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Comment by Polylactic_acid | Hacker News Reader

ePaper does not refresh fast enough to do the falling notes thing you are thinking of. An ipad works infinitely better, costs less second hand (I got an ipad air 2 dirt cheap and its still getting updates) and it does more.

Also my experience with using those things is that you would be better off spending the time to learn sheet music because once you get past twinkle twinkle little star, the falling note style videos don't work. You can't keep up with them live and paused they only show you the very short term future.

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Yep, you might as well just learn to read music the traditional way. It's very common for musicians to be reading the sheet music a long way ahead of the actual music being played, especially while playing fast and complex pieces.

Having said that, an e-ink reader that could read visual cues would be awesome, but I feel it could be very frustrating unless it was incredibly smart. Maybe some kind of blink gestures might be useful.

I think the best UI would just be a page change foot pedal. Not particularly difficult to implement and very reliable.

That's what many big-name classical pianists use, a pedal hooked to an iPad.

Why iPad though? I’ve seen a specialized electronic music sheet (seemingly based on e-ink) in some videos, I guess pages are flipped using a pedal since I didn’t notice any visible interaction with it to do so, e.g. https://youtu.be/oB-gF2Ncphg

I think the question quickly becomes why not an iPad. They're easy and pretty cheap to get hold of, have good screens, lots of people can easily write new software for them and they're also a tablet. Many people may already have one and so using hardware they already have is much cheaper than buying new special hardware.

Also, eink screens are nice to look at but so expensive for non-kindle sizes.

I've played so much live music with an IPad, but after the 4-5th time having it freeze up mid live performance I gave up on the dream. It's just not 100% reliable, and nothing like standing there like an idiot desperately trying to swipe to the next page to make your realize how great paper is

that really sounds like the software you were using not the ipad itself. most people essentially NEVER have their ipads freeze.

chucking the ipad because of that is like chucking the baby out with the bathwater because the bathwater got cold. The baby still has value. you just replace the water.

cool video. looks like the remarkable, actually two of them. now i need to buy TWO

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