My used large-format iPad just arrived!
So excited to upload my parts for the Capitol Lab Band, our sax quartet, and what the heck, that soul band I might sub in again someday. Plus PDFs to replace all those heavy Real Books I've been carting to jam sessions for years.
In case you're considering this for your Christmas wish list or making an investment in your music career, here's what I've learned in the past six months of research.
The 12.9" iPad Pro is preferable in the Apple world, or something that big in the world of Android tablets or the Windows Surface. That way it's just as big as a sheet of music paper. And the iPad Pro supports the Apple Pencil for on-the-fly annotating of music, with more features than a plain stylus.
For me, those are the make-or-break features to play complicated big band and sax quartet music, especially since I write a lot of annotations on my music. There are reminders for sharps and flats, dynamics, and circled passages that need practice. And funny things the director says; you'll find them all scribbled on my charts.
For other people, smaller sizes and earlier cheaper generations of tablets work just fine.
Until now I've been running forScore on a seven-year-old iPad 2 with a 9.7-inch display. It's good for RealBook jams, and I can write in annotations if I want with a freebie stylus pen. An iPad2 goes for just $50-80 on eBay these days and a bandmate is running forScore on it right now.
Our bass player says he just needs the chords, and gets by on an 8-inch Android tablet he bought for $109. Smaller screens work well if the main thing you want is to avoid hauling your RealBooks or looking at a 3-ring binder to be reminded of the changes. For that you can put the forScore Mini or iReal Pro app on your cell phone, and stop reading right here.
When I'm reading charts with a lot of black notes, though, I want them to be as big as possible. And I want to make notations on the music just like I do on paper, but without all the books and page-turning. The 12.9" iPad currently ranges from under $500 used on eBay to over $1,000 new, or over $2,000 fully loaded. I'll come back to the various options in a minute, including strategies to win that eBay auction at the best price.
Must-have accessories
Software: Once you have the tablet, you'll want musician-friendly software to organize and write on the PDFs. forScore is widely reviewed as the best iPad app for searching, displaying, and annotating your library of sheet music. You can upload PDFs from a variety of sources, including Dropbox and iCloud. It's easy to tag and arrange them in setlists through which you automatically advance.
You can play along to a metronome; program buttons to jump to repeats and codas or advance a half-page at a time; and even link your sheet music to MP3 audio files, with built-in "slow-downer" and "looper" features to help you repeatedly practice difficult passages. All this costs just $9.99 on the Apple App store.
And if you're on Android, check out MobileSheets for $12.99 in the Google store, which is also available in a Windows version.
There are many other musicmaking apps you may want on your tablet for this and other purposes, including unrealBook, iGigBook, iReal Pro, etc. Search online discussions for the pros and cons of each. But since the software is frequently updated, limit your search results to the last year or two (using the Tools menu in Google).
Pencil: Unless you never mark your music, some sort of stylus is a must. If your used iPad doesn't come with one, you can find the first generation Apple Pencil for as little as $62, the new work-alike Logitech Crayon for around the same, or a generic stylus for $12-20, all on eBay (or Amazon or Best Buy if you prefer). You can also use a pen with a little black rubber bulb on the end, often given away for free at trade show booths. ForScore lets you add annotations in a layer, so the original music remains, and you can write in red ink if you want.
Music: And of course, you'll need music in PDF form. Most photocopiers will allow you to scan in all that sheet music you already own and email it to yourself as a PDF. You can use GeniusScan or another scanner app to take a picture of it on your iPad or iPhone (it helps to have a couple of bright lights nearby), and export if necessary from JPEG to PDF.
Or, you can buy or otherwise download online the PDFs you need, including brand new music you can start playing right away. Look for files with no DRM copy protection, since otherwise that limits their use to specific software such as Amazon's Kindle or Apple's iBooks. Although you can still display and play from them on an iPad, those programs aren't optimized for features like setlists and annotations. Scribd is another place with a collection of RealBooks as PDFs; some of the older ones are downloadable, but many newer ones can only be read straight in the app online by subscribers, which might be a reason to pony up the $8.99 a month (after a 30-day free trial).
Once loaded, to read the music with less harsh white light from the device, as well as improve how it looks to your audiences, you can turn on Apple's True Tone or Night Shift features, or use forScore's built-in Sepia feature.
Optional gear you may need
Stand: You need something to put your tablet on. Your standard folding wire stand will not be sturdy enough to avoid a drop that could break your tablet. Any portable music stand with a solid shelf like this one for $28 is probably good enough. A standard Manhassat is even more sturdy and can be had for $42, but wouldn't fold for transport.
Bracket: Or, you can get a bracket that clamps your pad to a mic stand, which also puts less of a barrier between you and your audience. I got the K&M which is metal and built like a tank. It does hold the 12.9" iPad. The K&M 19742 Universal Tablet Holder by itself is $58, assuming you already own a generic folding mic stand like the OnStage for $21. Or, you can get the K&M 19776 which comes with its own telescoping stand for $71. Alternatives like the IK Multimedia iKlip are cheaper, but that one doesn't expand beyond 12.1", so make sure your bracket is big enough to secure a 12.9" iPad if you get one.
Note: You need one of the mic stands with collapsible tripod legs; the ones with a solid round base are too tippy with a top-heavy iPad mounted to them, and will just fall over.
Page-turner: Part of the joy of going electronic is never having to take your hands off your instrument at page turns. You can even program a return to a different page for a repeat or coda. This requires a device to turn pages with your foot. Connections are typically Bluetooth, although USB is still an option. The PageFlip line has large rounded pedals that seem more user-friendly and harder to miss. Their two-pedal Butterfly is currently $89; the programable Firefly is $109 and is plenty for most musicians; and the four-button Dragonfly goes for $119. One of cheaper options is the AirTurn AT-104, on sale in November 2018 for $39, and there are others.
Basically they all trigger a right or left arrow click. The more complicated ones can be made to do other things such as triggering backing music tracks or adjusting volume, although you can also reach out with your finger to do those things.
Back to the oversized iPad The third generation of iPad Pros came out in early November 2018 with some upgrades: They're even thinner, and a bit smaller while retaining the same display size by shrinking the bezel (the black margin around the screen). These new iPads have a faster processor and graphics; face recognition instead of Touch ID; and USB-C charging and connections, like the newer MacBooks and iPhones, versus Lightning. The camera is now 12MB with 4K video. Available storage has doubled to 1TB. And they support a new one-piece Apple Pencil 2, which clips to the side for charging instead of sticking out the end, and has a doubleclick button on the side of the pencil which forScore uses as a shortcut to the eraser.
However, after waiting for their arrival I realized these new 12.9" iPads are a major investment on the scale of a new laptop: They start at $1,000 for the 64GB wifi-only model, and go to $1,900 for the 1TB with cellular. Add $129 for the Apple Pencil 2, $199 for a keyboard cover if you want that, $129 if you want AppleCare's two-year service plan, plus tax, and you're looking at anywhere from $1,200 for the 12.9" base model (with pencil and tax), to around $2,400 fully loaded.
I balked at that price, and realized that none of those improvements are really necessary for music-reading. So I went to eBay and bid on the previous second-generation iPad Pro 12.9", which works fine for our purposes. The screen is just as big, still allows writing on the music, and has plenty of storage for charts. The forScore app recognizes the original Apple Pencil and immediately shifts into "live annotation," rejecting your handprint and saving your work. (For details, see the latest forScore 2.5 manual, p. 19.)
The second-generation 12.9" iPad Pro starts used for less than $500 with 64GB of storage (plenty for sheet music) and wi-fi only, like this one which just sold for $497 including shipping, and no sales tax. Prices will only continue to fall.
You may want to upgrade to 256GB or 512GB, if you think you'll keep a lot of pictures or edit video or do other such storage-intensive operations on the iPad.
Or, you may want always-on Internet access. Yes, it could come in handy at a jam session to download some chart you don't have. However, adding cellular service to your iPad typically tacks a $14.99 monthly fee on your cell phone bill to activate it. Instead you can log onto a nearby wifi, or connect your iPad to the wifi hotspot on your cell phone. That saves $180 a year.
If you do want the works, a 12.9" second-generation iPad Pro with 512GB, wifi & cellular, the Apple pencil, and an iPad cover just went for $719 on eBay (again including shipping and no tax).
So there you go -- for a total investment of around $600 to $1,000 if you shop used, you can go all-electronic with your music on the Apple iOS, and STILL read complicated notes on a big screen and write on the charts and turn pages with your foot. And if you use Android or can cope with a smaller screen size, especially if you just need chord symbols, you can get started for less than $100.
Here's a $600 Apple option with the largest screen:
iPad Pro 12.9" second generation 64GB or 256GB wifi only, under $500 on eBay
Apple Pencil original (if it doesn't come with your tablet), around $60 on eBay
ForScore, $9.99 from the app store
AirTurn AT-104 page turner, $39 on sale on Amazon
Music stand you already own
P.S. How to win every (well, almost every) eBay auction you enter
Maybe you're an eBay pro, or maybe the thought of having to bid on things turns you cold. Having used eBay for 20 years to buy everything from obscure $1 widgets to my new-old iPad Pro, I've developed a strategy to avoid frustration and soaking up my time monitoring bids.
First, I immediately enter a bid for the price I reasonably hope to get away with paying, i.e. "I got a great bargain." That won't immediately escalate the price to that level, but as buyers try to match it, most will be scared off rather than thinking this item could ever possibly sell for the ridiculously low opening bid.
Then, to almost certainly win the item I want, I use AuctionSniper. For a fee of 1.5% of the winning price, this must-have service will enter your final bid a few seconds before closing. Other bidders then have virtually no time to match it. I enter my "stretch price," i.e. a fair price that I'd still be happy to pay if I really have to. Most times, that is plenty enough to win it and even get it well below that price, if no one else already has a higher bid pending. With AuctionSniper, I don't have to monitor my item and remember to get on at the last minute, because the service does it automatically -- unless I feel like going back and changing my bidding instructions before closing time. That's another thing AuctionSniper is good for, versus eBay itself, since a bid made directly on eBay cannot easily be retracted.
One more tip: To see what recent winning prices have been on the item you want, check the "completed" or "sold" box on the bottom left of the eBay search results window.
Got more tips for playing sheet music from a tablet (or for winning auctions)? Please let us know.