With forScore’s metadata panel, you can add all sorts of useful information to your scores and bookmarks. You may already be familiar with the Time field, which lets you specify roughly how long a piece takes to play and shows that information in most of forScore’s menus, but there’s a little more to it than that.
In the Setlists menu, you can always see how many items each of your setlists contain, but if any of a setlist’s items have their play time set it’ll add them up and also show you the total play time for that setlist. Of course, you’ll need to add in some time for applause (hopefully quite a lot!) and breaks.
We’ve updated forScore a lot over the past five years. Over a hundred updates have tackled everything from minor bug fixes to major releases with dozens of new features, and we’re not stopping any time soon!
Updating apps is easy: you can download newer versions through iTunes on your Mac or PC and install them automatically the next time you sync your iPad, you can update them with the App Store app right from your device, or they can even update themselves automatically if your iPad is set up to do so.
Some people update immediately, but others prefer to wait until their performance schedules calm down so they can have some time to familiarize themselves with any changes. For those pragmatic holdouts, the Support section of the tools menu gives you an easy way to check if you’re using the latest version or not. Open it, and if your copy of forScore is outdated, an item will let you know that there’s an update available. Tap it to go right to the app store page, where you can learn more about it and install it if you’re ready.
As forScore has grown, the number of tools available to musicians has increased dramatically. With forScore 7, we made it easier to quickly access some of the most commonly used tools by adding a second page of buttons to the title display:
You can swipe or tap the arrow button to move between pages, but there’s more here than meets the eye. On the second page, the ellipsis (…) button lets you rearrange the tools and put the ones you use most often on the first page for quick access.
The first page has two spots available for buttons—one on the left of the title text, and one on the right. If you have less than two items set up to be visible on page one, an arrow button takes the right-hand spot, making it easier to switch between pages. Everything else is available on the second page.
So, if you recently upgraded from forScore 6 or earlier only to find that the perform button had disappeared (like a recent app store reviewer did), now you know how to get it back.
Bonus tip: we can’t respond to reviews. We hate having an easy answer and no way to tell a frustrated customer about it, so if you ever find something to be unintuitive or different from an earlier version, just ask us!
One of the most popular features of forScore is the ability to link an audio track to a particular score in your library. Open the score, and the audio is queued up automatically, ready when you are.
There are a few different ways to control audio playback: you can use gestures, keyboard/page turner shortcuts, or you can use the controls in the media box at the bottom of the screen. The media box appears and disappears with the rest of forScore’s controls when you tap the center of the screen, but for instant access from anywhere be sure to try forScore 8’s “Always show playback controls” option in the settings panel.
When this option is enabled, the media box will still appear and disappear when you tap the screen, but the play, pause, and rewind controls will stay put. They’ll even turn partially transparent so they’re visible without completely blocking the page.
Today we’re happy to announce the immediate availability of forScore 8.3 and forScore mini 1.2. These updates add tighter compatibility with the new AirTurn PED by offering direct Mode 1 communication in addition to the standard keyboard modes already supported in previous versions (with some potential issues). Learn more about connecting your PED to forScore here, and be sure to check out AirTurn’s new page turner if you haven’t had a chance to already. As always, these updates are free and available now on the App Store.