The Kindle DX and music - Here's a more recent article, by Gadgetell, on sheet music on the Kindle. I had looked at the new Kindle sheet-music feature when it was first announced. While the emphasis by Freehand System's "Kindle the Muse" selection of 20,000 pieces of sheet music for the Kindle seemed to be on classical sheet music, the composer names were not on corresponding book images at first and the titles gave names of movements only, so there was no clue as to who the composer was.
Today, they have generic covers with the composer names on them. However, a problem I wrote Freehand Systems about, via their feedback form, still exists. On the first page, the catalog offers a Bach Sonata for gamba/cello in G but it's for Movement 1 only, out of 4 movements for the piece, and is priced at $1.56. If the other movements are $1.56, the total cost for one sonata would be $6.24.
The real problem is there is NO LINK to find/buy the other 3 movements. I know no one who buys only one movement of a work that requires high-intermediate to advanced piano skils. The company never responded to my question about this.
There ARE shorter pieces, of course. And some popular music offerings should be fun to have in a Kindle edition. Also, this is ideal for groups that follow lead sheets, as no page turns are involved.
I've a few files of sheet music on my Kindle DX in PDF format and they look really nice. At the bottom, I've placed a link to a couple of examples.
You can scan sheet music, that you already have, to images at about 150 dpi (dots per inch), as 300 dpi is not needed for this, and they'll load or give you faster page turns). You can't take notes on the sheet music, on the Kindle, but you could learn pieces, write notes on them and then scan them for carrying around or always having with you.
(I preface the sheet music filenames with 'sm-' for sheet music so that I can find them easily.)
Google "sheet music pdf" and you'll find many places that offer music in PDF format. For classical, there is the IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library - "The free public domain sheet music library" with downloadable PDFs, and you can search by composer name, time period, genre, or instrumentation. The full name of this amazing website is International Music Score Library Project, and the files are legal. Here is their FAQ explaining the organization.
I would imagine Amazon's Kindle the Muse optimizes the sheet music files for the Kindle DX, and short pieces are affordable, but until they find a way of making all the movements of a basic sonata findable, I don't understand how they expect to sell sonatas.
Freehand Systems also sells a larger, very expensive unit (not a Kindle) dedicated to displaying sheet music and which can be marked up and has various pedals for turning pages (one of them pages forward only -- not optimal for repeats). They also have a number of music education tools and games.
I have a couple of photos of some sheet music (PDFs) on my DX, in vertical mode and rotated to landscape mode. It's very clear, but the display is still somewhat smaller than an 8.5 x 11" piece of paper. Best used when you've become acquainted with the notes. And if the images are very high resolution it may take a few seconds for a page turn. On the whole, the ones I have take about 2 seconds to turn. For me, pressing the button (on the inside) is much easier than trying to do a page turn with paper.
As for music in general on the Kindle, all the Kindles play mp3's.
On the Kindle 2 and the DX, they play in the order in which they were placed in the "music" folder. (On the original Kindle, they play in random order.) The features are minimal in that the music can play in the background while you're reading and you can rewind 30 seconds back or fast forward by the same, but you don't get information on what's playing. If you want a specific mp3 to play you can put it in the "audible" folder and select it from the Home page, as it will look like a book title, but in that case you wouldn't be able to read a book at the same time.
I should add that the
Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX
Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
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