[bfwoolner]

Just acquired a Samsung S10 ultra for sole purpose of digitizing sheet music.  While I am aware much can be acquired through ISMLB, much of what I have
will need to be scanned.  Question: is there a thoughtful way to begin the process rather than randomly scanning willy nilly.  Is there any way to even estimate the time it may take?
There is a lot of music but it is all only for my personal enjoyment, never performance.  I thought, perhaps, loading my favorites and ones that I easily play first, and then the ones 
that need some practice and beyond that, new things to learn.   I am 85 so consider I may not even be around much longer I want the most for the fastest so I can play and not spend
time processing.  Thanks for any tips.

bfwoolner

[Lester]

Hello bf and welcome.

We all have our own ways of thinking and working: let me explain how I have approached digitising the music for our church, approximately 600 songs. You can pick and choose which appeals to you or sparks a better idea.

Knowing that my goal is to have these 600 songs in PDF format and in MobileSheets, I started by writing up (meaning writing the lead sheets using score-writing software) about 40 songs, enough to show the other musicians in the church to see who would want to help out.

I then created blank (as in no music score) pages with only the song's title. That way I could create collections in MobileSheets for the 4 song books we use plus all the extra one-off songs. This means MobileSheets works now as it will when I have finished my work, just with lots of almost blank pages.

My task is now much clearer, each week replacing a few more of the almost blank PDFs with the fully scored version. It helps me to see the bigger picture, the framework, like doing a jigsaw puzzle and having completed the border. That helps me because I work like that but you may be different and will have to plan according to the way you think and like to work.

Just as I started with about 40 fully finished examples before I decided to create the blank pages and get MobileSheets' collections and setlists in order, it might help you to produce a handful or completed songs as that may well help you dedcide whether you need to adjust your working method or presentation method. From memory, my exqmples helped me realise that leaving a white border around teh music, like on a printed page, is a waste of space: everone wants to see the music fill the space as tablets are (at least in our case) smaller that standard printed sheet music pages.

One last thought: I work in blank and white as music does not need to be in colour. It makes for smaller (and therefore faster-loading) PDFs and where I would like some colour to help, I use the annotations facility within MobileSheets as it is excellent, reliable and even though I have not yet tried it, they can be embedded into the PDFs as opposed to just being an overlay.

Have fun exploring, scanning and creating your digitised music!