this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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anyone have a sheet music system/workflow that works? (fedia.io)
submitted 8 months ago by bluGill@fedia.io to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

My wife is complaining that we have music all over the living room all the time. With a couple kids in music lessons, school bands (regular, jazz), orchestra, and such a practice session often needs 6 books and 5 loose pages of music so I can't blame her for being frustrated. There is no easy way to store all that and find what you need for the current daily practice sessions.

Putting a tablet (suggestions? schools gives the kids an iPad, and I'm looking at pinetab2, or boox for me) on a stand seems easy enough, but then what?

Mobile sheets seems to be what others around me use, so probably what I'd end up doing too, though I'm not locked to anything. Any other software that I should be looking at? I do like the idea that we can synchronize page turning.

The hard part is getting all my music onto my NAS. Do I just scan all my books? Buy again as PDF (only rarely an option). Entry the music into some other program? I have some sheet music I want to put into lilypond - is there anything that would sync my tablets to a rendered version of this.

I already have Jellyfin and I see book options (but have not used it yet). Calibri-web also comes up often for books. Both seem book reading focused and music flows / organization is different. Anything else I might want to put on my servers that might be better?

Any other thoughts? What have others done that works?

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[–] Rbon@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 8 months ago

Hi! I’m a professional timpanist with a bachelors degree in music education. Buy your kids “two-pocket folders” from Amazon or you preferred local office supply store, and teach them the importance of organizing their sheet music. This is a skill they will need for their entire lives.

Now, to give you the self-hosted answer: forScore is seriously the best app in existence. It does so much more than just store sheet music. I personally use an app called Möbius Sync which uses syncthing under the hood, to sync my forScore files with my NAS. The only caveat to this system is you need to have the app open in order to sync files. Sucks I know.

Let me finish by saying that I strongly discourage you from giving your kids forScore, as it adds a mountain of complexity to their experience with music that they simply do not need in their lives right now. Buy them cheap two-pocket folders and chastise them for leaving their paper around the house like animals. If any of them ever study music in college, then at that would be the point at which using forScore becomes worthwhile.

P.S. thank you for being so supportive of your kids interest in music! It’s great to hear of a family whose children study so much music that it’s becoming a logistical concern, lol. We need more families like yours.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Give each person a folder in which to stick whatever loose sheets they are currently working with. Keep these folders plus whatever music books are relevant on a shelf. Tell each person to put their shit away when they are done.

There can be another folder for sheets people fail to put away. Your wife can just stick everything left out into this folder when stuff gets left out and she gets annoyed. People will learn they have to look through all the shit in this folder to find their stuff if they leave their stuff out.

[–] Luckyfriend222@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

My wife is a pianist. She bought an iPad and we paid for Forscore. So far, worth every cent. Yeah yeah I know, communism and Apple bad, opensource good and all that. But bloody hell, with Forscore the money was worth it. Being able to use facial gestures to turn pages, link up multiple sources for sheet music and a helluva lot more, I would recommend it to anyone serious about music, any day.

[–] dabe@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 months ago

I have some guilty pleasure apps that I refuse to get rid of because they’re just so dang good. Many of them are on Apple devices… forScore is one of those apps

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I want to caveat with I have not used any of this. This is just a link I sent to my FIL so he could find something to fit his needs, maybe it will help you too.

https://github.com/ad-si/awesome-sheet-music

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I had found that. A lot of projects are early releases that have not been touched in years - is that because they are stable or because the author gave up before making them useful? Which is why I want not a list but an opinion from someone else doing this.

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

My FIL got back to me this morning, he's only using an editor and printing his own music, so unfortunately no recommendations to be had there sorry.

[–] ProperlyProperTea@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Are you looking to obtain sheet music, or scan in your existing sheet music?

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 8 months ago

PaperlessNGX... Scan it in, then view it on the device of your choice... PDFs. Import from teacher as files if you want.

(I'm not a music guy so maybe I'm off base here)