Forscore: Explaining the Top Bar

What does the top bar of forScore, where the title of the piece is shown, do? What are all of the features hidden there? In today’s video and blog post, I’m showing you exactly that!

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE!

Accessing the Top Bar

The top bar that I’m sharing today is the one that shows the name of the score you’re reading, and what page number you’re on. There’s an icon to the left of the title, and another icon on the right.

The icon on the left looks like a piece of paper with a line in the center. Pressing this icon enables “half page turns.” When you turn the page in half page turn mode, one tap (or press of your pedal) only reveals the top half of the next page, so you can turn the page early and still continue reading the bottom of the previous page. A second tap reveals the rest of the new page.

The icon to the right of the title is a little arrow pointing right. This brings up the options we’ll be talking about today.

An Overview of the Icons

In this bar, we have first have an arrow pointing to the left. Pressing on this will take you back to the title bar that we just talked about.

The first icon in the group looks like a pencil. This is the annotate feature, and yes, it is exactly like the blue annotation feature to the right of this bar–it’s just another way to access it!

The second icon is the share button.

The third icon is three boxes stacked on each other. This is the Cue feature.

The fourth icon is a circle with arrows pointing to the edges. This is a way to access performance mode.

The next icon is a microphone symbol, and it brings up a simple recording function.

The fifth icon is a circle, with the outline mostly grayed out. This will bring up your goals and analytics.

The last icon in the group is a settings icon. This brings up a few basic display options.

And finally, we have three dots. This allows you to edit the order of all the icons in the top bar.

Let’s dive into each function!

Annotation

The pencil icon brings up the annotation feature. You can also access it with the blue pencil icon to the right of this bar, or by simply writing on the score with an Apple Pencil. If you’d like to go in-depth into forScore’s annotation features, head over to my blog post explaining each and every feature!

Share

The share icon brings up a menu where you can choose which format of the score you’d like to share: PDF, Annotated PDF, or 4S (forScore) document. For the PDF options, you can choose a page range and the aspect ratio. After making your selections, the typical iOS share options pop up.

Cue

The third icon that looks like three boxes brings up the Cue feature. If you’re in an ensemble where everyone owns an iPad and uses forScore, one member can become the Leader. This person can direct the page turns and program changes (flipping through scores). To lead, you will need the forScore membership, but anyone with the app can be a follower. Dual Page Mode displays two pages at once.

Performance Mode

The circle with two arrows pointing outwards brings up performance mode. In this mode, you cannot use your Apple Pencil (it simply does nothing), and tapping on the score does nothing except turns the pages. You cannot access the top bar of forScore in this mode–it’s made to be as distraction and accident-free as possible. To exit performance mode, just tap the x in a blue circle in the top right of the screen.

Record

The microphone icon pulls up a small menu where you can record yourself playing in-app. Just tap the microphone button in this menu, and it’ll show that it’s recording. When you’re finished, just tap the button again, and it will stop recording. To play back the recording, edit, or delete it, press the hamburger icon (three lines) in the middle of this menu. It will pull up a list of all of your recordings. Here you can listen, edit, delete, or share them.

Goals and Analytics

The circle icon brings you to your goals and analytics. Here, you can set goals for yourself, keep track of how you’re doing, and view analytics like how long you’ve looked at individual scores in your forScore library. You can also generate weekly reports of your analytics. There are lots of powerful options for customization, and I’m looking forward to playing around with this!

Settings

The settings icon just brings up a few simple options. There are a few display modes, an option to enable half page turns, and a night mode feature, which I always keep on.

Customization

The three dots at the end of the bar bring up a menu where you can change the order of the icons. I changed mine to better suit my needs after showing the original order in my video.

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Have any questions about what I shared today? Please leave a comment down below, and I’ll answer your question in the comments! If there’s a specific forScore feature you’d like to see me analyze in-depth, let me know, and I’ll make a video and blog post all about it. Thanks for reading!