Help arranging piano music into a binder?

Question

My teacher showed me a way where you can arrange the music according to where the rests are so that it is easier to turn. How do you do this?

Answer 1

If you're playing the piano it's harder, since you only occasionally have a lengthy rest. However, even if rests aren't available, if you can find a passage where only one hand is playing for a few beats, you can turn with the other.



Creative use of a copy machine will help: there's no rule that every page must have music on it. Copying some pages on both sides and some on single sides can help you arrange better page turns too. Memorizing your piece obviously solves the difficulty, of course! As a last resort, you can pick something to leave out as you turn the page. We've all done that, with a little bit of guilt :)



If you scan the piece you're playing and post a link I bet we could help you out if you're really stuck.





*I'll add a bit to an idea another poster had about plastic sleeves. It works great in many respects, but I've noticed a few drawbacks. You can't write on the page without pulling it out, and it has a tendency to reflect glare rather badly at times, making it hard to see the notes. (You can write on it with dry or wet-erase markers, but those have their own problems.) Otherwise, it's an excellent idea and will serve you well in many situations.

Answer 2

I have worked as a professional accompanist for many years - and I make pull-outs of everything. I copy the music, often reducing it slightly. I then trim off as much of the margins as is piratical and tape the pages together, leaving a hairline of space between them. They fold up accordion-style - and I can string them out across the rack, positioning them not too wide, but with minimal page turns. I have done this for thousands of works in the last 35 years- and then I file them into plastic sleeves, for storage, not for playing.



Piano music seldom has rests or convenient places to turn pages - so this avoids the issue as much as possible. Counting all the sets that my husband (pianist) and I (flutist) also do for cocktail hours at weddings (after one of our chamber groups does the ceremony), we have about 35 sets just of cocktail hour music ( show tunes, vintage standards, Cole Porter, etc.) and each has a dozen to sixteen tunes in it - you do the math. Some of our classical chamber music, and Viennese, also has to be set up this way. And all the choral accompanying I do is usually a one-off, so that stuff gets tossed - but have done hundreds of them.



You can always buy a FreeHand - those stand cost about a grand each where all your music is digitally uploaded. The Kindle and some other electronic readers will also load up sheet music, but their selections are very limited, and the screen is very small for music playing. But I think that is where the future lies - not sheet music at all.

Answer 3

My Guitar tutor would hole punch my music so that I could see two pages at a time...He would hole punch the first page on the right side of the page, then the second page on the left side. This is of course if you have one sided papers.

I wasn't completely sure what you needed , so I'll give you this tidbit too. The origination of music can be difficult...I've struggled with this myself, but it can be done. You can organize by favorite to least favorite, or by date(which is probably best for lessons). Here are some other options...

tempo

genre

composer

Hope I helped

God Bless

Answer 4

It's basically called looking at the pages. Decide where the best page turns are and plan your pages accordingly. Sometimes page one will be on the left, sometimes on the right.



Rather than hole punching your pages, use plastic page protectors and slip the pages into the sleeves. Then if you decide the pages are in the wrong order you can change them easily.



... keeps 'em from blowing around too much as well.