On Being a Paperless Pianist

Today's guest post is written by Hugh Sung, faculty Collaborative Pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music and tireless advocate of technology for both performance and learning. One of the coming revolutions in music performance and education will be happening in the next few years with the increased use of tablet devices for reading music.  If you're interested in investing in an AirTurn Professional Package for your tablet or laptop-based music reading needs, be sure to check out the awesome deal for Collaborative Piano Blog readers listed at the end of the article...

Something amazing happens when a collaborative pianist is freed from the common constraints of physical paper. You begin to realize that you are no longer limited to the size of your duffle bag or the strength of your shoulder muscles when it comes to how many music scores you can carry with you. You're not wasting hours hunting for that obscure encore you played 9 months ago buried in that mountain of music stacked on top of your piano. And, most gloriously, you can lay your hand calmly on the sweaty shoulder of that trembling page turner and reassure them that their services will not be needed for tonight's performance. All the piano works of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, all your Schubert Lieder and Opera scores, all your violin concerti and cello sonatas and flute transcriptions - in short, your entire sheet music library - fits snugly in a single neoprene-wrapped laptop. And since your hands never need to leave the keyboard to turn the page, your audiences are left to wonder, "How in the world did he memorize that entire program?"

Who would ever guess that a small, discreet pedal and a wireless transmitter could render page turns effortless and solve the stress of repeat signs, or worse - the dreaded Da capo? Who could imagine that any piece within a collection of thousands of scores could be instantly recalled and displayed with just a few keystrokes and a simple search bar?

This is the world of the paperless pianist, working with scores in digital format. When physical hindrances are removed, learning and making music simply becomes freer and more effective. To that end, the AirTurn was designed with musicians in mind, offering a simple, plug-and-play hands-free solution for the age-old problem of page turns. The companion program MusicReader enables Mac and PC users to easily convert scanned paper scores, as well as Finale or Sibelius files and downloaded PDFs, into digital sheet music files that can be accessed, read, and annotated in myriads of ways.

To help the readers of The Collaborative Piano Blog experience the freedom of being a paperless musician, we'd like to offer a special 10% discount off of our AirTurn Professional Package, which includes the AirTurn AT-104 page turner transmitter, the MusicReader program, and 2 silent pedals for bi-directional page turns, when purchased from our web store. Upon checkout, apply the coupon code CP10 to apply your discount (coupon expires April 30, 2010).

If trees could clap, I'm sure the ovation would be thunderous!



(Thanks, Hugh!)