On the use of tablets and BT page turners

[Hector Pascal]

Hi all,

I've noticed lately that more and more performers are putting parts on tablets and using bluetooth page turn pedals.

My question is: Using a paper part, if a performer gets to the end of page 3 and sees Da Capo, they turn back a page and see page 1 again. To do that with a tablet (that shows a single page) and left/right pedals, would the performer have to press the left pedal twice to return to page 1? I have not had the opportunity to try out the tablet + pedal system yet...

Thanks!
HP

[MichelRE]

I imagine that if the parts being read are PDF files it's easy enough to jut re-insert page 1 (and 2) if there's a da capo, so you'd just continue turning pages. in other words, page 4 would be a copy of page 1.

[OCTO]

I imagine that if the parts being read are PDF files it's easy enough to jut re-insert page 1 (and 2) if there's a da capo, so you'd just continue turning pages. in other words, page 4 would be a copy of page 1.

Exactly so. You just duplicate and instert one page if you want to get it back.

[John Ruggero]

In other words, unless the piece is a page or two, the days of da capos and such are over.

[Hector Pascal]

OK, thanks! Publishing parts in this era of transition between paper and digital makes for interesting times!
Cheers,
HP.

[Fred G. Unn]

I'm good friends with Harry Connick Jr.'s copyist, and they've been using digital music for over 20 years now. Here's a NY Times article about his system from 2002. I subbed in his band shortly after that, and it was pretty interesting! Everything was controlled by foot pedals and everything was completely written out, start to finish, so no repeats, or any repeat structures like D.S. etc. When you turned a page with the pedal, the top half turned first and then the bottom half a second or so later so you could turn the page while reading ahead. This also eliminates the need to find page turns although they are still nice to have.

Of course now, many people are using forScore with PDFs and tablets. I haven't seen a lot of people using BT pedals, but with forScore you just tap right or left for a page turn. (It will do half page turns too.) I played a jazz festival in Lake George, NY last night and 2 of the 5 of us in the reed section were using tablets instead of printed music. Another band I work with only uses PDFs. The bandleader keeps everything in a Dropbox and you can just assemble the set in forScore.

BTW, Dorico users can add additional custom page sizes with a doricolib file. It's really pretty easy to do. I added a couple of iPad sizes so I can easily format for those sizes in layout if I want.

Code: Select all

			<PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>
				<name>iPad (8th gen)</name>
				<entityID>pagedimension.ipad8thgen</entityID>
				<parentEntityID/>
				<inheritanceMask>0</inheritanceMask>
				<width>442</width>
				<height>589</height>
			</PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>
			<PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>
				<name>iPad Pro</name>
				<entityID>pagedimension.ipadpro</entityID>
				<parentEntityID/>
				<inheritanceMask>0</inheritanceMask>
				<width>559</width>
				<height>745</height>
			</PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>

[John Ruggero]

On the classical side, the Borromeo String Quartet has been using laptops since 2007. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/arts ... tring.html

[NeeraWM]

BTW, Dorico users can add additional custom page sizes with a doricolib file. It's really pretty easy to do. I added a couple of iPad sizes so I can easily format for those sizes in layout if I want.

Code: Select all

			<PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>
				<name>iPad (8th gen)</name>
				<entityID>pagedimension.ipad8thgen</entityID>
				<parentEntityID/>
				<inheritanceMask>0</inheritanceMask>
				<width>442</width>
				<height>589</height>
			</PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>
			<PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>
				<name>iPad Pro</name>
				<entityID>pagedimension.ipadpro</entityID>
				<parentEntityID/>
				<inheritanceMask>0</inheritanceMask>
				<width>559</width>
				<height>745</height>
			</PageDimensionsPresetEntityDefinition>

Could you share this as a doricolib file?
Or how do you save this code as a doricolib file outside of Dorico? I'm on macOS.

Regarding score readers: you can set up a tap area on the repeat to bring you back to a specific page of the piece, so you can keep the same engraving for print and digital (which is welcome!). If you know you're going all digital, then unfolding everything is better.
The Henle Library app has everything already set up so that you tap on the repeat sign and are brought back to the proper place.

[Fred G. Unn]

Could you share this as a doricolib file?
Or how do you save this code as a doricolib file outside of Dorico? I'm on macOS.

We can't share files on here, can we? Hmm, I keep getting a 403 error if I post the whole code, so here's a Dropbox link. Let me know if it doesn't work. In addition to some iPad sizes, I added some other fairly common sizes used in music publishing like ARCH B, SRA 3, etc.

EDIT: This actually just came up on the Dorico forum today, so I killed the Dropbox link and just posted the file in the thread over there.
https://forums.steinberg.net/t/feature- ... s/706438/8

[NeeraWM]

Hi Fred,
thank you!
Two questions: where should one save these on macOS?
I went to the place I would have expected (~/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5/) there is not the folder I recall you mentioned in another post either here or on the Dorico forum (I now don't recall the name of the folder).
Could you enlighten me on this?
Lastly, how does one save a doricolib?
Forgive me for repeating the question and if you have already answered this elsewhere I couldn't find.