Three Page Score Binding

Any musician playing from photocopies or printed PDFs will rapidly outgrow the basic score binding method. Many pieces simply do not include rests for page turns! In those cases, having three pages on the stand may be the best solution.



I remember the first couple of times I attempted to assemble my own trifold scores. Assembling a score with trifolds isn't hard, but I managed to make a few very awkward scores before I ironed out the kinks to my method.

So that you can skip past the awkward score phase (think of it as the teen years of do-it-yourself score binding), I've made a video tutorial that will teach you exactly how to add a third page to your scores. As a bonus, there's also an alternative trifold page turn solution that can save you paper.



See? Totally doable and very handy!

If you're a performer who likes to invest in spiral binding for their scores, you can still have trifolds. Just trim about 1/4 inch off the edge of your trifold page, so it can be tucked in without bumping into the spiral binding.



If you have any score binding questions, requests, or additional tips be sure to leave them in the comments!

Score Binding Basics

These days 90% of my performance parts are PDFs printed on my home printer. Unlike beautiful Urtext scores, these loose leafs are hardly stage-worthy. Over the years I've gotten very accustomed to binding these scores myself.

My former teacher, Ronda Rider, calls it "New Music Arts and Crafts". Obviously, she is the best.



Why tape your pages together? Loose leafs on stage are a risky proposition. All it takes is one wrong page shift, a wobbly stand, or an over-zealous air conditioning unit and you're spilling sheet music all over the stage in a not-quite-performance-art kind of way.

Some musicians manage to tape their pages together but don't bind them into a booklet. Have you ever seen the accordion-style spill of music off a stand? It's not pretty and there's no elegant way to recover on stage.

So, for the sake of getting through the concert in one piece...

How to Bind Your Score: Basic Method

Supplies: music, strong matte (non-shiny) tape




1. Tape all of your pages left/right sides together so the piece is one long row of pages. Leave a small gap between the pages as you tape them. Avoid putting tape where you might like to write notes in the future. Pencil doesn't stick well to tape.



2. Fold your music accordion-style to create an unbound book. Now is the time to check your page turns. Did you get the pages in the right order?



3. With the accordion of pages collapsed down to a stack of papers, turn the soon-to-be spine of your score towards you.



4. Gently separate a set of two page-pairs (the points where you already taped the pages together) and bind them together with a piece of tape perpendicular to the pages.



5. Continue to tape these pairs until there are none left.



6. Now tape the pairs into pairs.



7. Repeat until all of your pages are taped together.

At first your music is going to be a little... voluminous... the tape needs time to get broken in. It's a good idea to tape your music as soon as you get it so you have plenty of time to get comfortable with the new set up.




If the piece you're learning is very long (say more than 15 pages) it might be worth having it printed double sided on nice paper and bound professionally. This Basic Method of binding scores doesn't work well if the score gets too think.

There you have it, a basic plan of attack for binding your music. Of course, there are other fancy ways of binding that include third page fold-outs, blank pages for page turns, and tricks that begin to compete with pop-up-book artists, but in due time... mastering the basic method is an important first step.

Does anyone have any particular type of tape their in love with? I usually use regular ole' scotch tape, but I've seen some nice results with masking tape. Do share...

Choosing Score Paper

How music fits on a stand is probably my most un-sexy musical interest. A true Type A personality, I find it very interesting and it absolutely affects my day-to-day music life.

I've had several conversations with composers and performers about score size/orientation, and I thought it might be time to put all of my thoughts in one place.



(The sizes I'll deal with are the ones you tend to get from composers via pdf. I'm going to ignore 9x12 paper because it's specialty printing. I'll also leave out the standard double 8.5x11 portrait setup. It seems obvious to me that if page turns work out for that size/orientation/number of pages, it's absolutely the best option. I'll also stick to one stand because multiple stands opens up a whole other can of worms. Ok, qualifiers fin)

Spacial Comparison:

Let's start with the most essential analysis - how much music are you actually getting on the stand?

8.5x11 portrait (3 pages per stand) = 290.5

8.5x14 portrait (3 pages per stand) = 357

11x17 portrait (2 pages per stand) = 374

8.5x11 landscape (2 pages per stand) = 187

8.5x14 landscape (1 pages per stand) = 119

11x17 landscape (1 page per stand) = 187

In this comparison, portrait orientation is absolutely the most efficient use of space with 11x17 paper giving you the most space of any paper size.

But stopping there doesn't give you the whole story!

Intangible Comparison:

The size/orientation of music can have unintended effects on the pragmatic experience of making music.

Page Turns: The more music you fit on a stand, theoretically, the fewer page turns you need. This can minimize distracting moments or unwanted sounds during performance, which is especially important as the ensemble gets smaller. (A solo cello piece suffers much more from page turns than an orchestra piece.)

Additionally, page turn difficulty differs instrument to instrument: singers can turn as they need, pianists or some wind instrumentalists can turn when one hand is free, string players can hardly ever turn while playing.

Though it affords more space, page turns can get more complicated or unwieldy with set-ups using 3 pages per stand. The third page often needs to be tucked or untucked during the page turn, which takes additional time.

System Length: Web designers pay a lot of attention to line length and studies show there are optimal lengths for reading ease and comprehension. There are absolutely parallels to reading music - long systems are difficult to read.

Also, the shorter stave systems are, the closer measure numbers are to each other. It seems like an obvious and pointless fact, but infrequent measure numbers mean wasted rehearsal time counting bars. (No, seriously, so much wasted time.) Horizontal page orientations are especially problematic for this reason.



Overhang: Overhang can provide the little extra space on a stand needed to avoid a distracting or difficult page turn. But, large amounts of overhang can result in drooping or falling pages, light issues as stage lights pass through the paper, acoustic interference, and decreased visibility for the audience.

Most of these issues can be fixed with sturdy paper-stock or poster board extensions to the stand, but visibility or acoustics are instrument dependent problems affected by the directional acoustics of the instrument. For example, violinists' music is oriented perpendicularly to the audience, so acoustics and visibility isn't impacted by overhang. On the other hand, a cellists stand is parallel to the audience directly in between the audience and instrument. A huge wall of paper has an acoustic and aesthetic impact.

Another very practical effect of overhang is difficulty writing notes on the score during rehearsal. You can't write easily on any overhang because it isn't supported by the stand. It's obviously a small impact, but worth noting if page sizes with less overhang are an option.

Travel: Large scores are more difficult to transport without damaging them. While 8.5x11 paper easily fits into a protective folder or binder, 8.5x14 and 11x17 paper need to be folded (or risk being crumpled). Why do folds and crumples matter? Besides it being easier to read clean paper, folds and crumples can create shadows under concert lighting or make the music less stable on the stand.

Conclusions:

8.5x11 portrait has the third most space on the stand, minimal overhang, is easy for travel, has a nice system length, and fairly easy page turns. This is always my vote.

A close second is 8.5x14 portrait which has more space on the stand at a cost of slightly more overhang and less convenient travel. I use this set-up frequently as well.

11x17 portrait has the most space on the stand with easy page turns, but is annoying for travel, has long systems, and has inconvenient overhang on the top of the stand. If there are really NO other page turn solutions, this will work out. (Though personally, I'll usually just shrink the music once I know it well enough or write out my own shorthand.)

Landscape orientations are terrible. Really... that's the point of this whole post. Please don't use them. Like, ever.

Did I miss something? Have another reason for or against a certain paper set-up? Let me know in the comments