Quickly flip a page of sheet music while playing

Question

This seems like such a silly question, but! When playing the piano, I sometimes struggle to turn the pages of my music without noticeably sacrificing the sound of the piece or making the book / sheets fall. For a complicated piece where there isn't a break in one hand that would allow raising a hand to turn the page, is there a trick I can use to quickly flip the page of music and keep the music going?

Answer 1

One of the tricks you can use is one I have learned watching Gustav Leonhardt in concert. For difficult page turns, he uses a little copy of the start of the next page that he pastes on the side of the preceding right page as a flip.

Not only is it easier on his memory but it allows to grab the page quickly and turn it efficiently. Now that scanners and printers exist, this is really easy to do. Leonhardt often copied the parts by hand (which is not bad for memory).

A related thing you can do is to copy the right and left side and putting them in front of you at the same time when studying the passage. It will flow better in general, you will be less dependent of the precise moment you do the page turns, when you use the original score (which is usually required in concert for copyright reasons).

Answer 2

In general I find that I am slowed by grabbing the page, not by the actual turning. You could bend the corners of the pages forward so that it's easier to grab quickly, or use those sticky flags on the pages, or something like that.

As for turning pages where there's no break for one hand, you need to memorize the music. You can memorize all of it and discard the sheet music¹, or memorize the last few bars after you did have a break, or memorize the first few bars of the next page before a break.

_{1: In a performance you should probably keep the sheet music even if you're not paying attention to it, so that if you suddenly go blank you can just glance up.}

Answer 3

A pianist I used to work with would never actually grab the pages she was turning. She would just rely on the friction of her fingers between the front face of the page and swipe the page across. It was a very fast, efficient, and somewhat violent movement. I would not recommend this on any score with a weak binding or easily torn pages.

Disclaimer: I've never managed to do this myself.....she had some special way of folding the sheets of her music so that they wouldn't clump together.

Answer 4

Little Post-It notes as tabs sticking out from the edge of the page. Line them up from top to bottom and it's easy to grab the top one and turn the page.

Another trick with a bad page-turn is to take a pair of scissors and cut horizontally across the middle of the page, like a Dutch door. Then you can turn the top half first and the bottom half later.

Answer 5

Every pianist I know photocopies and hole punches the sheet music to go into a 1" black binder. This also allows them the luxury of unfolding taped pages so they can play until a break before needing a page turn, but the use of a binder alone should make it easier to grasp and cleanly turn a page compared to a bound paperback or folded free sheet music.

Of course, the pianists I know would all memorize their solo literature and acquire a page-turner if accompanying an instrumental soloist--and then there is the questionable legality of photocopying for that purpose, but anyway that's the perspective I'm familiar with: Memorize, if not: page turner, if not: minimize page turns with taped photocopies, and/or: photocopies in black 3-ring.

Answer 6

For a high tech solution, there's the Freehand Systems MusicPad Pro Plus. It's an LCD tablet that stores and displays sheet music while letting you turn pages with a foot pedal.

Most likely overkill for most people though.

Me, I just print out / photocopy the sheet music and tape the pages together so I can spread them out four pages wide. A 6-page-long piece now requires only one page turn, 8 pages, two turns, etc...

Answer 7

I've had my fair share of awkward page turns over the years, and there's a few things I've picked up that really do help:

• Fold the bottom page corner over slightly; it'll make it a little bit easier to grab the page smoothly (and avoid catching any pages behind it, which tends to be what makes most of the noise).
• Try to make sure you can play the first 2 or 3 bars on the next page from memory; it means you can be a little less violent about doing the turn, since you've got a little bit of time to do it in. Alternatively, if you can find some space in the piece a few (4 or 5) bars back, learn those few bars and do the page turn much earlier. Just be careful not to lose your place doing this - I've always found it harder to recover from doing it this way round for some reason.
• Depending on what genre you're playing (jazz is usually a safe one for this), you can sometimes make small tweaks to what one of your hands is playing (usually the left) if you can't find anywhere to do the turn. Also, don't be afraid to use the sustain pedal for a couple of beats to keep the sound going (you could use the sostenuto pedal, although be aware that you might not always be using a piano that has one). Just be careful not to make the sound too 'muddy' doing this.
• If you're playing in an ensemble of some form, try to listen to what the other instruments are playing. If you're playing in a group with a bass player, you can sometimes let him/her carry the bassline while you use your left hand to do the page turn.
• Finally, if you're playing with lots of loose sheets, it might work to tape them together into a single long sheet.

Answer 8

There are so many great suggestions above, but a particularity I've found isn't always immediately obvious:

If you're having trouble turning pages, you need to practice turning pages.

Just like any other difficulty with a piece, you take a line or so before the difficulty, and practice through to a line or so afterwards. Spend some time figuring out if you need to simplify some part of the piece. In the case of flipping pages, you can try to memorize a section before or after the page flip. This might come in handy even if you have a page-turner, to give you the moment to nod for the page flip!

Answer 9

My method

1. Copy the sheet music to separate sheets and lay them out side by side.
2. If they don't fit, memorize the easy pages until you can discard them.
3. Eventually memorize the whole song and become more impressive to watch. (this one can wait)

Answer 10

Spend some time with the piece and memorize the next chord, for all of the page turns; that way, you can have your left hand or right hand on the piano keys and automatically find the next notes as you take a second to turn the page.

Also, practice turning the pages beforehand. You can fold the corner of the page up a little bit, for easier gripping and you can even place tabs on your music (like post it tabs, etc from Staples).

The easiest "trick" is to simply memorize the next note and be able to play that note while turning the page.

Answer 11

If you can try to memorize the part of when you have to turn the page then you will be able to but I would still practice the part of the song when you do.

Answer 12

I get to know a piece well, then rewrite it onto one page or two using my own peculiar notations. Once I know the piece, I just need reminders of what to play. The actual notes are memorized by my fingers, so to speak. While learning the piece, page turning is a problem, sure, but there's no audience to be bothered by ugly breaks in the music.

Answer 13

My piano teacher sometimes uses his iPad in place of sheet music -- all he had to do was swipe the screen to turn a page.

Of course, this only works if you can find an electronic version of the music you're playing (although I suppose you could always scan your music and convert it into a pdf).