Scorly: Sheet Music Reader

Scorly is a sheet music reader for tablets. You import the PDFs and photographs of music you already own, put them in order, and read them from a stand while you play.

It is not a catalogue and it does not sell music. Everything in your library arrived because you put it there.

WHAT IT DOES

• Your library, on your device. Import PDFs and photographs, scan pages with the camera, or share a score into Scorly from another app. Scorly copies each file into its own storage, so nothing breaks when you tidy up your Downloads folder or move a file.
• Tags. Group pieces your own way — a wedding list, a Tuesday trio, what you are still learning — and filter the library or your setlists with one tap.
• Reading, not browsing. Full screen, the screen kept awake, and page turns by a tap, a keyboard, or a Bluetooth page-turner pedal.
• Two pages side by side. Switch it on and a wide enough screen shows a spread as one page, with a single turn moving both.
• Annotations. Pen, highlighter and eraser, written on the page and kept beside it. The file you imported is never rewritten.
• Sticky notes. Pin a note to the exact spot on a page it is about, write or type on it, and close it to a mark small enough to sit on the notation.
• Blank staves. Start a score on empty staff paper, or add a page to one you have, and write the music in yourself.
• Setlists. Put pieces in a deliberate order, play straight through them, and lock a set so it cannot be changed by accident on stage. Each set has its own stage paper for the running order, the cuts or the programme you were handed.
• Backup you can hold. Export your whole library as a single file, or have Scorly back it up to your own Google Drive on a schedule you choose.

NO ACCOUNT, AND NO SERVER OF OURS

Scorly has no sign-up and no profile. There is nowhere for your music to go that you did not send it: a backup goes to a cloud account that is already yours, into a folder you can open, count and delete. Diagnostics are off until you turn them on, and turning them off asks for what was sent to be deleted.

BUILT FOR A MUSICIAN WHO IS STANDING UP

The app is designed to be used in public, in the dark, with occupied hands. Controls are large enough to hit without looking, the dark theme was designed first rather than as an afterthought, and the page itself is what lights the stand.

WHAT IT DELIBERATELY DOES NOT DO

No metronome, no tuner, no audio playback, no notation recognition and no transposition. No folder indexing, and no editing of the notation. Doing less, and doing it reliably, is the point: a score that failed to open would fail in front of an audience.

Scorly is free, in full.

Questions, faults and feature requests go to [email protected]. It is read by the person who writes the app.