Music & an Ipad

Here are some ideas to play and perform music with an iPad. I received an iPad as a birthday gift many years ago. One of the first things I did was start researching how I could integrate it into my music life. So now 8 years later it’s almost as necessary as a music stand.

Music & an iPad + Worship Services

Our worship leader uploads the specific scores into Planning Center Online that we will be using. The Music Stand App is a feature that churches can subscribe to for a small fee. The app is free to download and then allows you to see the order of worship and choose the specific pdf scores that you want to see. I can make notes and draw on my score just like I would with paper and pen. My favorite part is that it saves my annotations. I have a tendency to forget how we played it the last time and I don’t have the desire to organize all my church music and notes in a file. Lots of loose paper stresses me out. I have had pages blow off the piano or my stand when the air conditioning came on. Planning Center keeps all of that online for me. When that song is scheduled again, all my notes to myself are there. I can also pull up notes that others have made and see their markings.

Music & an iPad + Giging

Gone are the days of showing up with a notebook full of photocopies or worse yet all the books with little flags marking pages. With the app ForScore, I can input all my music as a pdf file and then create sets. The downside is you may need to take some time to scan your music into pdf files. I store my music off files in Dropbox. ForScore allows me to import them into the app from Dropbox. This way I don’t have to keep my whole music library on my iPad all the time but I have access to it wherever I might be. (This is especially handy when traveling.)

iPad and Teaching

This is the area that technology has made the biggest impact for me. I use multiple apps during my lessons. As my studio grew and I couldn’t keep up with mentally keeping track of everything, I looked into an online service. For several years I used QuickBooks to keep track of billing and income, but I was looking for it to do some features that were beyond its originally programming. I found www.musicteachershelper.com. I am able to enter assignments and email them to the student. Students and parents each have a login and can also see assignment notes. The teacher receives an email showing my lesson schedule for the day as well as the notes from the previous week. I can keep track of my music library and The teacher can also set up automatic invoicing and billing. An app is also available for iPhone.

The brain is so busy communicating muscle commands that we stop listening to the music we are making.

Another apps I use in teaching are my camera for pictures and video, taking pictures of hand positions and bow holds. Voice memo and the Garage Band app are useful to in recording student’s progress. By listening to their own recording it allows them to focus on listening apart from playing. They suddenly hear what their listeners hear. The brain is so busy communicating muscle commands that we stop listening to the music we are making.