Tablets for notation input and score reading.
SheetCue, a music reader app, has you draw the measures, define the repeats and cuts, and it drives a timed, measure-by-measure practice flow from your own PDFs or photos. The idea also opens a bigger question: the vendor lock-in that traps annotated score libraries inside a single app.
A review of Rock Paper Pencil, a screen protector and pencil tip combo for the iPad that improves writing ability and reduces glare, making the device feel more like interacting with paper.
A review of the leading iPad score reader apps — forScore, Newzik, and nkoda — to assess the current state of the category, and to help musicians decide which of the excellent options best suits their needs.
Sibelius has come to the iPhone, with all of the same features that appear on the iPad version. Panorama view is enabled on mobile along with some other improvements, and Cloud Sharing gets a new setting to allow downloading.
Sibelius for iPad has arrived. We take a comprehensive first look at what you can expect from the experience, including multi-touch gestures, the revamped Create menu, and new pitch correction and chord input tools.
Dorico for iPad has arrived. This major release for Apple’s tablet platform brings over all the familiar elements of the desktop music notation software program, along with some new features and ways of working.
What are the best practices when preparing a score with the expectation that it will be read from a screen, not paper? This is an excellent question — one whose answer today may likely change in the coming years.
forScore has released forScore 11, the first major update to the iOS score reader since 2016. It's largely an evolutionary update, but the improvements are thoughtful, practical, and welcome.
The release of the iPad Pro 2018 edition presents some truly astonishing hardware that has the potential to replace a lot of what composers, performers, educators, and librarians are doing with notated music. Just don’t throw out your laptops yet.
David MacDonald has our in-depth review of Symphony Pro 5 — the latest offering of the iOS scoring app. The latest version's marquee feature is handwriting recognition with Apple Pencil support. See how Symphony Pro stacks up in a burgeoning marketplace of tablet-based scoring apps.
