I recently attended a British-style Brass Band concert at which the conductor and all performers were working from either large iPads or similar tablets, or perhaps from Surface(s), I couldn’t see clearly enough from where I was sitting to see for sure. After the concert I went up to talk to the conductor, and she said they were all using Forscore, on a variety of devices. The performers all bought their own devices, but she provides the Forscore parts (and score, for her own use). She was very positive about the app, and said she’ll never use printed score or parts again.
She had not heard of Dorico, only Sib and Finale and a few cheap ones, so I got to wondering, is there anyone on the forum here who has actually exported a large Dorico score for any sort of ensemble to PDF, and then actually used Forscore during an actual performance? There are several people in this thread who seem to have some working knowledge of the app, but I was just curious if anyone has actually gone through the whole sequence: Compose or arrange in Dorico, send score and parts to PDF, then either themselves or a colleague conduct from a Forscore score with all performers using Forscore parts. And, if so, how the experience went? And if there are any “gotchas” involved?
I do a heap of playing from ForScore, I’ve played my own Dorico typesetting (but not compositions - nobody wants to hear those!) from ForScore, and my other half is currently working a cruise contract for Lincoln Center Stage where the group (a piano quintet) play exclusively from ForScore on iPad Pros.
ForScore just uses PDFs. I really can’t think of any gotchas. If there’s anything at all, it’s that there’s a page turn at every page, not every other page, but most people I know that use ForScore pair it with a page turning pedal.
I have heard of page turning pedals but was rather surprised to see that nobody in this 29 person ensemble, nor the conductor herself, used pedals. They all turned pages by touching with fingertips. I would hate to think of the double amount of page turn facilitating part layout schemes that would have to be used. (Once per two pages is bad enough.) They were all playing 90% of the time, too, and no shared desks. Each one had his or her own device and music stand. !!!
There is a trick. ForScore has a “half page” mode, which, basically speaking, allows you to look at the bottom half of one page and the top half of the next page (and there’s a draggable divider - it could be the last system of one page and all but the last system of the following page, for instance). It means that you have to tap twice per page, but that you can tap basically anywhere you have rests on each half of the page, rather than at the final barline of the page.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried a system whereby a foot pedal, rather than turning a page, would scroll, so that, say, the stave you are playing at the moment, would be at or near the center of the view screen, and the ‘page’ would scroll continuously vertically with pressure on the pedal…
Or alternatively, something like Dorico’s Galley view, in which your ‘part’ would scroll continuously horizontally when you pressed the pedal.
No idea if that would be practical for performance purposes but just wondering if it has ever been tried.
What Dan said, plus
3. Almost all brass players can play “one handed” while sitting down. Britsh-style brass bands don’t have French horns which need two hands, so the only “obvious exception” is the trombone section.
Wow, this is the first time I’m hearing about this and I’m impressed. I’m kind of a minimalist and traditionalist when it comes to sheet music, and I can’t stand tablet computers for their energy consumption, light emission and limited size (I like to see at least two pages next to each other and turn them one by one, like move page 2 from right to left to see pages 2 and 3).
I’ve been thinking for a while that the only electronic device that would be acceptable for me would be an e-paper device, and this here looks really sexy. But damn, $1,600! That’s about the price for a basic 15" MacBook Pro. I’m not that inclined to buy it.
Yes, I noticed. But it’s still the first time I heard about this device, and it’s still $1,600. And there is still nothing that compares to it as far as I could find.
I use forscore for touring with a pedal page turner, but I’ve never found a good spot to put it on the organ. I played one service with a choir member linked to my iPad, turning the pages from his iPad - not a comfortable experience!
I’ve been using ForScore with my party band. Each band member has their own iPad and I export parts from Dorico. I network the ipads together using an Apple router and I turn pages for the band, since we’re pretty much all working off lead sheets (perhaps with a horn part written on the chart as well), IOW, we’re all looking at the same pdf.
It’s possible to export parts and load them to different iPads using ForScore, but it means a lot of file management. You can have dedicated iPads for each musician and load their parts onto their respective iPads. However, if you want one person (bandleader/conductor etc.) to be able to call up the charts for the whole band, then each file has to have the exact same title. So if you’re playing a song called “Forscore Song” you’d have to rename each of the parts “ForScore Song” so that the iPads call up the page the master iPad is on. Alternatively, you could create a setlist on each iPad individually or else have the musicians search for and call up each song as needed.
In contrast, a similar program unReal Book, allows you to assign each iPad an instrument and load files with the instrument name in it. Then, when the master iPad calles up “ForScore Song”, the flute ipad, for example will call up “ForScore Song~flute” which helps with keeping clear which file is which. As well, if there is no file specifying flute on the iPad, it will call up the same file “ForScore Song” as on the master iPad. I’ve been considering migrating to that program as it seems to be a bit more stable in regard to connectivity as well, but ForScore is much more elegant and I’d need to redo my setlists, so I’ve been dragging on this.
Have you tried Newzik ? It’s as elegant as ForScore and, IIRC, it can deal with master/slave ipads with the conductor turning the pages, the different markings added by 1st violin going to all the violin players, etc… I have both apps, and it’s Newzik I use (it also reads XML, synchronizes audio and video with score and many other nice things)
Years ago, Harry Connick, Jr. switched to an all digital system for his band. While Mr. Connick used Finale (it was around 2002), it seems such a system could eventually work with Dorico. I believe the system was a custom system for Mr. Connick’s band, but perhaps it is now commercially available.
I’ve used a irig blueturn to trigger my stepper in HW and I had to end up putting double-sided velcro on top of a spare swell pedal that wasn’t being used. It’s awkward but it works (and it’s my organ, so the velcro is a non-issue). Some of the big OEMs are building bluetooth functionality into the + pedal so that you can use it to trigger the sequencer and/or turn pages if need be. As much as I love my ipad, I still refuse to trust it to function perfectly in a concert setting. I had forscore take 5-10 seconds to turn a page on a high-dpi PDF (scan) once and I realized that there was no way I could trust it from that point on. Personal use, yes. Public use, no.
I’ve used Forscore on iPad for arena tours - no hint of a problem. Unfortunately I don’t have an unneeded swell pedal on the organ to Velcro the pageturner to. It’s useful sometimes at the side of the lowest manual to be hit by my hand. It’s definitely the future.
That’s about the price for a basic 15" MacBook Pro. I’m not that inclined to buy it.