Music Pad Pro

Advanced Tecnology

The Music Pad Pro is certainly "heaven sent" for the musician in terms of organsing and storing your music. So what is it?

It's really a computer in a music stand, A tablet-based platform for viewing and composing music compatible with Macs and PCs. It has a 12.1 TFT LCD screen and is about 13"x10"x2".

Here's a graphic...

Let's Analyze The Music Pad Pro "Plus" Side...

You can't misplace your music and you won't fumble around turing pages in performance...

Long compositions and orchestral parts now are a breeze and it can "read" all the popular music composition software availiable such as: Finale; Sibelius; Encore; Cakewalk so anything that can be printed on your PC or Mac can be converted to viewable files for the Music Pad Pro...

You don't have to carry around heavy music binders and can store a huge library of pieces...

You won't have to supply external stand lighting and won't be troubled by external climactic conditions e.g. music blowing off the stand etc...

You can annotate your scores in color and in your own handwriting and can correct errors in the score or highlight key passagesand can add notes or notation symbols to each score...

You can "look ahead" to the next page with an original "half-page turn" function plus zoom in to key passages whilst doing annotations to the score...

You can scan or download digital music files in pdf, jpg and other graphics formats, expand the storage capacity and turn pages by the touch of the screen (left for backwards & right for forwards) or by a special foot pedal if you wish...

Wow! A pretty impressive list I'm sure you'll agree!

But what have some people been saying about this tecnologically advanced instrument?

Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Consulting Professor of Music at Stanford University and Senior Research Associate at CCARH said...

Music Pad Pro shows great potential for making sizable repertories portable...the user interface is thoughtfully designed. It permits graphical adaptations to suit individual tastes and performance situations..."

Here's a snippet of an article about the Music Pad Pro by Julio Ojeda-Zapata who writes about personal technology...

"You won't get no techno from the Big Phat Band when the Los Angeles-based jazz ensemble performs in Minneapolis tonight.

But look for a techno twist that will be a first for the group � the absence of printed sheet music. Instead, band members plan to read off tabletlike computers displaying the digital equivalents of music sheets.

The Grammy-nominated band isn't the only high-profile act to go high-tech in this way. Sting and Linda Ronstadt have reportedly relied on the flat-panel screens. So has Mike Garson, David Bowie's pianist, and Jon Anderson of Yes fame.

All have used the Music Pad Pro, a kind of computer tailored to musicians who tire of lugging piles of sheet music and laboriously flipping pages while playing. On the tablet, turning a virtual page involves tapping a stylus on the screen � or, for the hands-free experience most users seem to prefer, pressing a foot pedal attached to the tablet.

Each of our guys has a folder of music three to five inches thick," said Big Phat Band leader Gordon Goodwin. "That's about 50 songs at three to four pages each. That's a lot of paper."

With the Music Pad Pro Goodwin said... "touching the side of the screen is a lot more economical a move than reaching out to grab the corner of a page while playing, as musicians have done for centuries."

Quite a convincing "plus" side. here's where you can buy the impressive Music Pad Pro

Now, what about the "minus" side?

Music Pad Pro "Minus" Side...

As I see it, the Musicpad Pro is a computer and as such is subject to power failure and crashes, possibly losing your stored material.

When I looked on the site that makes this instrument they tried to allay most people's fear by stating that it is... "a near-glitch-proof device...the tablet has few moving parts such as those in a hard drive; it stores up to 5,000 music sheets in solid-state or "flash" memory".

I'm not sure I'd believe the spin out-of-hand, especially if I was on a tight budget, but perhaps they should be given time to prove the effectiveness of their product.

Another "minus" for me is the price. At around $1100 it's a lot of money to be "dishing out" if you're not using it on a regular basis i.e. working or teaching.

My recommendation for the Music pad Pro would be for those that could easily afford it or if you're doing lots of performing or teaching a lot of students and you needed a large repertoire.

Most can get by with the normal music stand and play as we've always done...in the printed form.

I hope this article has been of help to you. Good luck!

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