Re: Chromebooks for printed music and Bluetooth page turners.
Re: Chromebooks for printed music and Bluetooth page turners
Hello everyone. My journey into Chromelandia has been a mixed one. For instance, I just found out that my new machine has a best before date but since I am approaching the age when people stop buying green bananas, I am not to worry. The reason for this journey was simply the large and unwieldy music "library" I had. So I gave it away which brings me to the use of chromebooks for printed music paired with Bluetooth page turners. I was unable to find much practical information on this specific combination. Nevertheless, since most chromebooks run a fairly recent android version, I chanced it and bought an iRig BlueTurn by IK Multimedia. It works like a charm, paired with an Asus C523 which displays PDF files natively so you do not have to hunt for an app. The page turner is set to emulate the left and right keyboard arrows and the Asus is placed on the piano rest opened up just like an album thanks to its 180° hinges. A quarter turn (ctrl, shift and refresh) then offers a vertical 15.6" display of a full sheet of music. An SD card is used to store the material -mostly from IMSLP and Mutopia- organized just the way I like. Do make sure to click on the square "fit to page" icon at the top of the screen, otherwise nothing happens. You might also want to use a mouse as the touchpad is tricky to operate with the screen rotated. I admit it looks stange to see a sideways arranged laptop draped on a piano but it does the job besides initiating conversations. My new setup is taking some getting used to but sure beats the piles of old music books I had to rummage through in order to find anything; all this proving that old dogs do learn new tricks. Robert
Re: Chromebooks for printed music and Bluetooth page turners
Hello everyone. My journey into Chromelandia has been a mixed one. For instance, I just found out that my new machine has a best before date but since I am approaching the age when people stop buying green bananas, I am not to worry. The reason for this journey was simply the large and unwieldy music "library" I had. So I gave it away which brings me to the use of chromebooks for printed music paired with Bluetooth page turners. I was unable to find much practical information on this specific combination. Nevertheless, since most chromebooks run a fairly recent android version, I chanced it and bought an iRig BlueTurn by IK Multimedia. It works like a charm, paired with an Asus C523 which displays PDF files natively so you do not have to hunt for an app. The page turner is set to emulate the left and right keyboard arrows and the Asus is placed on the piano rest opened up just like an album thanks to its 180° hinges. A quarter turn (ctrl, shift and refresh) then offers a vertical 15.6" display of a full sheet of music. An SD card is used to store the material -mostly from IMSLP and Mutopia- organized just the way I like. Do make sure to click on the square "fit to page" icon at the top of the screen, otherwise nothing happens. You might also want to use a mouse as the touchpad is tricky to operate with the screen rotated. I admit it looks stange to see a sideways arranged laptop draped on a piano but it does the job besides initiating conversations. My new setup is taking some getting used to but sure beats the piles of old music books I had to rummage through in order to find anything; all this proving that old dogs do learn new tricks. Robert
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