians. Most are for the iPad only and designed to work specifically for music notation. They are all in their infancy and many (what might be) essential features seem to be lacking. Hopefully by next year, they would all have gained maturity.

Here is a list of some:
forScore (see next post)
unreal book
Deep Dish Gigbook
PDF sheet music reader
Medley: Music score reader
Forzando
Next Page
Scorecerer (a companion Windows and Mac version available)

Some of their features: (not all)
-'hot points' where you tap a specific location and another page location quickly appears (D.C., D.S., or page turns, repeats etc.)
-notes layer (for fingering, bow markings, making notes, highlight markers, 'erasing' parts of the original score, annotations etc.)
-various ways of organizing any combination of the scores (title index, set lists (for a gig list or practice charts,) collections, keywords, difficulty rating, composer etc.)
-automatic sort by composer, genre, keyword, title
-zoom settings to eliminate large margins of white space (often necessary with scanned music)
-coupling a score with an audio file
-metronome
-adding in complete PDF documents
-adding in separate PDF files for each tune

Unlike iBooks (see a previous post) you do not have to composite the PDF pages into a single document (although some allow multi-paged documents, keeping them intact for searching.)

In most of these apps, adding additional tunes is easy, just drag more PDFs to that app in iTunes or email and "Open in…" to import. (No need to merge with the original composite document, create their bookmarks and reorder everything.)

The table of contents (index) is constructed using each PDF filename, so no bookmarking (as in iBooks) is necessary although some apps allow for further bookmarking (used for example in a multipage document with a number of pages and different tunes that need indexing.)

I hope to post a report on one or two of these apps in the future.

[dflat]

I have been checking out forScore and thought I would share some of its features with you, relating it to iReal book users needing music notation, melody, lyrics etc. while our Player is running in the background.
(Just to make it clear, I am only an end-user of forScore, not part of their development team. And as in previous posts, this is only one of a number of PDF music viewers available.)

forScore is one of a number of PDF readers for iPad, designed specifically for musicians. It is ideal for scanned music such as pages from your Real books (or classical music.) It imports single and multi-paged PDF files. The file name is used in the title index. Certain PDF information embedded in the file can optionally be imported (corresponding to title, composer, genre) or you can manually tag for perhaps, bossa, latin, Eb transpose or waltz for instance. Score menu indexes for title, composer and genre are dynamically generated. Search within them or a search for keyword - Eb could bring up your charts for alto sax for example.

As with iReal book's playlists, 'Setlists' are used to group pieces together for your gigs or different bands.

Swipes or taps are used to turn pages (or half-page turns, where it 'tears off' half of the two pages so you can visually scan where you are coming from and going to) and tapping Links are used to jump to/from repeats, DC or DS. In multi-paged PDFs, Skip-to-page using Page Peek shows thumbnails of each page as you navigate (drag along) through the document to find a particular page or for ideas for the next tune to play.

Bookmarks are useful where several pieces are in one PDF, then listing each piece in the title index (and bookmark menu.)

Each page (or bookmarked section) can store its own margin adjustment zoom to eliminate any large white margins surrounding your chart. Pages can be viewed in landscape or portrait.

Music binding links an audio track from your iPod app to a piece in forScore. It could be used to provide a backing while you view/play.
(And no, it does not work with iReal book player in this way. To do this, you could record the audio from the Player and add to your music in iPod app.)

Annotations are made on a layer on top of the music (so they can be deleted or edited if necessary in the future.) This includes hand drawing, highlighting, stamps - musical notation symbols for fingering, accidentals, mordents, bowing marks, 8va etc. (or make your own.) For music on white paper, an eraser is also supplied (non-destructive of course.)

Other options include a metronome (optionally providing automatic page turns after calculating beats), sending pages to other forScore users, back-up options.

Recent iOS models with multitasking can run iReal Book's player in the background while viewing PDFs in forScore (and similar apps.)
See a previous post in this thread about using iBooks for PDF viewing as an alternative.

Ref: forScore v2.3.3
http://www.forscoreapp.com/


-----Sept 2011------
1
forscore: Darkroom
http://www.forscoreapp.com/announcin...core-darkroom/
an app used in conjunction with forscore, used for taking photos of sheet music (etc.), optimizing it, then turning it into a PDF, add metadata, then import to forscore.

2
forscore v3 (released July 2011)

3
to import a chart from iReal b, from Song view>Send (icon with arrow)>PDF ... Open in .... forscore. It will import into forscore directly! Quick and easy.
(The title of the song (iReal b>Song edit) is used as the title in forscore.)

---UPDATE 2014---
forscore now allows audio file import into itself (instead of into the iOS music app), you can link any PDF to an audio track, and automate page turns at specific places along the track.