Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Question re Using Kindle for Sheet Music

I usually use forScore when I play from digital sheet music using my iPad, but that means I either buy a digital score (usually from a sheet music site like MusicNotes or SheetMusicPlus) or else I buy the physical book and make PDFs.

There's a score collection I'm thinking of getting and it's available as a Kindle book. Amazon's notes say it doesn't have "page flip" enabled, but page flip is a Kindle thing, and not the same as using a Bluetooth page turner (which is what I do).

Does anyone know if I will be able to use my page turner with a Kindle score? Or should I just do what I always do (buy the physical book and make PDFs). (This collection doesn't seem to be available as a collection on the sheet music sites, and if I bought all the digital scores separately it would be much more expensive).

ETA I'm googling around trying to find a definitive answer and it occurs to me that I might need to specify that I'm talking about using the Kindle app on an iPad, not using a Kindle tablet.

Also I've read complaints about Kindle sheet music, does anyone have any tips about what to avoid?

TIA for any comments!

I too am a Forscore user, and wasn't even aware Kindle offered this.

I don't think the Kindle app is really set up for music purposes and I can't imagine you want to spend extra on a page turner just for the Kindle. Plus, do you want to have different pieces of music on different sources? I quite like going to Forscore and just knowing everything I need is on there.

Personally I'd suggest trying to get a pdf of the book you're looking for, Maybe contact the publishers and ask if a pdf file can be bought or if they intend releasing the full book on a different format. Is it a new book? Could it be on Scribd?

You can a screen shot each page on your iPad. Then go to your photo app and click “select” select all of the screen shots in order from page 1 first and page 2 second etc. then click the little box with arrow (bottom left) to open actions, click print, the use your thumb and index finger to swipe away like your trying zoom out. This will open extra actions click action in upper right and select forescore. All those images will be added as 1 score and you can use page turn, rename the score, etc. If you have a MacBook I can explain other options too. If you need a hand let me know I can give more details.

Yeah, that's my concern, and I recall in the past reading some complaints in Amazon reviews about Kindle scores that were not good quality or that had some weird problems which I am not now recalling....


No, definitely not. I already own a PageFlip Butterfly -- and just to be confusing, PageFlip is the brand name of a company that makes Bluetooth foot pedals, and page flip is also the name of a new function that Amazon added to its Kindle app a few years back. :P



This is a really good point! I make set lists in forScore (like, practice lists, repertoire collections etc.) so it would be super inconvenient not to be able to do that.


This music is still under copyright and the variety of formats it can be purchased in are limited....

I might actually do what Sebs described in his post. I could actually do that on my computer -- I am a PC user but I have a separate monitor that's really big and I make PDFs out of screen shots all the time for work purposes. I didn't think of it for this.

So I guess I'll stick with forScore and not even try to play from the Kindle app.

So now the question is, which will be faster and get better results, buying the physical book and making PDFs that way, or using my monitor to make screen grabs and making the PDFs that way... I guess I have to pick one to find out!

Anyway, thanks Fatar and Sebs!

If anyone else has more ideas or tips etc. please share!

IMO screen capture from a true digital source look better than making a pdf from a physical book. I would also add you already have the digital version, use that with screen captures it’s so quick and easy. Especially since you already know how to do this I was just describing a way direct form iPad as I wasn’t sure if you had another machine. I’m sure either way it’ll turn out good.

Yeah, starting with the digital version will probably be easier. Or at least faster since I won't have to bother with either my all-in-one printer or the scanner app on my phone.

I wouldn't mind the scanner app (well, and I use it all the time out of necessity) if I had a big piece of clear plexiglass or something so I could force books to lie flat. That's really the only advantage of the printer over the app, you can use the lid to push the book down and keep it in place.

I don't want to see my fingertips on the PDFs I make!

Ya, the Kindle page-flip will not work with the Bluetooth page turner.

This may not be relevant but I have a work-flow (for work OR for a cookbook) that I use all the time, although I’ve never used it for a book of printed sheet music (yet!).

When I require either:
1/ a book that lies flat, aka spiral-bound (e.g. cookbook, music scores in bound books) OR
2/ a digital copy of a book that is only available as a paper printed version

I order the paper book
When it arrives I take it to the local ‘copy shop’
For $1-2, the copy-shop folks slice the binding off for me and replace it with a spiral-binding. So cheap!

OR
I take the stack of now-individual sheets home (without binding) and
feed the stack (“the book”) through my fast document scanner

This device scans individual paper sheets, front and back, at 50 pages/min and simultaneously digitizes the context, then saves the stacks of sheets as a single PDF to my Mac laptop… and it does this all wirelessly! of course, it also gives you the option of saving each page as an individual PDF. The scanner also ‘instantly’ converts any text on the pages (titles, composer) into readable- and searchable- digital text. And the quality? super-duper crystal-clear. Excellent!

I have a ScanSnap sheet scanner— dang expensive ($400?), but it was purchased for work and was one of the most useful home office purchases of all time, imho: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/soho/

… anyway, scanning done:
Sometimes, I return to the copy shop after the scanning is done and have them complete the binding (spiral), so I have the paper original in an easy-to-store format.

Anyway, I suppose that most people won’t have a fast scanner at home but perhaps it’s not too expensive to have the copy shop do that task as well?

This all sounds long and complicated but it’s surprisingly easy:
I just drop the bound-book off and pick up the new-improved spiral-book when it’s ready.

Naturally, a digital copy from MusicNotes, etc. is the easiest path of all— if you can find one.

Right, but would a bluetooth page turn work to turn pages on a Kindle book that didn't have the Kindle page-flip?

Most of these pieces are available as PDF downloads (I can't remember if I saw them on MusicNotes or SheetMusicDirect, but one of those). But the collection includes 18 pieces so is the more economical purchase.

I have never had a book changed to spiral binding, although I read about it all the time on PW.

I have a home printer (all-in-one HP) that does have a document feeder for scanning, but I don't think I'd want to risk feeding sheet music into it, it would be horrible to have even one page get mangled!

I think if I spend money on anything, it should be a big piece of plexiglass to press books open so I can scan them with my phone.... I'm half-joking here, but I wonder if I could make that work or if there would always be the problem of a reflection...

The best thing to do is to cut the spine off of the book and then scan the individual sheets. Anything other than that always has a curl in it since you can't flatten the sheets out completely.

I'm personally a bit lucky that way since a friend of mine owns a publishing company and he has a big industrial paper cutter. I just slide the book into that, clamp it down and WHAM! The spine is off and I'm all set to do the scan. I don't need or want the paper afterward since I do all of my playing off of my Samsung tablet, so cutting the book up like that doesn't bother me. Scan it and toss the paper into the recycle bin.

I do like to keep my score books though, even though I prefer to play from the iPad for ease of page turns. I love having a big collection of music books, the digital copies leave something to be desired!!

I'm the same way at work. I much prefer actually books to digital books, besides the physicality of it, trying to find information is generally faster using a real book ...

Re: Sheet music in Kindle
Don’t do it. It’s awful. Several years back I bought/downloaded a few Kindle sheet music books from Amazon, and ended up screen capturing every page so I could use them in a PDF. One particularly long book, I re-bought in paper form. It’s that bad of an experience.

Nowadays, for new digital sheet music, I stick with Musicnotes.com or Sheetmusicplus.com.

I'm surprised to see you say that. I find that the indexing and search capabilities that can be harnessed on my computer make finding what I'm looking for much easier than it would be to search for just the right information in file folders or in paper books.

Somewhat off the subject here, one of the most convenient things ever for keeping information organized is vimwiki. I highly recommend it if you want a free-form indexed and searchable miscellaneous notes thing (that's the best way I can think of to describe it). It's free so the price is right as well.