PDF Score Reader

The PDF Score Reader in The Ultimate Piano is your music stand for PDF sheet music: it puts the score on the screen and turns the pages for you, so your hands stay on the keys. The page scrolls in the tempo of the music and turns when its time is up — on the beat of the metronome, if you like — or on a tap of a Bluetooth foot pedal. Fingerings, reminders and circled bars go straight onto the page and are there again the next time you open it.

It opens ordinary PDF sheet music — scans, downloads from publishers, anything you would otherwise print.

On this page

How to Open the PDF Score Reader

Open the Song Player menu in the header and choose PDF Score Reader. If one of the other players is already open, click the PDF Score Reader tab in the row of players — MIDI Player, Audio Player, Video Player, Sheet Music Player, PDF Score Reader.

Then load a score with File → Open… — from your computer or your Cloud Library. Dropping a PDF onto the MIDI or Audio Player works too: the app offers to open it here. With nothing loaded, a demo score — Funiculì, Funiculà — is one click away. File → Upload puts the open PDF into your Cloud Library, and File → Close file clears it while the reader stays open.

The piano keyboard starts hidden so the page gets the whole screen. Show Piano in the title bar brings it back; the reader remembers your choice, separately from the Sheet Music Player.

Viewing PDF Sheet Music

• Four ways to view the document: 1 Page, 2 Pages side by side, Half (half a page fills the screen), or Scroll for one continuous column
• Fit width or Fit page, plus Zoom in / out from 25% up to 400% — in Half the size is set by the view, so zoom freely in 1 Page
• Changing the zoom or the view keeps your place on the page
• Previous / Next page buttons and a page number field — type a number to jump there
• The ? button at the end of the control bar lists the keyboard shortcuts and how to set up a foot pedal

Every step forward moves on by about half a screen, so the line you are playing stays in view while the next one comes up — the page turns once nothing new is left below. In 2 Pages, the right page slides to the left and the next page appears on the right.

Sheet Music Page Turner — Hands-Free Page Turns

Press Play and the score moves on its own: the page scrolls steadily while you read it, then turns as soon as its time is up — so you never lift your hands off the keys. Rewind takes you back to page 1, and next to it the bar shows how many seconds the current page lasts. Turning a page yourself while it plays gives the new page its full time.

How long a page stays on screen is set in the Tempo & measures panel, next to the Play button. There are two ways to decide it, and you pick one for the whole document:

• Time — you say how many seconds a page is shown, from 3 seconds up to 600 seconds. Works for anything, including chord charts and lyric sheets that have no bars to count.
• Score — you enter the tempo (20–300 BPM), the beats per bar, and how many bars are on the page. Each page then lasts exactly as long as its music. Bar counts are a property of the printed page and never change, so practising slower takes a single edit: lower the tempo, and every page follows.

Either way the value belongs to one page, so a short final page can be shorter than the rest. If every page holds the same amount, one click applies it to all of them. The panel always shows the resulting seconds for the page you are on.

Playing to the metronome: the metronome button in the control bar opens the app Metronome — the same one as in the header, with all its sounds and grooves. In Score mode, start it and press Play: the reader shows the beats left until the next bar line, joins the beat there (after the count-in, if you use one) and follows the metronome's tempo from then on, so the pages turn on beat 1 with the music you hear. While the metronome leads, its button lights up. Pausing the page leaves the metronome running, so you can keep practising a bar to it.

Your settings are remembered for that score. Set them once, and the piece is ready to play the next time you open it — and for a score kept in your Cloud Library, they travel with the file, so it behaves the same on every device you sign in to.

Bluetooth Foot Pedal

Any Bluetooth page-turner pedal that works like a keyboard — AirTurn, Donner, PageFlip and generic music pedals — works out of the box. Pair it in your operating system's Bluetooth settings; a pedal that sends Page Down / Page Up (or the arrow keys) turns forward and back straight away. To use different keys, assign them under Settings → Foot Pedal.

Annotations

Click Annotate to mark up the page — fingerings, reminders, circles around tricky bars. Drawing works in the 1 Page view, where every mark has one clear page to belong to. Your notes are shown in every view, though — also in Scroll, 2 Pages and Half, and while the score scrolls or turns pages on its own. The drawing tools open as a small palette that floats over the score, so they are always right next to what you are marking. Drag it by the dotted handle if it sits over something you need to read; it stays where you put it.

The palette holds select / move, pen, highlighter, eraser, text and shapes (rectangle, circle, line, arrow), plus colour, stroke width, undo and redo (the last 50 steps), and clear. The tool you are drawing with is highlighted, so you can always see what a click will do. Close the palette with the × when you are done.

To mark a bar the way a teacher would, pick Circle it (hand-drawn), start in the middle of the bar and drag outwards: a loose, hand-drawn circle grows around that point, as wide or as tall as you drag. The rectangle and the circle grow from the middle in the same way. When you finish a text, click next to it or press Esc — the text stays selected so you can drag it into place.

On an iPad, a stylus always draws. For your finger, the hand button in the palette switches between Finger draws (one finger draws, two fingers scroll) and Finger scrolls (your finger turns through the pages, draw with a stylus). With no drawing tool open, swiping simply scrolls the score.

Annotations are saved per page and can be hidden or shown again at any time with the eye button, even while you play. For your own scores in the Cloud Library they are stored with the file — the bar shows Saving… and Saved — so your markings are on the page again when you open it somewhere else. A PDF opened straight from your computer keeps its markings in this browser: open the same file again, even after reloading the app, and they are back. Opening someone else's public score, your notes stay with you for the session — File → Upload keeps a copy of your own, and your markings are saved with it from then on.

What It Is For

The PDF Score Reader shows the printed page; it does not read the notes on it. For a cursor that follows you, Wait Mode and scoring, open a MusicXML version of the piece in the Sheet Music Player.

Use Cases

• Sight-reading — Open a PDF and let it scroll to keep a steady pace
• Playing from PDFs at a rehearsal or gig — Read charts on screen and turn pages with a Bluetooth foot pedal
• Practising slowly — Lower the tempo in Score mode and every page follows; play along with the metronome
• Lesson notes — Write fingerings and reminders on the page, and find them again on every device

Related: Play along to MusicXML scores with a moving cursor and scoring in the Sheet Music Player. Keep a steady tempo with the Metronome. Store and organize your scores in the Cloud Library.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the PDF Score Reader open scanned and downloaded sheet music?

Yes — any PDF sheet music: scans, downloads from publishers, anything you would otherwise print. Scores in MusicXML format open in the Sheet Music Player.

Can I turn the pages without using my hands?

Yes. Press Play and the pages scroll and turn on their own. How long each page stays is set in the Tempo & measures panel: in Time mode you enter the seconds per page, and in Score mode you enter the tempo, the beats per bar and the number of bars on the page, so the reader works the seconds out from the music itself — change the tempo and every page re-times at once. Any Bluetooth foot pedal that sends Page Down / Page Up (AirTurn, Donner, PageFlip, and similar) works out of the box too — just pair it through your operating system.

Can the page turns follow the metronome?

Yes. In Score mode, start the app metronome and press Play: the reader comes in on the next bar line and follows the metronome's tempo, so the pages turn with the beat you hear.

Do my markings and page timings follow me to another device?

Yes, for your own scores in the Cloud Library — annotations and the page-timing settings are stored with the file, so the score opens the way you left it wherever you sign in. A PDF you opened straight from your computer keeps its annotations and page timings in that browser on that device, since there is no stored file to attach them to.

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