In 2019, the AmateurPianists Competition Committee decided to go with PDF for competitor’s musical scores. It is easier on the travelers with less to carry, but also a lighter touch on the forests, simpler to handle for the judges and easier to manage for the volunteers who organize and assemble the variety of materials used in the competition.

Here are some suggestions and tips for acquiring or creating your PDFs:

PDF Downloads (Digital Originals or Professionally Pre-Scanned)

NOTE: Ensure that the score you choose to download is the same edition as the edition you are preparing to play.

Downloading existing PDFs is the method with the best quality and possibly simplest to succeed — because the pianist doesn’t need to create anything or do anything technical. The hardest part is finding your score already in digital format. Perhaps from the same publisher who printed your score. Perhaps from an online digital score subscription service such as Sheet Music Direct or Virtual Sheet Music, bargain services like IMSLP or perhaps you’ll find some of the classical pieces available for download for free online. Doing some online searching and chatting with friends will expose some options for your particular pieces. Reminder again about watching that you get the right edition to match what you’re playing.

PDFs that you find online that are published digitally from music scoring software will be the highest quality for use by our judges — crisp and clean in every detail. PDFs you find that were professionally scanned from printed scores will usually be much better quality than ones the pianist scans themselves, but not quite as good pure digitally generated ones. Either way, all the pianist has to do is find, buy (unless it’s free) and download.

And a final note about downloads: Does the edition match the one you’re playing (or did we already say that?)

Scan your score yourself

If you can’t get your piece already in digital format, we recommend scanning rather than simply taking pictures of sheets since you’d eventually have to edit the photos and assemble them into PDFs… something that scanners and their apps already do.

Several ways to scan into PDF:

1. Use a scanner to which you have access. Some people already have a scanner or access to a scanner and don’t realize it… maybe access to an all-in-printer at home or at a friend’s house. These can be configured to create a PDF that is saved on the computer. Or perhaps a connected copier at work or at church which can scan pages which become a PDF that the copier automatically emails to you.
2. FedEx/Kinkos, OfficeMax, etc. Office service stores have scanners connected to computers for which you pay a small fee by the minute. An employee may be able to explain and get you started. Help from a friend can make it go quicker. Eventually you end up with PDFs you save to a thumb drive to take the results home… or email the PDFs to yourself. (NOTE: One fellow competitor actually recommends the high quality scanning service at OfficeMax, having experienced it.)
3. Phone apps for scanning, NOTE: This option is HIGHLY dependent on the quality of your phone’s camera, your ability to setup with decent flat light and hold the phone steady, etc. So… assuming you know what you’re doing… there are free Apps for iPhone and Android such as CamScanner. Such apps use the phone’s camera but fully control the process, allow tweaking things like contrast, straightening, cropping and then bundling the shots of all the pages of your piece into a PDF ready for you to upload. Some of the AmateurPianists board members use this method — folks with a steady hand and a phone that has a decent camera.

Remember to provide and upload one PDF per piece that you are playing.

If you have any problems uploading, please contact me.

Once you pick a method to try, please feel free to connect with me for further help or questions.

Fred Zuill
Board Member & Webmaster of AmateurPianists
webmaster@amateurpianists.org
858-472-3309