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Double Bass Scanning All My Music (For Future Switch to Ipad)

Steve Freides

Steve Freides

Former Mannes College Theory Faculty
Supporting Member
Dec 11, 2007
2,576
1,508
Ridgewood, NJ
#1
I'd appreciate any advice about making the switch to using an iPad, specifically about how to handle all the printed music I have and get it scanned in a good manner without breaking the bank or taking years to do. E.g., I know I sometimes have trouble fitting 9" x 12" sheet music onto a page to make a photocopy - how does one handle that? I've seen ads for scanners where you can page through a book and it deal with the curvature of the page, but this whole process is a brave new world to me.

We're an Apple household if that matter - Apple laptops and iPhones, and currently an HP all-in-one printer that can scan to our computers.

Thanks in advance for your replies, links, hardware and software recommendations, etc.

-S-
 
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#2
Download the "GeniusScan" app. You can take a picture of your sheet music and it will adapt to the background and cut off anything unnecessary to make it a good looking rectangle. You can also scan numerous pages and it will assemble it into a single document that you can shift into forescore, or whatever else you use. Obviously you'll have to learn and work around Genius Scan's quirks, but once you do that it'll work great. I do this at work to scan in insurance documents or other client correspondence then upload it to the cloud.
 
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#4
krfoss said:
Download the "GeniusScan" app. You can take a picture of your sheet music and it will adapt to the background and cut off anything unnecessary to make it a good looking rectangle. You can also scan numerous pages and it will assemble it into a single document that you can shift into forescore, or whatever else you use. Obviously you'll have to learn and work around Genius Scan's quirks, but once you do that it'll work great. I do this at work to scan in insurance documents or other client correspondence then upload it to the cloud.
Click to expand...


Scanner Pro is another great scanner app that does all of the above, with built in Dropbox integration.
 
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#6
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#8
ForScore is fantastic, IMO. I love that you can add layers for annotation and have the ability to turn them off and on. You can also embed audio files for reference, set-up automated page turns, do split pages so you see what’s coming up, etc. it is very flexible. You can also crop pages in the app to fit better on your screen! This is a lifesaver when you have larger sized scores.
 
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#9
Here is an example of how I use the annotation function to clean up a chart by whiting out unnecessary text and highlighting with colors to help me through the form. I also white out the melody notation above and below the staff since I’m really only using it for the changes. I’m still pretty new at navigating charts so this makes it much easier for me to read.

IMG_3065.jpeg
 
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#10
I've got a few thousand scans under my belt so I've done lots of scanning and sorting and such. I've had the luxury of scanning on an oversized commercial scanner and the frustration of using my iphone to scan oversize original sheet music on a music stand during a rehearsal because the scanner wasn't available.

As a Mac user who will be scanning bulk PDF's, one of your best friends can be the Preview app on your Mac (a seriously underappreciated app IMO). I do work as a librarian for a big band I play with and many of the PDF's I deal with are just huge interconnected files, sometimes they're a total trainwreck to work with. Preview has been a lifesaver for me easily splitting up the parts and renaming them by pulling the thumbnails to a new folder with a simple drag and drop (I hope that makes sense).

For iPad I also heartily recommend forScore as your music reading app. forScore also has a desktop version for Mac that works will with the iPad version. For me it's been easier to work on my desktop then import it to the iPad. No matter what app you use, be sure to check out all the functionality you can. I also use an Android device with Mobile Sheets Pro and everything I'm typing below for forScore mostly applies to it as well.

Pro Tip- MetaData, MetaData, Metadata!

On the Mac- For PDF's you can add simple MetaData tags for sorting and such. This is handy if you misplace the record or if you're looking for a certain composer/arranger (assuming you've added that tag)

forScore- label everything as you upload (especially any MetaData tags that you find useful) as that makes sorting your library so much easier down the road. Even if you don't think you'll use it, those MetaData tags will probably be handy to you in ways you can't even imagine right now. I frequently kick myself for not realizing that when I first starting going electronic.
 
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#11
krfoss said:
Download the "GeniusScan" app. You can take a picture of your sheet music and it will adapt to the background and cut off anything unnecessary to make it a good looking rectangle. You can also scan numerous pages and it will assemble it into a single document that you can shift into forescore, or whatever else you use. Obviously you'll have to learn and work around Genius Scan's quirks, but once you do that it'll work great. I do this at work to scan in insurance documents or other client correspondence then upload it to the cloud.
Click to expand...
I use GeniusScan every day - for this use case and any time I would have used a scanner in the past. It’s an underrated app.
 
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#12
I have an old flatbed scanner that I've used to digitize my 8.5x11" sheet music – among many other things.
Something that accepts 9x12 may be a little harder to come by – but I thought I saw a thing or two with my quick Googling. :wacky:
The flatbed set for relatively low-res makes for a quick workflow and reasonable file sizes, with good read-ability. I prefer not to use the phone apps for all 3 of those factors. But it will certainly do in a pinch.
 
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#13
Great information, everyone. Thanks very much. One last question - I tend to hang onto my iOS devices, e.g., I went from an iPhone 10 to an iPhone 16 Pro Max. I haven't owned an iPad in a decade or more. Is top-of-the-line still worth it? I imagine the largest screen size _is_ still worth it, but what about things like onboard storage, i.e., do most of you keep your music on a cloud somewhere or have it stored on your iPad, or both?

Thanks again.

-S-
 
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#14
oren said:
If you have an iPhone you can use the Notes app to scan paper:
Click to expand...
This is a great feature that I'll be using from now on.
Who Knew? (...not me.)
Thanks, oren.
Edit: I print all my handwritten lead sheets on paper, reducing my 9 1/2"x 12 1/2" manuscript paper to (standard printer paper) 8 1/2" x 11".
Yeah. I'm old.
 
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#15
Steve Freides said:
Great information, everyone. Thanks very much. One last question - I tend to hang onto my iOS devices, e.g., I went from an iPhone 10 to an iPhone 16 Pro Max. I haven't owned an iPad in a decade or more. Is top-of-the-line still worth it? I imagine the largest screen size _is_ still worth it, but what about things like onboard storage, i.e., do most of you keep your music on a cloud somewhere or have it stored on your iPad, or both?

Thanks again.

-S-
Click to expand...
I went from a 10.5” iPad to a 13” and the display is now roughly the same size as an 8.5 x 11” paper. I don’t think you need a lot of storage for pdf files, but if you can afford the larger screen size I feel it’s worth it. I keep my scores on my device locally but back them up to icloud.
 
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#16
fclefgeoff said:
I went from a 10.5” iPad to a 13” and the display is now roughly the same size as an 8.5 x 11” paper. I don’t think you need a lot of storage for pdf files, but if you can afford the larger screen size I feel it’s worth it. I keep my scores on my device locally but back them up to icloud.
Click to expand...
I also went with the 13” screen, which makes reading charts much more better with these aging eyes. I also tend to keep my devices for a long time, and have found that over time I need more capacity than I originally envisioned, so I bought my iPad with 512 gB of memory. The Apple silicon (Mx chips) performs really well. One useful accessory I bought is a Bluetooth footswitch for page turning. I keep my charts in Dropbox, and ForScore makes it easy to download them onto the iPad.

For jazz players, another very handy app is iGigBook, which is a PDF reader that has built-in indexes for many of the most popular fakebooks, so you can look up a song and call it right up. You have to bring your own PDFs of the fakebooks, It’s a bit of a process to load them into the app, but once you’ve done that it works great. They also have a new (paid) fakebook of their own, called the New Bob Book, that has many standards and allows you to transpose both chords and melodies into different keys. You can save different transpositions to separate setlists, which is very helpful for working with multiple singers who do the same tunes in different keys.
 
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#17
oren said:
I also went with the 13” screen, which makes reading charts much more better with these aging eyes. I also tend to keep my devices for a long time, and have found that over time I need more capacity than I originally envisioned, so I bought my iPad with 512 gB of memory. The Apple silicon (Mx chips) performs really well. One useful accessory I bought is a Bluetooth footswitch for page turning. I keep my charts in Dropbox, and ForScore makes it easy to download them onto the iPad.

For jazz players, another very handy app is iGigBook, which is a PDF reader that has built-in indexes for many of the most popular fakebooks, so you can look up a song and call it right up. You have to bring your own PDFs of the fakebooks, It’s a bit of a process to load them into the app, but once you’ve done that it works great. They also have a new (paid) fakebook of their own, called the New Bob Book, that has many standards and allows you to transpose both chords and melodies into different keys. You can save different transpositions to separate setlists, which is very helpful for working with multiple singers who do the same tunes in different keys.
Click to expand...
Hmm... I not familiar with iGigBook. I'll have to check that one out. I built out RealBook 6 indexes on forScore, but only the ones I play enough to need but haven't memorized yet. It would be nice to have the entire index available for all my Fake books. Thanks!
 
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#18
Steve Freides said:
I'd appreciate any advice about making the switch to using an iPad, specifically about how to handle all the printed music I have and get it scanned in a good manner without breaking the bank or taking years to do. E.g., I know I sometimes have trouble fitting 9" x 12" sheet music onto a page to make a photocopy - how does one handle that? I've seen ads for scanners where you can page through a book and it deal with the curvature of the page, but this whole process is a brave new world to me.

We're an Apple household if that matter - Apple laptops and iPhones, and currently an HP all-in-one printer that can scan to our computers.

Thanks in advance for your replies, links, hardware and software recommendations, etc.

-S-
Click to expand...
Great thread, thank you. I've integrated a lot of things to iPad, lyrics, basically, but it's good to know of other functionality options if/as I want to be more educated about them.
 
#20
bassmanbrent said:
Can you tell us more about how this works? I have a zillion fakebooks on a disc. If I import them to iGigBook do the indexes work, or do you have to scroll through the file to get to the chart you want? Thanks
Click to expand...
I was wondering the same. I found this on Youtube. It looks like someone already pre-created the indexes and when you upload your book it links the page number to the PDF you imported. At least that's what appears to be happening. If that's the case, it's gonna save hours of manual linking... which is a win IMO. That feature alone makes it worth $19.99 cause I don't have the appropriate hyperfixation chemicals in my brain for this particular task.

 

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