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I've been struggling for weeks with a particular book of music. It's not what you think. The music itself is fine enough. But, the binding was driving me nuts. I don't know if there was too much glue or what. But, I could not get the book to open flat. Pages would not stay open. I was getting quite frustrated. Yesterday and today practicing, I just hit critical mass. Something had to change.

Well, I took it to Staples to see if I could get the book spiral bound. Nope, their machine wouldn't handle a 12 inch book. Thankfully, I called around to a couple of print centers and discovered that our local Fed Ex Print Center could do it. The big surprise was the price. It only cost $3.99 to get the spiral binding on a nearly inch thick book. Now the music lies flat!!!!! Now the only excuse as I practice is frustration at my slow progress. But at least the book will stay open to the page I want.

I made a clip that holds books open.

I've had many music books spiral-bound at Fedex/Kinkos. It's a great service.

this is a great idea, books not staying open are the bane of my life. But I never thought to have them spiral bound, will look into it.

I've done much the same thing, but I prefer comb binding to spiral.

Either way, the price is right!

I've been meaning to get that done with several of my books. Was there any concern about sufficient margin space for punching and installing the spiral binding?

Stubbie, yes it was a concern. But, I'm satisfied with the results. The spiral binding is close to the inside margin of the measures. But, there is still some white space. They had to cut off a fair bit of the glued binding because there was so much glue in it. I swear that's what made the book extremely difficult to open and keep open. I had taken to nearly staning on the open book to break the binding. The spiral binding is a great solution. I'm quite happy with the results.

I took my favourite albums and had them spiral bound after reading a post in this forum a couple of years ago. SO much easier to manage, no pegs or clips required! And since I started loading my sheet music into forScore on my iPad I've made another pleasant discovery - the spiral-bound pages lie flat and are far easier to scan.