While not strictly a forScore feature, Apple allows developers to discount their apps by 50% for educators who are buying in bulk (currently defined as 20 or more copies). We absolutely love this program and have always embraced it fully by opting in with each of our apps from the very moment they were released.
It’s back to school season around much of the globe, so we wanted to take a moment to highlight this discount and make sure educators everywhere can take full advantage of it. If you’re looking to supply your classroom with forScore or any of our other apps, check out Apple’s website to learn more about this excellent program—or, if your institution is already part of the volume purchase program, contact your program administrator for further details.
There are many options out there for musicians looking for a page turning device that can flip pages with the press of a foot pedal, but less common are handheld page turners. With forScore 10.4.3 we added support for one of these that was new to us, the Turn Touch remote.
This remote is certainly unique, beginning with the fact that it’s made almost entirely out of wood and held together with strong magnets. In the modern age of cheap plastics and sharp mold lines, it can be refreshing to feel the satisfying grain of natural wood (especially important for something you hold in your hand, rather than set on the floor).
Four buttons let you perform up to eight actions—configurable in the Page Turners & Shortcuts section of forScore’s settings panel—with a click or a longer click and hold. Turn pages, skip to the previous or next score, toggle the metronome, activate on-page buttons, and much much more.
Inside, the Turn Touch uses Bluetooth Smart for much better battery life than standard Bluetooth devices like wireless keyboards. Replacing the battery is easy, though not something you’ll need to worry about often. It pairs directly with forScore through the app’s Devices panel, so there’s no need to keep another app running in the background.
If you’re looking for a handheld forScore remote, this one is a great option. We don’t have any sort of affiliation with them and aren’t compensated if you choose to buy one, so you can trust that we recommend it solely based on its merits. It’s not the only option, but for some people it will certainly be the best.
With forScore’s Rearrange tool you can reorder, duplicate, remove, and rotate pages of a score and save the results in place or as a new copy in your music library. With forScore 10.0, we introduced the ability to insert pages from another score to the end of the piece you’re currently rearranging, or to insert one or more blank pages.
Templates, a feature that was introduced with forScore 10.2, allows users to create new PDF files in their forScore library by picking a style and specifying how many pages they need. Default templates include a blank page and several different types of staff paper, but you can easily add your own templates to better suit your needs.
This year, with forScore 10.4.3, we took each of these features one step further by providing the ability to insert templates directly into the Rearrange workspace. Tap the + button at the bottom of the Rearrange panel to open the Insert picker and you’ll still be able to select a score from your library to insert its pages, but a tab bar along the bottom now also lets you switch over to the Templates browser.
It works just like it does when you select Templates from the tools menu: choose a style, adjust the number of pages, then tap Done. Instead of immediately producing a new score in your library, however, the new pages are appended to your score’s layout and you can continue working until everything looks right. When you’re done, save your changes (or save a copy) and you’ll find the template’s pages included in all the appropriate places.
One of forScore’s older features allows you to create and restore from annotation snapshots. These per-page saved states for your annotations allow you to keep different markings for different situations, but the new Layers feature we discussed last week gives you all of the same capabilities and more: you can hide any layer at any time without permanently removing those markings.
Since most people will want to use layers going forward, we replaced snapshots with layers in the annotation toolbar (you can reverse this if you prefer by visiting the “legacy features” section of forScore’s settings panel). When you’re working on a page that already has one or more snapshots, the Layers panel displays the Snapshots icon in the top left-hand corner so you can still access them and use them just as you always have.
When you’re ready to upgrade to using Layers, you can use a new conversion function we added forScore 10.4 to help people transition. It takes each of your snapshots and creates a new layer from them, with one caveat: forScore supports up to 8 layers but up to 24 snapshots. If you’ve got more than eight, you’ll need to remove some before you can switch over to using Layers instead.
New features are always exciting, but the real test of any thoughtfully developed app is how it helps existing users adapt to the new functionality. We spent a lot of time trying to find the best way to create something amazing for everyone without disregarding the work and time our users put into organizing and annotating their scores.
When you want to add markings to your score but keep some of them separate from others, or if you don’t want to see all of them at all times, forScore 10.4’s new Layers feature offers a great solution. While in annotation mode, tap the icon of three overlapping rectangles in the bottom right-hand corner of the the annotation toolbar. (If you’re using forScore mini, or if you’re using Split View or Slide Over on your iPad, the icon will be in the center of the top row instead.)
This button’s icon shows you how many layers exist for the current page, and tapping it opens the Layers panel. To add a new layer for the current page, tap the + button at the bottom of this panel, or swipe from right to left over any existing layer in the list to clear or remove it. Tap a layer’s title to rename it and use the three icons on the side to toggle its visibility, merge two layers, or duplicate it. Rearrange layers by tapping the “Edit” button or, with iOS 11, using Drag and Drop gestures.
In this list, you can see which layer is currently active by looking for the entry with a slightly darker gray background. When you draw, erase, or add text annotations, stamps, and shapes, they are all added to the current layer—no markings on any other layer are affected. Just like with most popular photo editing applications, markings within layers further down in the list are shown above any markings that may exist in the layers below it (higher up in the list).
Using forScore’s selection tools, you can copy and paste an area of markings from the current layer, then select a different layer and paste them there. If you make a mistake, undo and redo support is ready to help—it tracks each of your changes no matter which layer you’re working with and lets you step backwards and forwards through your edits as needed.
Annotation layers aren’t just a simple addition to forScore’s toolset, they represent a whole new way of working. If you haven’t tried using them yet, be sure to check out this panel and get a sense for how it works.
