How do you keep your sheet music organized?

[WaterMan]

Anyone use one of these? MusicPad

 

Seems it would be real handy to keep your favorite songs/lessons in one place.

 

What about other organization systems?

 

I'm tired of searching through tons of books and mazagines to find stuff I want to play.

[Gruupi]

Chronilogical order is all I do, the last thing I played gets thrown on top.

[Fingerstyle_Jim]

I keep a binder with plastic sleeves so I can slide in things I want to work on, and slide out things I don't. When I was playing lots of solo guitar gigs this was really handy, I could keep an extra set of sight-reading material ready for those longer gigs. Now I use it to keep what I'm working on right now all in one place. Cheap and easy.....(insert comment here)!

 

Jim

[pollock]

I have several different binders, full band sets, acoustic sets, written works, one for notation, one for tab, one for chords, one for bass, all alphebetized. Works great for me. It's really a personal preference thing.

[alittlebatty]

What a star trekkie lookin gizmo that musicpad is....looks neat,but when I saw the price I can safely tell you I'll never own one!

Hmmm my method is having songbooks with tab stuck in them at the proper spots where I reworked something for the 7. Bookcases are mandatory for me,needless to say. (I'm a bookworm anyway so it's not all music) If I get really motivated on a tune,I'll photocopy the music and use my notebook so it's more condensed & portable. In some ways I am terribly 20th century.......

[Justus A. Picker]

Organized? I have folders, books, etc, of music all over the place. I may not be able to find what I'm looking for but I'm sure to stumble across something interesting.....

[Darcy H]

Papers and book all over the place. I do have a "priority pile" for stuff I'm really putting some serious time into, but no organization to speak of.

[musicalhair]

Right now everything is literally in piles and boxes all over the house and I can barely find anything, outside of what I'm working directly on right now.

 

I used to do it this way. I have a sheet music stand with a really wide and deep "ledge" I guess it is and it held my college repertoire of classical stuff. Along with that were the segovia scales sheet, the slur and ornimentation book, a few collections of Giuliani studies, and a polyrhythmic study book by Bogdanovic, and stuff I was learning (usually two other pieces at most, like Ponce's Sonata Mexicana spent a long time in that "on deck" place on the right near the top).

 

Clipped to the bottom was a Sabine tuner and clipped to the top was a light. The ledge was wide enought so that it could fit 2 piles when they were closed, and an open sheet or book would span across both piles on the top. Exercises and stuff on the left, repertoire and high priority stuff on the right (so it opens right up without haveing to move to the right).

 

In a box next to the stand was pages from the real book I was working on, and anything else I wanted to keep handy to refer to, like: sight reading exercises, theory texts, rhythm reading exercises, Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic patterns (plus it would tip over the music stand if it were there with everything else), etc.

 

All the rest on book shelves.

 

They also make a music stand that has a storage space in the back for books, I kept that by the keyboard for my wife back before we had a piano.

[Dr. Ellwood]

I have them organized in numerical order (Excell spread sheet format) by genre. I use the spread sheet to locate four different binders and the songs by number,name. It works well. For everything I have there is a sheet with full notation and lyrics if it has lyrics put on a transparency and I throw the image onto a screen that comes down from the ceiling in the rehearsal room, that way everybody can see it during rehearsals and when I practice alone I use the overhead projector as well.

[Rock Soldier]

A lot of my music is in the Power Tab format. It's all here on the computer cataloged and alphabetized. If I want a song, I print it and then manage to lose it somewhere along the way. If I can't find it the next time I want it ... I just print it again. As far as that gizmo goes ... way too pricey for me.

[Bbach1]

Originally posted by ellwood:

I have them organized in numerical order (Excell spread sheet format) by genre. I use the spread sheet to locate four different binders and the songs by number,name. It works well. For everything I have there is a sheet with full notation and lyrics if it has lyrics put on a transparency and I throw the image onto a screen that comes down from the ceiling in the rehearsal room, that way everybody can see it during rehearsals and when I practice alone I use the overhead projector as well.

Great recommendation. Excel is an excellent organization method.

I keep my sheet music alphabetized by song name. With many under the same letter, I use little stick on plastic tabs where I can easily get to a certain song under a certain letter of the alphabet.

 

Waterman, I don't like the electronic gismo mostly because your sheet music will have to be in their format to be loaded onto that unit. Looks cool though, but binders are relatively cheap and easy.

[WaterMan]

Originally posted by Bbach:

 

Waterman, I don't like the electronic gismo mostly because your sheet music will have to be in their format to be loaded onto that unit. Looks cool though, but binders are relatively cheap and easy.

The way I understand it, you scan sheet music into your computer, which can be saved in a variety of formats for other uses. The MusicPad then converts your scanned files into its own format for importing into the unit. That way you have you whole library both in your computer (in whatever digital format you want for printing, etc,) and also in MusicPad.

 

The attration for me is having all my favorite songs and scanned lessons from magazines, etc. organized in one spot. So when I want to work on something I can pull it up in seconds, and then not have to worry about finding it, page turning, keeping the book open, etc.

 

I can't get over the $1100, however. If this thing were half that, I'd probably buy it.

 

Now I'm looking to see if there's a software program out there that will do the same thing, expect in the computer only. No luck so far.

 

And thanks everyone for all the organization suggestions.

[Justus A. Picker]

Originally posted by ellwood:

For everything I have there is a sheet with full notation and lyrics if it has lyrics put on a transparency and I throw the image onto a screen that comes down from the ceiling in the rehearsal room, that way everybody can see it during rehearsals and when I practice alone I use the overhead projector as well.

I like that idea a lot! I got bifocals when they started making the notes smaller and they've started shrinking again. Wall sized sheet music would be a definite help.

[Billster]

Well, I write my own so...

 

Current projects are in a sort of multiple random stack system. I know which ones are close to finished and which ones are just one line ideas that need some fleshing out.

 

Finished stuff is in alphabetical folders in a drawer. Even if I can't really hit the tune, I can usually recall the title and general concept.

 

I have a few artist folios and standards collections on a shelf, and my trusty Real Book is on the desk at all times. If I do my own chart of a tune by another artist, my chart goes in the alphabetical file.

[The Big G]

binders in alpahbetical order (band names) lots of binders, not as organised as I would like, obviously i do have a large pile awaiting to be put in to a binder in order, oh well a job for a rainy day.