On Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm, AirTurn's VP of Communications Hugh Sung will be presenting a Music Technology workshop at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music's Flute Fest of Central Pennsylvania, addressing the question, "What is the #1 underutilized brain function in Musicians?"

Based on current brain and neurological studies, Hugh's Music Technology workshop will demonstrate how a better understanding of this specific brain function can exponentially improve the speed, retention rate, and contextual artistic understanding of the music learning process for students, teachers, and professionals.

The workshop will take place in the Grand Salon at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, which is located at 42 North Prince Street, Lancaster, PA 17603.  Please visit the Flute Fest of Central Pennsylvania website for registration forms and a full schedule of events.

Hugh will also be joining featured artist Gary Schocker in the gala concert at Steinman Hall at 7:30 pm.

If you have any questions about Flute Fest, please call 717-399-9733.

FANCY FOOTWORK

The art of painless page-turns explained by Hugh Sung

It all began with a lost encore.

Several years ago, I was checking into a hotel in St Louis, where I was going to be playing a recital with the violinist Aaron Rosand, who specialised in playing obscure romantic gems as encores. As I rifled through the stacks of music in my bag in the hotel lobby, I discovered to my dismay that one of these precious gems was missing. What to do? As Aaron’s teeth ground his cigar and the proverbial steam jets billowed from his ears, I begged the front desk clerk to use his fax machine. I called my newlywed wife, still learning how to drive, and asked her to find the part, drive to the local office supply store and fax it over. When she asked, ‘What’s a fax machine?’ I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Little did I realise how badly I underestimated that thought. It turned out that on the way to the store, she got lost on the highway, had to pull over onto the shoulder and call my father for help.

When the fax finally came through, several hours later, my wife sobbed into the phone, ‘Never, ever, make me do anything like that again!!’ I realised that something drastic needed to be done about the problem of paper.

As a collaborative pianist, I was well versed in the two sides of the coin that plague our craft: parts and page turns. When playing for the entrance auditions at the Curtis Institute of Music, I had an annual ritual at the school library, hunting down parts and having to carry several boxes of them in order to accompany the applicants. As for page turns, the problem really speaks for itself; any busy pianist will have a full repertoire of page-turning horror stories, from well-meaning seniors with bad bifocals, to the accordion part made of photocopied music and tape that suddenly dictates a big polka in the middle of that pianissimo section. Surely there had to be a better way – particularly with the emerging power of portable computers.

In 2001, Microsoft introduced its Tablet PC. For the first time, a laptop screen could be rotated so that you could place the computer on its side and view an entire page of music in its native shape. Not only that, there was a pen that could actually draw digital ink right onto the screen. I splashed out on a Toshiba model in 2002 and scanned a digital picture copy of my beloved ‘Emperor’ concerto. When I saw how clearly the notes were preserved on the screen, and how easy it was to draw (and erase) digital ink markings in full color, I was sold. Now, instead of carrying boxes of music, I could have my entire library in the hard drive of my computer wherever I went. No more lost or misplaced parts. And I could still annotate them with my own fingerings and markings, as easily as with pencil on paper.

I then thought how nifty it would be if I could come up with a way to turn pages by foot instead of by hand. I went about hunting for pedals that could be programmed to trigger a simple page-turn key command. Although there were already a number of such pedals on the market at the time, they all shared the following drawbacks: 1) they clicked audibly when pressed (hardly the best thing in a pianissimo passage); 2) they had long, unwieldy cables to connect them to the computer (unfurling cables on stage doesn’t, of course, make for the most elegant stage presentation); and 3) they required some intricate programming to set the key command correctly to turn the pages. My new dream was to find a silent, wireless, plug-and-play page turning-pedal that could work easily with any computer.

By 2007, my Tablet PC had completely replaced my paper library, storing over 6,000 scores in its hard drive. I was using a homemade page turning-pedal that was heavy, clunky and wired, but at least had the benefit of being silent. After accompanying one of the student recitals at Curtis, a wild-eyed woman almost bowled me over, peppering me with questions about my digital music reading system. Her name was So Young Lee, at that time the director of an arts center in Boulder, Colorado, and she insisted that I get in touch with her friend Lester Karplus, an engineer and entrepreneur who had simultaneously been dreaming about just my kind of system. After a year of discussions, we decided to go into business together to design and build a page turner for musicians that solved all three of my hangups, being silent, wireless, and plug-and-play easy to use with virtually any computer. Much head-banging and brain-wringing ensued, and we finally came up with a name for my dream page turner: the AirTurn.

Since launching AirTurn in December 2008, we’ve entered into partnership with the developer of MusicReader, a program enabling people to read music comfortably on a PC or Mac laptop. MusicReader features enhanced page-view and turning capabilities, as well as the ability to order pages for repeats and create playlists. MusicReader also enables users to draw annotations on their music, and works, as well, as a sophisticated catalogue system, enabling you to find that obscure encore instantly with just a few clicks. Hundreds of musicians now use the AirTurn system, including the violinist Ray Chen, who won the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium using his AirTurn for the required contemporary work.

When technology removes physical fetters, it’s amazingly liberating to experience the enhanced flow of musical creativity, artistic freedom, and pedagogical effectiveness, both in playing and in teaching. And, of course, my wife is now forever freed from late night encore fax runs!

(The above article originally appeared in the December 2009/January 2010 Issue of Piano Magazine.  ©2010 Rhinegold Publishing. Posted with permission from Rhinegold Publishing.  www.rhinegold.co.uk)

AirTurn AT-104 Wireless Page-Turner

by Dr. Mario Ajero

* Note:  This article originally appeared in the September/Octover 2009 Issue of Clavier Companion Magazine.

Pianists are beginning to go paperless with their scores. Just as the consumer can convert an audio collection into a complete digital library, the artist is now able to consolidate an entire score collection into one portable notebook or tablet computer. With digital music, a pianist can place a computer on the music rack and perform anything on the spot.

Whether reading digital or traditional paper scores, we pianists must deal with the problem of turning pages while both hands are occupied at the keyboard.The AirTurn AT-104 solves this problem: when connected to a pedal footswitch, the AirTurn allows musicians to incorporate a handsfree system of page turning.

The AirTurn AT-104 contains two components: a receiver and a transmitter. The receiver is the size of a USB flash drive and plugs directly into one of your computer’s USB ports. The transmitter is the size of a small television remote control and is compatible with a variety of pedal footswitches that initiate page turns on your computer’s display. The AirTurn transmitter requires two AA batteries. Although the transmitter does not use any battery power until it is plugged in, I would like to see AirTurn add a power indicator light to the unit.

The product comes with a two-page instruction manual. I decided, however, to try out the device without reading the instructions; I wanted a true test of the AirTurn AT-104’s user-friendliness.

When I first plugged in the USB receiver, my MacBook Pro computer treated the receiver as an unidentifiable external USB keyboard and launched a Keyboard Setup Assistant window. Since, however, the computer stated that I could skip the setup if the device worked properly, I simply closed the Keyboard Setup Window and connected the AirTurn transmitter to a Boss FS-6 Footswitch. (I chose the Boss FS-6 because it contains two pedal switches. The right pedal switch turns pages forward, and the left switch turns pages backward.) Using musical scores that I had scanned into PDF format,my test page turns were flawless.

By default, the MacBook Pro interpreted the pedal switches correctly: pushing the right (forward turn) pedal was the equivalent of activating the “Page Down” function of most computer software programs, and the left (backward turn) pedal corresponded with the “Page Up” command. I was pleasantly surprised to see that several software programs that I already own (Adobe Reader, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Apple Keynote, and Apple Pages) worked beautifully with the AirTurn/Boss FS-6 combination.

So how does it feel to turn pages with your foot? It took me about one day of practice to truly adjust to this new physical movement. At first, I tried to use the AirTurn AT-104 pedal with my right foot, but I found myself accidentally turning pages when I wanted to use the damper pedal! So I moved the AirTurn pedal to the left of the pedal lyre and found it much more natural to turn pages with my left foot.

Communication between the AirTurn transmitter and receiver was consistently reliable, even at a distance of thirty feet. It is of course highly unlikely that a performer would be this far away from the music display, but my testing demonstrates the strength of the connection between the two AirTurn components.

While some musicians might prefer built-in pedals, the AirTurn’s compatibility with a variety of third-party footswitches provides the user with a variety of options. For example, one pianist might feel more comfortable using just one pedal and preprogramming the score with repeats, while another player might prefer to add a second pedal for backward page turns. Personally, I liked having the two connected pedal switches on the Boss FS-6, but both Boss and Roland manufacture other pedals compatible with the AirTurn AT-104.

The bottom line is that the AirTurn AT- 104 is an invaluable device, especially for musicians who have decided to go digital with their scores. It works as well as its creators promise. More important, with the AirTurn AT-104 you won’t have to bother your colleagues or students to turn pages for you ever again. (AirTurn, Inc., www.airturn.com. $49.95.)

—Mario Ajero

© Clavier Companion. Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.

Click here to view Dr. Ajero's video review of the AirTurn.

MusicReader continues to make improvements in both feature set and performance.  Now at version 3.21, MusicReader is available for computers running Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X.

MusicConvert

MusicReader

General

To celebrate the latest build of MusicReader, we're now offering a $10 discount off of all products that include the MusicReader program, such as the Professional Package and the downloadable version of MusicReader itself.  Enter coupon code MR32 at checkout to have the $10 discount automatically applied.  This coupon is good until January 31, 2010.

Visit the MusicReader product page for free download demo versions for Mac and PC computers.