How to Mark Up Sheet Music on a Tablet
Fingerings, breath marks, cuts, bowings: musicians have always written on their music. On a tablet you can do the same, and in a Page Turner room the leader's marks show up on every screen in the group as they're drawn.
Draw on the Music for the Whole Group
- Start a room by uploading a PDF on the home page. You're the leader.
- Tap the page to show the toolbar, open ☰, and tap ✏️ Annotate. A drawing bar appears.
- Pick a tool and mark the music. Every device in the room sees each mark as you add it, and anyone who joins later sees them too.
- Tap Done to go back to turning pages with a tap or a swipe.
Only the leader can draw, so the group works from one set of markings. Marks stay with the room, on the page they were drawn on, for as long as the room lasts.
The Tools
- Pen, in black, red, blue, or green. With an Apple Pencil, pressing harder draws a thicker line.
- Highlighter, in yellow, to make an entrance or a repeat easy to spot.
- Text, for words like "div." or "solo", or a note to the group.
- Symbols: breath mark, caesura, fermata, accent, dynamics from pp to ff, cresc., dim., rit., and a tempo, placed with one tap.
- Eraser, which removes a whole mark at once. ↶ Undo takes back your last change, and Clear Page removes every mark on the page (tap it twice to confirm).
Turning Pages While You Draw
While the drawing bar is open, touches mark the music instead of turning the page. You can still turn pages with a Bluetooth pedal, the arrow keys, or the ◀ ▶ buttons on the drawing bar, so you can mark up a whole piece without stopping.
Marks That Fit Every Screen
Marks are stored as positions on the page, not on the screen, so they land in the same spot on a phone, a tablet, or a computer. They line up with Trim Margins and half-page turns, and in Dark Stage they invert along with the music, so black ink becomes white. See reading on stage and outdoors.
Keep Your Marks for Next Time
A room closes 24 hours after a piece was last added or shown. To use the same marks next week, save the set list: open ☰ → Set List and tap Save This Set List. It keeps each piece with its marks, and its repeats and jumps. Next time, tap it under Saved Set Lists on the home page to start a room where the marks are back, and still editable: you can erase, undo, and add to them as before.
If you're signed in, the set list is kept in your account, so you can start the room from any device you sign in on. If not, it's kept on the device you saved it from. See organizing a set list.
Save a Marked PDF to Print or Share
For a copy to use outside Page Turner, such as a printout, an email to a sub, or a file in your own storage, anyone in the room, leader or not, can open ☰ and tap ⬇ Save Marked PDF. It saves the piece on screen with the marks drawn into the pages. On an iPhone or iPad, a Save button opens the share sheet, where you can choose Save to Files, AirDrop, or Mail; on other devices the file downloads. Text that the standard PDF fonts can't show, such as emoji, is left out of the saved file, and repeats and jumps aren't part of it.
In a marked PDF the marks are part of the page, like ink on paper, so they can't be erased once you upload it again. A saved set list is the better way to carry marks forward.
Avoid Doubled Marks
Marks drawn into a PDF and marks drawn in a room are kept apart, so the same piece can end up with both. If you upload a marked PDF and also start a room from a saved set list of the same piece, its marks show twice: once in the page and once on top. Pick one for each piece: the saved set list's editable marks, or the marked PDF uploaded on its own. Each also takes its own space in an account, because a marked PDF is a different file from the original.
Marking Up Before You Upload
You can also mark the PDF on your own before you start a room, for example with Markup in the iPad Files app or Samsung Notes on a Galaxy Tab. Everyone in the room then sees the file as you marked it, though those marks can't be erased in the room. Players who want their own private reminders can do the same with their own copy, or keep a marked copy in a library app like forScore; see how the two kinds of app work together.
Tips for Clean Markings
- Use a stylus. A finger works for circles and arrows, but a stylus is far neater for fingerings and small symbols. See choosing a tablet for stylus picks.
- Keep a color for each job, for example red for cuts, blue for breaths and bowings, and green for dynamics, so the group can read them at a glance.
- Prefer symbols to handwriting. A placed fermata or mf is easier to read from a music stand than a scribbled one.
- Mark before rehearsal. Open the room ahead of time and mark the cuts and repeats, so rehearsal time goes to the music.
Get Started
Page Turner is free, with no account needed and nothing to install. Upload a PDF to start a room, then tap ☰ → Annotate.