At 7:15 AM -0800 12/8/10, Chuck Israels wrote:
Dear David,
I have seen no discussion of this, but one is certainly due. iPad
size is an issue for me. I don't like a music stand right in my
face, and the iPad does need to be closer than the 9.5 x 12.5 parts
I print. I have seen a player here in Portland use one for reading
lead sheets and, for that limited purpose, I think it is a handy and
effective solution - no light problem in dark clubs and a large
repertoire easily available. But that kind of reading is limited
compared to having to take in the details in some ensemble parts,
and I'm not yet convinced about its usefulness in that role. I'm
eager to hear more from anyone with experience with electronic music
stands. Someday they will work, I'm convinced of that.
Oh, I'm sure they work today, they're just too darned expensive
compared with a $35 music stand!!
This was brought up a while ago on the ChoralNet discussion, but in
the form of an advocacy rant: This is the Future and the Future is
Now, and we should have them in every classroom and they will totally
do away with paper books and music!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, and has anyone actually noticed the "paperless office" that we
were promised, in real life?!! One of the first things I discovered
when we got our Commodore 64 back in the early '80s was that it
wasn't worth much without a printer to make paper copies!
The actual electronic music stand can be, I believe, purchased and
used today, IF you can afford the cost, but I suspect that the bands
actually using it have it on professional loan and didn't actually
put up the money for them. The various iPad-like devices can
apparently be made to work, but they aren't designed for the job and
are presently too small to be truly useful. And whether anyone will
see fit to make them large enough to be practical, and cheap enough
to be attractive, will probably be entirely dependent on the
potential market for the things, which might be a lot smaller than we
musicians picture it being. And as David said, it will take a
particular combination of size, memory, cost, and well-thought-out
functionality before most people will even consider it. And
functionality means that it has to be as easy to use as an audio
cassette player in a boom box, and not require a degree in computer
science!!
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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