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One thing I haven’t really brought up here is that I play piano and guitar. It’s a fun hobby, but with work and travel, I don’t have as much time to memorize sheet music–but I can still read!

But I manage to find myself in situations where friends and family prompt me to play, and I’m hundreds of miles from home. I certainly can’t carry all my books of sheet music around with me wherever I go, just in case. But what I can do is carry around my iPad.

I’ve been using the app music notes, for my iPad.

You can download sheet music, mark it up, and view it whenever you need. It is superior to sheet music in that you just need to quickly tap the screen to change pages. (As opposed to quickly flipping it, then watching as the book suddenly shuts on you).

The one real downside to this app is that they do not have many collections, so you have to pay per song–which gets expensive. They have, however, been upping the amount of collections they offer. This is especially true for holiday music, the kind I get asked to play the most.

I love marking up the the music, but I’ve had trouble with a stylus. I’ve left random marks across the screen. So I use a special stylus that I also use in meetings to take notes, the Jot.

This lets me take pinpoint notes on the sheet music.

I also use the app GoodNotes to not only take notes in meetings, but also to write out my own music notes.

My boss is a musician and saw me doodling on my music and asked me about it, and I realized not everyone knows about these apps.

When I was about 13, I saw a piano prototype that had built in sheet music (that you had to insert an actual disk in for) that blew my mind. The future is now, and I’m so happy to be here for it. 😉

A warning about the Jot. People have complained about getting a shard of something stuck on it resulting in a scratched up iPad. So I always wipe my jot off on the microfiber on my iPad case just to make sure before I use it, and I always keep it capped. I have zero scratches on my iPad.

Disclaimer: If you make a purchase using my links on Amazon.com, I receive a small credit and appreciate the support. I don’t receive credit for Music Notes but please do let me know if it helps you out! I love that app and want more people to be able to take advantage of it.