ReadyScore User Manual

Understand how ReadyScore organizes your material:

🎼 Books and Scores

In ReadyScore, a book represents a collection of musical pieces — much like a printed music book, but fully interactive. You can: • Add new scores to a book. • Delete pieces no longer needed. • Reorder scores by moving them up or down. • Transpose any score, useful for adapting to different instruments or vocal ranges. Each score is a complete musical work, stored internally as ABC music notation, but presented visually as traditional sheet music. You can: • Edit the ABC code directly. • Import or export scores in ABC format. • Play back any score at various speeds and volumes. • Rely on a built-in sound font piano, ensuring consistent playback across devices. (Future updates may introduce full General MIDI support.) ⸻

✍️ About ABC Notation

ABC notation is a compact, human-readable text format for music, invented in the early 1990s by Chris Walshaw. It was designed to notate folk tunes using only plain text — easy to write, read, share, and process. Over time, ABC has evolved into a full-featured music notation standard, supported by a variety of software for display, playback, and conversion. ⸻

🔧 The Engine Behind the Scenes

ReadyScore uses the powerful open-source library abc2svg (by Jeff de La Chaise, based on work by Christoph Dalitz and others), which converts ABC notation into scalable vector sheet music directly in your browser or app. Key features include: • Guitar tablature rendering • Chord symbol support • Multi-voice arrangements • Precise layout and formatting This foundation allows ReadyScore to offer rich musical display and editing features, powered entirely by lightweight, portable code. ⸻

Book and Score Structure

How to move around and manage your material:

Scroll and filter modes

In Reader mode, all scores are displayed in a continuous scroll, each with its transposition already applied. Navigation is touch- or mouse-based: tapping the lower left corner scrolls forward (Page Down), lower right scrolls backward (Page Up), upper left jumps to the end, and upper right returns to the beginning. From the menu you can use these tools:

The current scale, which ranges from 0.1× to 2.0× and is adjustable via the control bar.

Activating Free Flow ignores line breaks, reformatting each score to fit.

The Filter function in Reader mode searches only titles and composers (ignoring tags); when active, entering a keyword shows suggested matches, which can be clicked to apply as filters.

Page Mode displays one A4 page at a time with transposition, filtering, and scaling applied. Its menu, hidden by default, appears when tapping or clicking the center bottom edge. Available controls include page forward/back, score forward/back, a book navigation slider, and an exit button to return to Reader mode.

File management (import/export)

Open a book file (.json) including its scores

Import a single score, as an .abc file

Save the current book as a single .json file

Export the current book as a single Markdown file (only on desktop PC)

Organize your score collections:

Use this tool to enter edit mode. Scores are shown as thumbnails with only their titles and top lines visible, similar to managing a drawer of files.

• ↑ ↓ Reorder Scores
  Use the arrow buttons to move a score up or down in the book.
• 🎼 Transposing
  Each score starts with a transposition value of 0, meaning it plays in its original key. Adjusting this value shifts the pitch up (positive) or down (negative) by that number of semitones. Changes take effect when you return to Reader mode.
• 🗑️ Deleting
  After confirming a prompt, the selected score will be permanently removed from the book.
• Edit Score
  The edit score button opens the score into th Score Editor

The Score Editor lets you modify and play individual scores, combining live rendering with full code access.

• Tags Field: Located at the top, every word you enter becomes a tag for filtering and organizing scores.
• Score View: Displays the rendered music from the ABC code in real time. Selecting a music symbol highlights its corresponding ABC code.
• Code Editor: Automatically color-highlights the ABC code. The score updates live as you type. Cut, copy, and paste are supported. On iOS, an extended toolbar appears above the keyboard.
• Toolbar: Offers cursor movement (← → ↑ ↓) and quick entry for special characters (♭, ♯, |). Includes buttons for Set Loop , Undo , and Redo
• Play Controls: Adjust volume and playback speed. Includes Play / Pause , Set Loop , and Stop buttons.
• Scale Control: Same as in Book View, lets you zoom the score display for better readability (0.1× to 2.0×).
• Score Controls: Buttons to Cancel , Export PDF , Export ABC , and Save changes.

• iOS gestures:

- long press on a score on Reader mode to edit it directly into the Score Editor - swipe left or right on Page mode to change pages

• Mac keyboard shortcuts:

- on reader view Cmd+H and Cmd+G increase and decrease scale - navigation keys PgUp, PgDown, Home and End - on Page mode esc exits