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How Do You Organize Your Sheet Music?
I’m curious how others organize your sheet music. I’ve tried putting them in a binder, then I’ve got some stacked on my table and then more on my music stand. I haven’t come up with a creative way to organize so I’m not scattering them all over the floor. I can’t staple sheet music together because then I can’t spread them out on my music stand. Now I’m adding some TAC music as well and my library is growing!
Thanks in advance for ideas.
Kyle
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5 Replies
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For my TAC music, I have a binder. I have little post-it tabs and create a label for each week. I group a week’s together and put a tab on it.
For my non-TAC sheet music, I use the OnSong app. I’m a keys player so I have ALOT of sheet music, lol. OnSong lets you group and save music however you’d like – genre, key, artist, etc. It’s a pretty great app, if you have an iPad.
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@Shyman911, I save my music from TAC as a PDF and have a separate drive to maintain my music. This approach allows me a historical perspective as I keep copious notes on the individual music sheets themselves.
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For my printed paper music, I put the sheet music/song sheets alphabetically by song title. I used to keep them in a binder but now I have so many that I keep them in folders. Right now I have A-M in one, N-Z in another one, and I do keep any alternate tuning songs in another folder, arranged by which tuning the song is in. (DADGAD, Open G, Open D, Etc)
I also keep one or 2 binders with plastic page protectors, for taking selected loose music out with me to jam parties, guitar camps etc.
I also have a whole library of guitar song books, workbooks and stuff like that. I have them all on the shelf arranged by topic (classical, theory, instructional, fingerstyle, christmas, etc.)
It took me 2 full days to organize all of my music last summer but it was well worth it. Now I can find stuff within 2 minutes and know if I have the music or not. 🙂
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Wow! Talk about organization! Thanks for your input.
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@Skyman911 Your system sounds like me. :). I had great intentions of filing all my sheet music, and having it make sense, but I have haphazard binders, piles on my table and pretty much all over the house. I try to pull it all together and reorganize about once a month.
I took several binders and I placed songs I wanted the paper copies for in one binder. But I didn’t really organize alphabetically, by genre, etc. I put many in plastic sleeves which I think makes it so much easier to handle. They take up extra space in binders. I actually started just saving chord sheets on ultimate guitar, and I just pull the, up and put them on auto scroll and play away! Kllll I did keep ukelele in a separate binder. I had separate one for my private lessons and homework. Instructor is great for synopsizing the lesson and also spelling out what my focus for the week should be. I keep TAC tabs saved as pdfs in folders labeled by the 5 days of the week and the focus area (I.e. Monday- Technique; Tuesday – Lick; Wednesday – Scale/Improv; Thursday-Rhythm; Friday – Chord Transitions). I have a cabinet that houses my books. I keep theory together, classical, rock (99.99% of my songs), and ukulele.
My intentions to maintain it were real and geared towards making it simpler. Reality is that it’s burdensome upfront and when updating, but the overall thought is that it is worthwhile in the end. I just have to be committed to updating and filing.
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