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Why do printers try to cram so much on one page? If they could only spread it out just a little more!!!! Makes me nuts!!!

Not sure if it's true, but my teacher years ago told me that the more expensive manuscripts are printed better. Not all crammed together.

I use a couple of different (not ideal) solutions when using a keyboard.

1. Scan the page and print it on A3 paper, or

2. scan the page to PDF and view it on a large wall monitor mounted right behind the keyboard. I can tailor the size of the page from a portion of the monitor screen to filling the screen, and even have it display 2 pages.

Isabelle:

When you write "printers," do you mean music publishers? I don't think you can tar them all with the same brush. Many publishers of print music do have very legible texts.

You also have to consider that the more spread out the text, the more page turns the player has to try to cope with.

Regards,

I just use my iPad as a sheet music holder.

Now that I'm old and infirm (well, almost..... ), I find it more difficult to read small print. And often, the most densely written and difficult music are printed the smallest, which makes it difficult to read. Like the Durand edition of Ravel's piano music, much of which is note-dense and very difficult......

It does save paper (and therefore, rainforests - assuming it's not from sustainable sources), and reduces page turns, and shelf space, though I do wonder whether the publisher believes that most people buying those scores just want to admire them, and aren't planning to learn to play the music. Or maybe he wants to dissuade people from even thinking of learning to play it, by making the music seem more note-dense than it already is......

BruceD, yes publishers, but not all. I would rather be able to read the music than worry about the page turns. If I can't read it, won't have to worry about turning the page.

Bennevis, well said!!!

It can be a pain in the neck, that's for sure. On a few occasions--with short pieces--I've re-notated the piece in MuseScore, where I can choose how wide each measure is.

I think 80% of it is publishers wanting to save on the costs of added pages. It does add up, I suppose. If Nikolas reads this thread, maybe he'll have some insight he's willing to share.

Denes Agay's Classics to Modern is a pain - you need 20-20 vision to read the music. I've taken the book to Kinko's to make the musc a bit larger and it helps a little bit but not much.

My teacher likes this music book, I'm not a big fan. Isabelle, I'm with you on this one.

There is almost certainly a financial aspect to this.

Good thing I searched for my name!

Sorry for bumping this thread, but I think it is important to share some insights...

Professional printed scores are bound either by a staple in the middle, or are sown and glued on the book spine.

This means that whenever you;re binding a book like that (and not SIMPLY by gluing the pages together, or by binding them with a wire or something), then you have to consider that the page number goes up by 4 pages.

If you're actually printing in offset (as opposed to digital) then chances are that, because of the paper size they use, you're bound to be going up by 8 pages, rather than 4.

So a score that's 23 pages, will be 24. A score that's 25 pages will be either 28, or 32, depending on the print method. Technically there's no other way to do it!

So imagine having to print a score of either 40 pages, or 32 pages for 10,000 times! These extra pages cost A LOT, and weight A LOT, and take up A LOT of additional storage.

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Then again I do NOT like that and I don't care for the added pages, as long as the layout is good for the eye.

But of course then there's the page turns that one needs to consider. There have been a very few cases that I simply gave up (basically the music was without any stop, so it was impossible to find a place to have a normal page turn. It can happen really...). In that case having 32 pages instead of 40 means that you're saving the performer from 4 page turns! That's quite a handy accomplishment really!

+1. I love MuseScore for that. It can help to have a big, easy-reading version for learning, and then condense it for performance, when page turns are the problem. As you learn, you're doing less reading of each note, and more just having the score remind you what the next phrase is.

Hem... you do know that both Finale and Sibelius do that, right? It's one of the basic functions of a notation software.

Certainly, and they're fine software, though rather pricey for the occasional amateur user. There is a "junior" version of Finale, FinaleNotepad, and it is is free. I don't know if Sibelius has a free version. MuseScore is free.

Yes, I know and you're right. Sorry.

I think I will see what I can do with Musescore. If that doesn't work, I'll need a pair of binoculars and someone to hold those and turn pages. If I can't see the music, I can't play it.

I just started to use the crop function in ForScore (iPad app) - it's great for those tiny scores with too much blank space around. After cropping, I can put the iPad Pro in landscape and have two large enough pages in front of me, which I couldn't read before. I really think that going digital is the best option especially when one's eyes are not so young anymore! And you can do all kinds of edits to the score and just save it as a new file, and keep multiple versions. I love my music books, but I always look for ebooks and pdf's now if at all possible.

Sinophilia, I took snap shots of music and cropped out the junk. Will se how it works on my iPad. Also picked up reading glasses at 2.5 power. My regular glasses are the near, far and in between kind, so to use the reading part I had to arch my neck which is not good with an existing three level cervical fusion.