As the Page Turns...

Well, I've decided to go for it tonight. I originally said I'd wait a few weeks before trying out the wireless page-turning system, but then I realized I have a perfect opportunity this evening. It's a not too formal recital, and I'm only accompanying one piece: the Saint-Saens cello concerto. We're officially playing the first movement, but since that doesn't really end (it tapers off meekly into the second movement), we're doing one of these mashups where we make a couple of cuts into the final movement, ending with the "big finish" coda.

The stitched-together piece works well because it begs for the kind of cut-and-paste job that I can easily do in PDF Annotator - it also works well because I've played the music many times, so my fingers know my way around the notes well enough if I get distracted by the newness of the page-pedal, etc. (It's also good that I know this music because the free online scan that I found is really of low quality - but, as I mentioned last post, this really doesn't bother me much.) So, I spent more time than I should have this afternoon doing some virtual cutting and pasting so that all the page-turns are easily manageable.

One thing I'm coming to appreciate more and more is the value of annotating in color. I often find that the trick to fixing a passage I keep missing is just to write in a crucial fingering or two and maybe a reminder about some accidental. These really pop off the page in red! It's also useful in those places where the poorly scanned image makes some note important detail hard to read.

I'll report back tomorrow on how things went...