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Large Print Music

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Antoni Scott

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Large Print Music

PostSat Feb 25, 2017 12:37 pm

I was experimenting with my camera, video recording myself while playing Hauptwerk. I posted the performance on Youtube and to my surprise I got a response, not about the organ or the performance, but about the size of the music print sitting on my console music rack. The viewer noticed that my music notes were very large and asked where one purchases such large music . Initially, I thought the question was a little odd, but later came to realize that maybe obtaining large music was not that obvious. If one person asked, perhaps there are many others that have the same question. So here goes.

In some music, like Bach, where the notes overlap and intertwine, it can be difficult to follow, especially where the printed notes are small. I would take the score to Staples and copy the music to its original size. I would then select the 11x17 option and enlarge the music to approx. 135% or 140%, It usually required a few attempts to get the magnification just right to fill the 17" width from edge to edge.

I was working on a piece of music where the printed notes were so close together that it was almost impossible to read (even if your eyesight was normal !!!!), but increasing the size by 135 to 140% really helped. Also, I use a draftsmans right angle to align the Bass and Treble staffs with a vertical line to ensure that I played the correct note in the Treble Staff with that in the Bass Staff.

Seems like a lot of work, but when your eyes are showing signs of old age, I'll do anything to make it easier for me to read the music. Being able to READ the music is half the battle.
Antoni
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PeterD

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  • Location: Surrey, England

Re: Large Print Music

PostTue Apr 11, 2017 4:32 am

Most of my playing other than Hauptwerk is in our local church and Hymn Books print seemed to have decreased in size as I've got older.... I bought a Plustek book scanner which allows you to scan right to the edge of the page. I can then enlarge and print the hymn to full A4 size which I can read with relative ease and does tend to make playing somewhat more accurate... wonder if they do a scanner in A3.........
Be careful what you set your heart on......you may achieve it.
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Jan Loosman

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Re: Large Print Music

PostTue Apr 11, 2017 5:40 am

These days the modern phones have such good cameras that there is almost no need to buy a scanner.
To scan my music for my music reader software, i use my samsung s7 phone which has an exellent camera and use the free TINY SCANNER app. You can scan every page of your music, correct the edges of each page of the scan and save the whole piece as a pdf file. Use the built in flash.
The results are exellent.

Regards Jan

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