Back in 2015 (Wow! that’s nine years ago!) we did a Featured Musician blog on Alun McCarthy.
Alun was an early adopter of Power Music and has been using it ever since! Recently he purchased one of our MusicOne 12 Green systems – based on a refurbished HP Windows tablet. He suggested he could do a follow-up blog about his experience with the MusicOne.
Here it is…
A review of page turners including the new flic 2 Bluetooth button.The art of being an efficient (human) page turner is a highly sought after skill for performing musicians, particularly those whose hands are occupied on a keyboard or keyboards. But not all musicians have a page turner.
I remember well the time a few years ago I attended a Christmas concert in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries in Glasgow, where Kevin Bowyer was manfully struggling with a large book of music on the piano, as he accompanied the choir singing carols. Watching the pages of the book slowly flipping over, as if in slow motion and then Kevin’s antics at getting back to the page he was wanting to play was most amusing. I have to say that today Kevin is now a total convert to electronic music display and no longer has this nightmare.
So if you are thinking of moving to electronic music display or are already a user, I thought a short review of the current crop of (non-human) page turners might be helpful. I am only reviewing ones I have personal experience of and the opinions expressed in this blog are mine. These pedals all work really well with Power Music. If you have other experiences with page turners please feel free to post a comment on this post.
Jim has been a long time user of Power Music. He runs a large farm in Fife and has a fascinating blog about farming http://cultsfarm.co.uk/
We asked Jim to tell us about how he uses Power Music and MusicOne digital music stands – so grab your self a cup or glass of something and have a read of what Jim told us…
Firstly, as a musician I play the accordion and the piano. The accordion is mostly Scottish Traditional Music and second accordion to accompany others – I play occasionally in a dance band. I also play the accordion at my local church, either helping out the organist, or occasionally doing all the music myself if he is not available.
Piano playing is mostly classical piano, and as I am working towards my Grade 8 exam I have lessons every week. I also do a bit of vamping for a small accordion workshop group that I play for.
With an increasing number of music display apps coming onto the market, we thought it was time to talk about why our users think Power Music is great! All the points below are taken from comments we have received from our users over the years by email, phone and face-to-face at exhibitions.
We always welcome feedback about Power Music so feel free to send us your comments and suggestions, especially ones like this recent comment from Jeroen Jacobs – a German pianist…
Your software is best in the world. I have not seen better, more stable, more versatile, more easy to use software. It’s just great. Never need anything else.
I use it together with a Microsoft Surface Pro.
It’s super stable.
It is fascinating the snippets of information you pick up when dealing with a support request for Power Music. One such example was when David Castator contacted us about deactivating some old Power Music installations. This led on to a discussion about other music display software where he casually mentioned that he build his own Bluetooth page turner pedals – interesting I thought!
He then said that he had built a pedal that can control several tablets or PCs from one pedal – VERY interesting!
After further communication with David I asked him to write an article about the pedals he has built. So here it is, in David’s own words.
Any active musician that utilizes a Laptop, tablet, All-in-One and a digital (music) software package understands the need for a foot pedal to turn pages forward and backwards. I have used many of the wired and wireless models on the market. All of which turn sheet music pages forward or backwards on the computer to which they are attached.
My needs began to g
Back in December last year I wrote “A Review of Page Turners – Not the Human Variety“. Since then there have been a couple of new pedals launched and one is no longer being manufactured. This is an update to that article.
So if you are thinking of moving to electronic music display or are already a user, I thought a review of the current crop of (non-human) page turners might be helpful. I am only reviewing ones I have personal experience of and the opinions expressed in this blog post are mine. These pedals all work really well with Power Music and most other music display apps. If you have other experiences with page turners please feel free to post a comment.
We were also really impressed by the detailed responses from you about what features should be added to the new versions of Power Music coming out this year.
It turns out that quite a number of the requested new features are already in Power Music! So the purpose of this article is to explain where these features are and how to use them.
