The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 now has a powerful sheet music reader – Mobile Sheets
By Stephen Pate – Updated – After years of playing second fiddle to the Apple iPad for musicians, Windows 10 now has the popular Android app Mobile Sheets.
The app is actually better than some iPad apps since it allows transposing text and ChordPro files. MobileSheets has a free companion desktop app for organizing and transferring files to your tablet.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (128 GB, 4 GB RAM, Intel Core i5) is a newer and slightly larger version of the Surface Pro 3 discussed in Surface Pro 3 Full Sheet Music Reader.
The Surface Pro 4 has a larger 12.3″ diagonal screen which might improve its ability to display a full page of sheet music. It also has an improved pen and other enhancements.
Surface Pro 4 with Adobe Touch and sheet music (Photo NJN Network)
If you already have a Surface Pro 4, it can be used for as a sheet music reader with no compromises.
A sheet music reader should meet most of the following criteria:
- Full page display
- Portable
- Easy to use in performance or practice
- Have a choice of programs or Apps to read music notation and chord charts
- Use Bluetooth page turning
- Allow annotations
- Use a standard operating systems – iOS, Android or Windows 10
- Cost less than $1,000
Full page display
The Surface Pro 4 has a 12.3″ screen with an aspect ratio of 3:2 which is not the same as an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of sheet music. A standard 8.5 x 11″ page will shrink 24% to 6.5″ wide on the Pro 4.
As the page is reduced, the fonts become smaller and harder to read. It is possible to fit the page by reducing the left and right margins .75″ each.
Sheet music is also printed on pages larger than 8.5 x 11″ with smaller margins that will require even more reduction in the page and smaller fonts. Hal Leonard music books are 9″ by 12″ with music on 8″ x 11.5″ of the page. Hal Leonard sheet music will shrink 20% on a Surface Pro 4 screen.
MusicNotes.com, the sheet music download site, would require the same 20% reduction to view a full page. Some people might not mind that but many prefer a full sized sheet of music, myself included.
MobileSheets has automatic page cropping to eliminate the song margins.
You can overcome this by using the Surface Pro 4 in landscape mode. That means you will be paging down with a Bluetooth pedal on each page and at page breaks.
From Paper to Pixels – Your Guide to the Digital Sheet Music Revolution
is an excellent guide to moving your sheet music to a tablet. The author has 12 years of experience that saved me months of effort. He is biased towards the Apple iPad but that’s not uncommon. Highly recommended.
Portable
The Surface Pro 4 suffers from the “app gap” any hardware device is limited by software applications
The Surface Pro 4 is reasonably portable measuring 11.50 x 7.93 x .33″ and weighs 1.73 lbs. The built-in kickstand makes it easy to set up in landscape mode on your knee or table top.
If you are preparing your PDF music files on a desktop, you can use it without the optional Type Cover, although it is very handy to have and the Type Cover protects the screen when you’re travelling. The Surface Pro 4 could be your only computer, something not possible with the Apple iPad.
Easy to use in music performance or practice
The Surface Pro 4 uses Windows 10 a desktop/laptop operating system that needs a mouse and keyboard. To create a tablet experience Microsoft bundles the excellent Surface Pen which attaches magnetically to the side.
The free Surface Pen is a necessity but also a great tool for things like annotations on your sheet music. It beats the finger annotations on an iPad Air which is why Apple sells the Apple Pencil with the iPad Pro.
Program to read music notation and chord charts
Mobile Sheets by Zubersoft is similar to the popular Android app. It is available from the Windows Store, Android Play and Amazon.com for Kindle. Amazon customers rate it 4.3 out of 5 stars.
- Multiple modes of operation including two pages side-by-side, half page turns, and vertically scrolling pages.
- Hands-free page turns using any Bluetooth or USB devices (including two and four pedal models), or through the automatic scrolling feature
- Annotations for marking up music including support for free form drawing, basic shapes, text and stamps
- A custom audio player for playing audio tracks with your scores. Audio player supports a-b looping and multiple sizes.
- A metronome with multiple display modes and sound effects
- Bookmarks for quick and easy access to sections in scores
- Link points for handling repeats and quickly jumping between pages
- Support for multiple file types including images, PDFs, text files and chord pro files.
- The ability to transpose chords in text and chord pro files.
- Manual and automatic cropping to completely eliminate unnecessary margins
- Support for set lists and collections to efficiently group songs for playback.
Sheet Music by BugBytes – one of the few apps that does not support PDF files. It uses images instead which is clumsy.
Music Reader by Leone Music Reader – PDF based app that has versions for Windows, Apple iOS and Android – which deserves a longer review.
You can also use OneDrive, File Manager and Adobe Touch reader to see the sheet music, although this is not as efficient as an app.
The steps to display your music are: 1. navigate to the sub-directory with the music in File Manager or OneDrive, the cloud storage; 2. click on the file and 3. the sheet music will open with Adobe Touch, if you make that the default app for PDF files. You only need to set the default once.
The key to making this system work is to keep OneDrive up to date and organize your sheet music in some logical fashion so that you can find it quickly. For example, I use genre and composer as sub-directories. For a composer or songwriter with hundreds of titles you may need another level of organization. For a gig or performance, you can create a performance sub-directory, copy in the music and rename the files with a number prefix.
Use Bluetooth page turning
PageFlip Firefly Bluetooth/USB Page Turner Pedal
AirTurn PED
The Airturn PED is ultra compact and absolutely quiet. I like both and use them all the time.
Allow annotations
The Surface Pro 4 has an integrated pen but not every application supports free-form annotations.
Standard operating systems – iOS, Android or Windows 10
Windows 10 is a standard operating system but not widely accepted on mobile devices.
Cost less than $1,000
A Surface Pro 4 with i5 processor and 128 GB of storage costs $709 with the Surface Pen. You really need the Type Cover which is another $129. Microsoft often have bundles that discount the Type Cover or Office so your cost may be less.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (128 GB, 4 GB RAM, Intel Core i5) is sold everywhere – Microsoft, Best Buy, Staples / Office Depot, Costco and Wal-Mart.
You might also find the Surface Pro 3 on clearance with savings of $200 – $300. I recommend staying away from the entry-level i3 processor models which are under-powered. You can also upgrade the Pro 3 by getting a Pro 4 Type Cover.
Alex Bolton
So, what is the conclusion, if to read sheet music (to practice, to perform on stage etc.) is the main goal? iPad Pro 12.9″ is no-brainer?
Stephen Pate
That’s about it. The iPad Pro 12.9 is the best sheet music reader for performance and practice. The smaller iPad Air / iPad Pro 9.7″ work if you don’t mind turning it sideways and using a Bluetooth page turner.
Alex Bolton
Thank you. Before I was considering Microsoft Surface Book, since its screen is the biggest in its class – 13.5″ (also a bit higher ppi, contrast and brightness in comparing with iPad Pro 12.9″). But then… battery life is very limited (but I thought I would use it with charging cord [tablet part has its own charging socket]), variety of special applications for musicians is much more limited, their functionality, user friendliness and stability (including OS itself) are under questions. I was learning this sphere last days, and I like very much the forScore application. Nothing close to it on Windows. And many digital piano manufacturers make their applications exclusively for iOS devices. For example Kawai with its Virtual Technician, Touch Notation and Sound Museum. It is also possible to connect iPad Pro 12.9″ wirelessly to digital piano using the Quicco Sound mi.1 Bluetooth MIDI device. And again this device is developed exclusevely for iOS devices… So, despite I’m a Windows user (laptop) and Android user (smartphone), I have decided to go for iPad Pro 12.9″ second generation (when it will be announced). I just wish iPad Pro could have a bit bigger screen (13.5″).
Stephen Pate
The iPad Pro has an aspect ratio close to a standard sheet so it does a better job.
Drey D.
I was under the same debate but beside my frustration at a complete lack of cross platform compatibility for music apps/products, I started to look into alternatives. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but there are emulators out there to mimic an operating system. Bluestacks is a PC program that you run and can download and play/use any android app. It basically puts a mini smartphone on your PC with full screen resolution, has the playstore and everything. This made me start searching, and I found (but admittedly have not been able to test yet) a few well reviewed iOS emulators to basically run an iPhone/iPad from your windows PC. That would give you access to the iTunes appstore to download these apps. The lack of testing on my end leaves a few question about whether or not files can be transferred over (i.e. PDF’s for the music) or not, but this seems to be a pretty viable option to me. Just throwing it out there if you had other uses/interests in getting a surface book or surface pro. If the aspect ratio was the deal breaker, then you’d still have that problem which is something else to consider as well. That isn’t personally a problem.
Stephen Pate
Not to be discouraging but it sounds complicated. The beauty of the iPad solution is simplicity. Prepping the sheet music can be done on a Windows computer whether its notation or just lyric chord charts. Producing the sheet music as PDF makes it cross platform. Using an iPad in practice or performance is simple, quick and relatively foolproof. While Windows 10 can be a hairy experience on a tablet during performance, the iPad is dead simple and works as intended. I found with the Surface, there were annoying pop-ups that took a lot of work to kill. With the iPad you just turn off notifications in Settings and they don’t interrupt the song.
thomas2003
Would be so nice to have For Score ( iPad ) as a Windows 10 app
Stephen Pate
Absolutely
Jeff
What is the aspect ratio of the iPad Pro? I just purchased a Surface Pro competitor from ASUS that also has the 3:2 aspect ratio, which is of course much squarer (and thus superior for this purpose) to the t.v. style, 16:9 so-called “wide screen” aspect ration that has taken over the entire laptop industry due to economies of scale. While the iPad Pro’s screen is slightly larger, it appears to have a somewhat more rectangular aspect ratio than 3:2. My ASUS can fit a 7″ wide visible area, which, were my eyes younger, would be perfect. I can see an entire piece of sheet music (real book stuff) and scroll merely using Adobe. I might spring for one of those fancy blue tooth pedals to use it in landscape, but with my 58 year old eyes, the iPad Pro would require the same hardware. Since I have zero use for an iPad for anything else, a purchase of same would have been an $800+ reader. I’d rather have a fully functioning, bad ass computer like the ASUS. That said, I’m reading your article to find the best PDF reading software. I just downloaded “Power Music,” and am seeing what that’s all about. Thanks for the article1
Stephen Pate
The iPad Pro displays a page at 7 3/4 x 10 1/8 which is almost a full 8 1/2 x 11. I use Adobe Acrobat to shave off the top/bottom/left/right margins to avoid shrinking the page and text.
The aspect ratio is 4:3 = 1.33 and screen size 10.3 x 7.7 inches.
When I was trying to make the Surface Pro 4 work last winter, I used ever conceivable Acrobat reader including the one in Windows 10. They just don’t work as well as the apps on the iPad like ForScore and GigBook. There’s more to a good sheet music program than page turning. I keep my music by composer, genre, tags and alpha. I can have multiple libraries and setlists. I annotate on the fly but don’t have automatic transposition. I can import music from several cloud services like GoogleDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox and iCloud.
Using the apps is so convenient versus struggling with an Adobe reader. You’re right – it’s the price of an iPad but they are actually a pretty cool device. It’s weird to just FaceTime another musician and start going over a piece. Anyway, good luck in your search.
TRex
I like MobileSheets, I like Windows and Android, I like the Surface Book 13.5″ screen. Thought I needed an Android emulator, to run it, but MobileSheets has a Windows 10 app for me!
Stephen Pate
Interesting, I’ll try it.
Jeff
I ended up buying the iPad Pro 12.9 and it is fantastic for reading music! Plus, I had no idea about all the other cool stuff it can do – I now have Cubasis, etc., as well as a bunch of great sounding keyboard apps!
Alex Bolton
I would feel shame to go on stage with such an ugly and inelegant solution. And there is no forScore there – the best app in the world in it’s class. Bought an iPad Pro 12.9″ (2017) and Apple Pencil (plus AirTurn PEDpro pedal) just because of that app. The final solution is fantastic. I’ve got even slightly bigger sheet music than in my music books.
Gerry Hulme
Yes works great and really with an extra large tablet you get true to size fonts in 8.5/11; and even larger with a program that can render the fonts in a pdf to a larger size and cut out the often useless over-sized margins.
Gerry Hulme
For onstage of course you would memorize the piece first. 🙂 Would love to see a phone shot of the solution on a 12.9 iPad if it is as you claim larger than 8.5/11 print outs. It would be a simple matter to hold up a piece of sheet music beside the tablet for comparison. I doubt that with the real estate tablets take that is really true.
Gerry Hulme
For onstage of course you would memorize the piece first. 🙂 Would love to see a phone shot of the solution on a 12.9 iPad if it is as you claim larger than 8.5/11 print outs.
Alex Bolton
No. Because I have about 150 pieces in my repertoire. Nobody on our cruise liners plays by memory. Everybody use sheet music or iPads. This is not academic classical solo pianists concerts. But even if it’s classical duet, trio, orchestra etc., you will see in most cases that musicians play from sheet music.
Regarding photo. Maybe I will make later, can’t guaranty, I will try.
Alex Bolton
Hello again. About three days ago I made big post here to answer to you again. I’ve provided three photos, two links on musician forum, where they discuss and compare (with their photos) different devices for reading sheet music. I gave link on YouTube video as recommendation to watch about iPad Pro 12.9″ and forScore app. But my post was in “Wait” status, as moderators have to approve it. And it seems they never approved which is shame on them: they don’t respect my time I spent for my post and making pictures, they don’t respect you to get some helpful information. So, what can I do.
Stephen Pate
Hi, Alex. We appreciate your comments. The comments system will strip out pictures and links to safeguard against spam and porn. I’m sure that is not your intention but websites get attacked with spam and porn hundreds of times a day and it’s impossible to scan through them for the odd valid post with a picture.
Quote “And it seems they never approved which is shame on them: they don’t respect my time I spent for my post and making pictures, they don’t respect you to get some helpful information.” No disrespect was or is intended.
You could try a single YouTube link and see if it can be processed. Thanks.