notes in music scores
from evy's notebookThere's an app I want to exist for taking notes directly on sheet music (these notes are usually called "markings"). I've wanted this app for a long time. I don't particularly want to make this app, partially because it seems like more coding work than I usually like to do in my spare time, and partially because I'm not sure if I'll have enough opportunities to use it now that I no longer take music classes or attend ensemble rehearsals.
But here are the features I'd like it to have:
- I should be able to draw markings directly onto a pdf of a music score
- Each marking should be stored as a unit, even if it is made up of multiple penstrokes
- Markings should be taggable by:
- date, i.e. when they were written in
- context, e.g. music lesson, rehearsal, solo practice
- topic, e.g. phrasing, diction, tempo, dynamics, fingerings, bow directions
- More generally, this means I can create tags for markings, and I can create groups (which would also be tags) for tags to be collected into
- I should be able to filter which markings are visible by their tag(s), e.g. only seeing what I wrote in my last lesson, or only seeing what I wrote about dynamics while in the last three rehearsals
- I should be able to colour-code markings to visually differentiate them by a tag or tag group they belong to, e.g. displaying all tempo markings in green
My desire for this app comes from a love of marking my music and scores with way too many pencil markings to be parsable. I've been playing more piano recently and have returned to some pieces I learned years ago and spent a lot of time practicing.
When I add a lot of markings, it becomes harder to remember which are reminders of things I've mostly addressed and which are notes I should be paying attention to every time I practice. Sometimes I avoid adding new markings or writing them out in as much detail as I want. Sometimes I'll erase old markings, but I usually avoid this out of fear that I'll later forget what they taught me. Each marking is a gift - from a music teacher or from my own efforts of self reflection - I want to hoard them all but still be able to read my music and focus on whatever I want to practice each day!
Well, if anyone knows of an app that does anything close to this, or wants to build this and let me use it, definitely hit me up!