Topic by hanysz

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Topic: Screen for reading sheet music?

I'm looking for suggestions here.  Soon I'll need to replace my old Android tablet.  I'm looking for something I can put on the music rack on my piano for reading scores.

The problem I'm having is that all the new tablets seem to be widescreen.  If you take a 16:9 screen and turn it on its side for portrait mode, you end up with narrowscreen!  These things are less than 15cm wide (or tall in landscape mode), not great for reading music.

An ipad or a surface pro would be a good size, but these are overpriced for my purposes.  I'll be using this device for opening up PDFs from IMSLP, nothing else (well, maybe the nkoda sheet music app if I get keen, but that's an optional extra, I can live without it).  So there's no point paying extra for a high resolution camera, fast CPU or big SSD, since I won't use those things.  (And also I'm not keen on giving money to either Microsoft or Apple if there are more open alternatives.)  The tablet I'm currently using (Chuwi Hi-12) cost about a quarter of an ipad the same size and does everything I need, but it won't last for ever and they don't make that model any more.

What else are people using?

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Reply by Luc Henrion

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I'm sorry if it doesn't help but my own setup is a 23" screen, attached via HDMI to my laptop and a USB pedal system that allows me to turn pages. The advantage of such a big screen is that I have always 2 pages side by side, like usual on a "real" paper sheet... Just food for thought.

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Reply by GRB

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

You are correct about the screen size of newer tablets.   I'm using a Samsung Galaxy  S5e in landsacpe orientation with a Firefly Pedal.  You can usually only display two lines of piano music on a page, but depending on the music, some times 3 lines can fit.   This is something that should be addressed by the digital music industry.  Traditional sheet music is obsolete.

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Reply by kumowoon1025

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

Hmm... I'm not sure if this is an option for you (seems like you need the portability?) but I got a monster of an LG panel to mount on an articulating display anchor-post-thing (like the ones you see at your dentists) in front of my keyboard, 32:9 Dual QHD (side by side) and ~15" high, so bigger than your typical printed scores. It's curved and everything, maybe 5 "page turns" max for a whole sonata with 6-up display. Only thing is I had to order through CDW and have it invoiced though corporate acct. since apparently you can only get consumer SKUs at places like Best Buy but they might come up for sale as surplus pretty soon on eBay, etc. Monitor datasheet

Another thing you might want to consider are one of those chinese battery powered display units, I think the biggest I've seen is a 17" diagonal unit, but it's not too much smaller than, say, a standard sheet of letter sized paper. Only thing is you'd have to plug a video source into it since it's just a display, but your phone will probably do the job no problem. This unit is 15.6" so it's thinner than 8.5" in portrait mode as you say, but the bigger ones are all powered through USB-C PD or separate power adapter.

Reply by hanysz

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

kumowoon1025 wrote:

Another thing you might want to consider are one of those chinese battery powered display units...

Ah, that looks promising!  I'll look for larger but similar models and report back here if successful.

I need "portability" in the sense that I'm about half and half printed sheet music and reading off the screen, and I'm moving between digital piano+Pianoteq and my acoustic piano.  So the screen/tablet/whatever won't ever leave my music room, but I want to be able to pick it up from one place and put it down somewhere else with minimal fuss.

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Reply by scherbakov.al

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I, too, dream of a light and thin device that is easy to take with me.  It should have a good resolution e-ink display and be spread over two A4 pages.  Several devices presented are incredible money.  Apparently because of its exclusivity ..

Reply by bgrant

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I'm using a Vankyo Matrixpad S30 tablet, an inexpensive ($150) 12" Android tablet that works well displaying PDF files and Scribd, youtube videos, Airturn pedal.

Got it on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/MatrixPad-S30-Oc...B083BRVG28

Bruce

Reply by teknico

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

Here are a few expensive, e-ink models:

https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic...d-pianists

Since last year, new models with backlight have come out.

Reply by oldionus

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I found the easiest solution was to go on a site like Swappa and purchase a one-model obsolete used iPad. The iPad format is better and it supports forscore, which is the best pdf based viewer for score reading. Also works well with bluetooth pedal page turners and an Apple pencil, which is very useful and works much better than capacitance styli. Got the iPad for under $500, about a year ago.


hanysz wrote:

I'm looking for suggestions here.  Soon I'll need to replace my old Android tablet.  I'm looking for something I can put on the music rack on my piano for reading scores.

The problem I'm having is that all the new tablets seem to be widescreen.  If you take a 16:9 screen and turn it on its side for portrait mode, you end up with narrowscreen!  These things are less than 15cm wide (or tall in landscape mode), not great for reading music.

An ipad or a surface pro would be a good size, but these are overpriced for my purposes.  I'll be using this device for opening up PDFs from IMSLP, nothing else (well, maybe the nkoda sheet music app if I get keen, but that's an optional extra, I can live without it).  So there's no point paying extra for a high resolution camera, fast CPU or big SSD, since I won't use those things.  (And also I'm not keen on giving money to either Microsoft or Apple if there are more open alternatives.)  The tablet I'm currently using (Chuwi Hi-12) cost about a quarter of an ipad the same size and does everything I need, but it won't last for ever and they don't make that model any more.

What else are people using?

Last edited by oldionus (12-11-2020 21:18)
Amateur Standalone PTQ user; interests classical music, especially Bach and Mozart, and historic keyboards

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Reply by hanysz

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I ended up buying a 14 inch Venturer Luna Max Android tablet.  The screen size is about 17.4x31 cm.  It's still widescreen format, not exactly what I wanted, but big enough that most scores are readable, and much cheaper than an iPad or Surface.

It wouldn't be great as a general-purpose mobile device.  It's a little on the bulky and heavy side, battery life not all that good, low-powered CPU, no rear camera.  And the screen resolution is only 1920x1280, a step down from the Chuwi Hi-2, but that bothers me less than I expected.  As something that I use only for score reading at home, it meets my needs well.

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Reply by dv

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

hanysz wrote:

I ended up buying a 14 inch Venturer Luna Max Android tablet.  The screen size is about 17.4x31 cm.  It's still widescreen format, not exactly what I wanted, but big enough that most scores are readable, and much cheaper than an iPad or Surface.

It wouldn't be great as a general-purpose mobile device.  It's a little on the bulky and heavy side, battery life not all that good, low-powered CPU, no rear camera.  And the screen resolution is only 1920x1280, a step down from the Chuwi Hi-2, but that bothers me less than I expected.  As something that I use only for score reading at home, it meets my needs well.

Is it stable on the music stand with that bulky stuff on its back?

Please report back here after you use if for a month or two, the size is decent, and the price not too bad. On the other hand I agree that if one needs just electronic reader, a regular monitor is best, and sometimes you can have those for nothing (or very cheap) on craigslist.

Where do I find a list of all posts I upvoted? :(

Reply by Key Fumbler

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

How the other half live:
https://www.gvidomusic.com/

Reply by Luc Henrion

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

Not exactly inexpensive but very nice !!!

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Reply by hanysz

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

dv wrote:

Is it stable on the music stand with that bulky stuff on its back?

Please report back here after you use if for a month or two, the size is decent, and the price not too bad. On the other hand I agree that if one needs just electronic reader, a regular monitor is best, and sometimes you can have those for nothing (or very cheap) on craigslist.

Yes, I've been using it for a few weeks now.  It's more stable than it looks!  I was a bit alarmed when I first opened the package (it wouldn't be great to travel with), but it turns out to be fine for home use.

I think a regular monitor would need to be cabled to my desktop computer and a power supply.  I don't want the cables.  Or am I missing something here?

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Reply by Beto-Music

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I remamber there was a site with a data bank of thousands of music sheets and an on line music sheet player with controls of speed. Forgot the name and can't find the site or don't know it it's still stand.

Reply by dv

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

hanysz wrote:
dv wrote:

Is it stable on the music stand with that bulky stuff on its back?

Please report back here after you use if for a month or two, the size is decent, and the price not too bad. On the other hand I agree that if one needs just electronic reader, a regular monitor is best, and sometimes you can have those for nothing (or very cheap) on craigslist.

Yes, I've been using it for a few weeks now.  It's more stable than it looks!  I was a bit alarmed when I first opened the package (it wouldn't be great to travel with), but it turns out to be fine for home use.

I think a regular monitor would need to be cabled to my desktop computer and a power supply.  I don't want the cables.  Or am I missing something here?

Thank you. No you are not missing anything. That regular monitor will work only in a permanent setting in which the cables can be hidden/routed with a raceway (I may eventually do that for my DIY digital hybrid), so no good for going back and forth with the acoustic.

Where do I find a list of all posts I upvoted? :(

Reply by dv

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

Key Fumbler wrote:

How the other half live:
https://www.gvidomusic.com/


Sadly it was too expensive to have success and hence it failed and it's been discontinued:

https://www.gvidomusic.com/uploads/Noti...-GVIDO.pdf

In my opinion something like that should have been max $600 and with the option to buy a one-page version for max $300.

But yes, it looks very nice.

Where do I find a list of all posts I upvoted? :(

Reply by dv

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

dv wrote:
Key Fumbler wrote:

How the other half live:
https://www.gvidomusic.com/


Sadly it was too expensive to have success and hence it failed and it's been discontinued:

https://www.gvidomusic.com/uploads/Noti...-GVIDO.pdf

In my opinion something like that should have been max $600 and with the option to buy a one-page version for max $300.

But yes, it looks very nice.

This looks identical to the GVIDO, and does have the single page option: https://www.padformusician.com/en/products -- still very expensive tough

Plenty of less expensive but too small ones such as https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2

The very rare large ones like https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi2 are too expensive, IMHO

The only one which sounded reasonable to me (which I almost bought) is https://www.quirklogic.com/products/papyr

Where do I find a list of all posts I upvoted? :(

Reply by jcitron

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

You may want to look at this site here:

https://powermusicsoftware.com/

They also offer hardware setups as well.

I currently run their software, as well as the ancient e-Stand on a very old and very ancient Dell XPS18 tablet-PC which is more like an All-in-One. My XPS18 is now dying, and I've been on the lookout for a decent replacement. The problem with many of the All-in-One devices these days is the weight. Instead of keeping the weight down, they're now in the 6-8 kg range which is too heavy for the piano. Cambron Software's offerings appear to be much lighter.

Reply by Lynn S

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

I'm a recently retired illustrator. I used a Wacom 22" Cintiq pressure sensitive drawing tablet. It has a stand, so I have it on a wooden TV table. It originally cost $3000 (never mind the adobe subscriptions). I'm old and only been learning to play for four years. If I hadn't done that I might be looking for some design student to give it away to. It weighs a ton, but mine isn't going anywhere.

So, if you know a retired commercial artist, they might be looking for a new home for theirs... I still have the previous model that was  like a mouse pad.

Reply by jcitron

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Re: Screen for reading sheet music?

Lynn S wrote:

I'm a recently retired illustrator. I used a Wacom 22" Cintiq pressure sensitive drawing tablet. It has a stand, so I have it on a wooden TV table. It originally cost $3000 (never mind the adobe subscriptions). I'm old and only been learning to play for four years. If I hadn't done that I might be looking for some design student to give it away to. It weighs a ton, but mine isn't going anywhere.

So, if you know a retired commercial artist, they might be looking for a new home for theirs... I still have the previous model that was like a mouse pad.

I know which display you have. My brother has the older model he uses for his graphics design and CAD work. That cost him about the same about 14 years ago. His requires a stylus though and no direct touch like yours.

I tried a monitor setup with pedals to turn the pages before I spring for a new touch-sensitive display. The problem I ran into is the display was a bit too far for me to see everything clearly even though it was much bigger.