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Episode Summary
A few basics on utilizing the forScore digital sheet music app, including how to digitize and import sheet music, a little on the benefits of the Apple Pencil, how to edit and maintain consistency with metadata information, organizing setlists, and more.
Items Mentioned
Christmas Music Video Series
Christmas Music Videos Listening Activity
Find the ForScore app in the app store
Related article on the Piano Pantry blog: What iPad and Page-Turner Device Do You Use?
Utilizing forScor App Features: A Visual Guide
Episode 098 – ForScor (pt 2): Need to Know Features
Transcript
This past summer, I gave a recommendation to a teacher who attended one of my in-person digital organization retreats to invest in an iPad and the forScore app. Besides teaching, she does a lot of professional playing and accompanying; I knew it would change her life. She reached out several weeks later with this message:
Hey! Your new tech-savvy friend here. I just bought an iPad and the forScore App! My summer project will be digitizing my library… Any tips on taking on such a huge project? I’m a little overwhelmed by how to ‘tag’ everything. And is there a difference between the Apple Pencil and a stylus? The Pencil is so expensive…. do you find it necessary in using all that forScore offers? Maybe this is even a future blog post/podcast episode?
Thanks to Gabrielle’s question, I decided to take her advice and share thoughts on how to best utilize, organize, and manage the forScore app. As I started writing, I realized I had quite a bit to say on the topic, so I’m bringing this to you in two parts. As a matter of fact, I think this is the first-ever 2-part episode that I’ve done.
Today, we will cover some basics, including answering some of Gabrielle’s questions on how to digitize sheet music, a little on the Apple Pencil, and tagging. Next week, I’ll go a little deeper and share some features that I wish I had taken the time to learn about sooner.
This is the time of year that many of us play professionally more than ever with all the holiday events and shows, so I felt the timing of this topic was perfect for the season. Oh, by the way, I’m Amy Chaplin, host of this podcast and a piano teacher from the Indiana flatlands who also enjoys sharing her other skills of organization and digital management. Let’s get going!
Are you looking for fun holiday activities to do during the month of December? Believe me when I say that the Christmas video series available on PianoPantry.com is a guaranteed smile on your students’ faces. The 25 videos and 90 minutes of listening include inspiring musicians like Jarrod Radnich, The Mormon Tabernacle Bell Choir, Straight No Chaser, The Piano Guys, Cameron Carpenter, Eric Whitacre, Placido Domingo, and more.
While the video collection is free, if you want to dig deeper with your students, there is a 9-page listening guide available for sale in the shop that includes brief and easy-to-digest background information on each piece and a reflection question.
Visit the show notes for the link to this resource.
Before we dive in, let’s start with the basics – what IS forScore?
ForScore is an app for iPad, iPhone, and Mac that is a boss of a PDF sheet music reading experience. This is a place where you can take your digital scores to the next level with things like annotation, half page turns, setlists, and much much more. The features extend far and wide.
I am going to insert a little disclaimer that I am not doing an exhaustive tutorial on ForScore – what we’re just hitting some highlights that I think will benefit you as a user.
To get hard-copy music into the app, you’re going to need a scanning app. I highly recommend Genius Scan. To create a PDF of a hard copy of music you just open the scanner app, start a new document, hold the camera up to one page of your music, and it will auto-grab the page. If you have multiple pages in a piece, you scan each page back to back.
Then, you can adjust the cropping and go through a few editing options. This is where you set it to be a PDF document, then hit the share button just like you would anything else you’re sending through your device. So you share the scanned piece of music from the scanner app into the forScore app.
The other way to get music into the app is to do it directly from forScore. You can open files from your document manager and import them into forScore.
This is the place where – as a digital organization coach – I want to encourage you not to think of forScore as the place where you save and store all the digital files you own. The digital score files – I should say. I would recommend still keeping a file that has your scores in it and then just using forScore as a player.
To be completely transparent, I only do this for digital scores I purchase directly. If I’m scanning a hard copy piece of music into my forScore app, I don’t save it in my document files first. I just send it into forScore.
If you are scanning hard copy music into forScore, there are two different ways to think about it:
(1) You could scan the entire book into one PDF file and use bookmarks to mark the start of different pieces within
(2) You could scan individual pieces and then create a label with the book name so you can find all the pieces from that book in one place.
The trouble with using the bookmarks feature in forScore is you can’t really organize them very much, so I think the first option is not the best. I would recommend just scanning individual pieces and then using a label with the name of the book.
OK, so now that we know HOW to get files into forScore.
Let’s talk about the Apple Pencil.
Do I recommend it? Yes – highly.
It is 100% worth the investment. The 2nd generation Apple pencil I have literally magnetizes to the side of my iPad Pro 12.9” to charge. It’s awesome. The 1st generation Apple Pencil had a lightning connector that you could plug into the iPad to charge directly – which was still pretty cool. Still, you couldn’t easily charge it while using the iPad because it stuck out the bottom of the iPad.
In order to use an Apple Pencil, though, I believe you need the Pro version of an iPad. Just double-check before purchasing an iPad that the Apple Pencil will work with it if you know you want it.
I have used old styluses for years, and nothing has come as close to being as sleek or as user-friendly as the Apple Pencil. If you are going to be doing a lot of playing from digital sheet music in forScore – you’re going to want to be able to write digital annotations on the page, and using your finger is just not fun or very accurate. Plus, it’s a business write-off, so don’t skimp on yourself or your sanity.
I also recommend the Apple Smart Keyboard. While I don’t use it as much now that I have a laptop, it’s still nice when editing information in forScore to be able to type and not have to peck with fingers. If you have to choose between the keyboard or the Apple Pencil, though – definitely get the Apple Pencil.
Just a heads up that I am linking to all this stuff in the show notes for you.
Now, let’s talk a little about the tools within forScore that can help us keep our scores organized.
What you DON’T WANT to do is to import a piece of sheet music and just let it be. The metadata for the file will title it with a really wonky name. You have to go in and add some basic information to the score’s metadata title display. You can do this from two places. If you’ve just imported the piece and you’re actually viewing the piece, then you will find the place to edit the metadata at the very top of the page in the middle.
You can also edit the song’s metadata information by going into the place where you view the list of all your scores and clicking on the information button next to the file name.
Besides editing the title, the metadata information area includes lots of different tools that will help you organize your digital library. If this is new to you, it can be really helpful to decide before you start importing a bunch of music how you want to organize it.
Things like – what kind of format do you want to write your composer names in? You must be impeccably consistent; otherwise, it will create multiple composers. For example, if you write that the composer’s name is chrissy ricker – all lowercase – but on the next songs you import, you write Chrissy Ricker with the first letter of both names uppercase – it will not recognize them as the same composer and it will create two separate names.
The nice thing is that once you create it, you don’t have to remember. This is something I didn’t realize right away when I started using forScore and is a tip I’ll include next week as well, but when you’re editing the composer name or other properties in the song information if you put your cursor inside the area when you type their name, a little circle with three horizontal lines will appear clear to the right. If you tap on that, you will be able to see all the composers or tags or labels that you have ALREADY created so you can select from there rather than having to type it in manually every time.
Learn how to do this – I promise you, it will save you TONS of time and will help keep all your information nice and tidy.
I’m going to tell you something else that I actually learned while researching and writing this podcast that kind of blew my mind. You do not have to use the preset metadata titles properties that are the default.
The word TITLE is not changeable, but everything else below that is editable. So, for example, you could change the word composer to ARRANGER or the word genre to LYRICS BY or whatever you want it to be! How cool is that?!
Now that you know that, I’m still going to go through this as if we are keeping the defaults.
So, the next part of the song information to consider and edit is the Genre. A few I use include Broadway, Christmas, Church, Classical, Patriotic, Popular, and Wedding.
After that is Tags. I tend to think about tags in all the ways I would describe the piece, such as duple, minor, piano solo, hymn, contemporary praise, lead sheet, or chord chart.
I think about and use the Labels category when thinking about grouping things that go together such as an entire book or liturgical setting. So tags are more descriptive, and labels and genres are more big pictures.
So, for one song, I might put it in the following:
Genre – church, christmas
Tags – hymn, duple meter, major tonality
Label – ELW (Evangelical Lutheran Worship Hymnal)
The beautiful thing is that you can customize it however you like and with whatever works with your brain. Isn’t our modern technology amazing?!
No more spreading 6 pages of sheet music across the music stand taped together and ripping them away when it was time to reveal the next layer of music.
So far we’ve learned how to get music into the app, why the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard are useful, and we can create information that will help us keep track of it in a useful way,
The last thing I want to cover today is setlists. Set lists, to me, are the gold of this app. This is where it all happens. One useful thing to know is that within setlists you can create folders.
So, I have one setlist folder called “CHURCH,” and then inside that folder is a folder for each of the different churches I’m currently playing for. Inside each of the individual church folders might be setlists for different types of services, such as Christmas Eve or Maundy Thursday or just a regular Sunday morning service.
I have setlist folder called “SCHOOLS”. Inside that folder are setlists for all the different schools I’ve done accompanying for.
I have a setlist called “SERVICES.” Inside of that folder are either folders are direct setlists for things like weddings and funerals.
Lastly, I create setlists for some of the early childhood-type lesson material I do in my Music Moves for Piano Keyboard Games lessons. I scan each song or rhythm chant, and then I can notate directly on the page what different movements we’re doing, and it’s easy to shuffle through.
Creating folders in setlists is a little unintuitive, so I wanted to take a moment to talk you through it. I realize that verbalizing something like this will be hard to follow unless you’re actually doing it with me. However, I still want to tell you about it because there is a transcript of this episode, so you can go back and read the transcript when you’re ready with your device in front of you to find out how to do this.
So, to create a folder in setlists, you have to click on the “Edit Button” inside of setlists. If you click the + button, it will just make a new setlist. Create the folder in Edit mode first. Hit Done, then hit the plus symbol to create a setlist. Once the setlist is created, you click the information button to add it to the setlist folder.
If you have found this episode useful, stay tuned for next week’s episode, where I’ll share some of the hacks that I wish I would have figured out sooner in this app.
You know, like any other thing in our lives, things don’t magically organize themselves. We have to put a little intention and effort into making things work FOR us – like taking the time to edit song information right away when importing into the app – otherwise it can create a bigger headache down the road.
This is something that I talk about a lot in my digital organization course which is available both online and as an in-person retreat. I’ll be announcing dates for the winter session here in the next few weeks so stay tuned!
Before we move into this weeks tiny tip – I wanted to finish with a follow up from my friend who I talked about at the beginning of this episode. She recently wrote me another message and said this:
I wanted to write with a specific “thank you” for your strong suggestion to get an iPad and ForScore. While it is great for teaching, it would be impossible to do my new accompanying job without this resource! I’m working as the staff accompanist at a musical theater dept, where I’ve got 100 + songs to play. (No exaggeration!) It’s my dream job, and would be so difficult to manage without this digital tool.
Wow – I told her – yes, it absolutely would! Gone are the days of carrying around 3” three-ring binders with pages and pages of music taped together. I know you can relate!
Thanks for sticking around to hear today’s tiny tip. Today’s tip is not so much life-related as it usually is but is a piano teaching tip. I recently had a student who was having trouble remembering that F was to the left of the 3 black keys and C was to the left of the two black keys. To help him remember, I had him draw an upper case F and an upper case C and then count how many tip ends there were on each letter. F has three endpoints, and C only has two! Aha!
I have no idea if this was an idea I came up with on my own out of the blue or if I had heard it from someone else years ago, and it was locked away in the stores of my mind. Rarely do I ever have students who struggle to remember which is which, so it’s not a trick I pull out of my back pocket very often, but I think it’s a pretty clever one. What do you think?
Speaking of what you think – I would love it if you would give me a little gift this Christmas and take a moment to rate and review this podcast. It’s so easy to do. Please know that the small effort it will require of you can help this podcast yield great results, so thank you so much in advance for going the extra mile as we near the end of the 2nd full year of this podcast. Happy Teaching!
