Musicians of the world, your dreams just came true. Some kind souls have come up with a Kindle for sheet music, and it’s called the Gvido — a dual-screen E Ink device that digital scores organized, and all those binders of loose leaf paper from exploding time and time again.
The brain child of the Tokyo-based company Terrada Music Score, the Gvido consists of a 13.3-inch “Mobius” flexible electronic paper display, approximately the same size as your actual sheet music, with a resolution of 1,200 x 1,600 pixels. But now, instead of flipping through physical pages, you can swipe across this thin, lightweight device as you make your way through a piece. The Gvido claims to support a long period of use due to the low power consumption of its e-paper, and thanks to its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions, you can actually purchase scores directly from the internet, and download them to your device.
And don’t worry — if you like to make annotations in your scores, you’ll still be able to do that with the Gvido. According to the company, the device comes with a digital pen that allows users to make notes directly onto the e-ink page, and save any markings in a PDF file format. Its microSD card slot and internal memory should also provide plenty of storage space, supporting your exploration of musical compositions from the Baroque to Contemporary periods.
Sadly, there’s no automatic page-turning functionality (which is really what we need), and a demo video does suggest that the page-turning process (you tap or slide your finger across the device) is a bit slow. All the same, it may just be one of the most exciting tech innovations made for musicians in recent memory, so if you’re tired of trying to organize reams of sheet music on your shelf, consider the Gvido instead.
