Kindle Strikes Out

Don't get me wrong, I love my Kindle. Mom gave it to me for my birthday, and I learn more things about it on a regular basis. It's great for traveling, since it's a lot lighter and less bulky than packing three of four paperbacks. It allows me to store books online, which takes up no space on my already overstuffed bookshelves. I can take notes on it as I'm reading an electronic text. I can download work documents onto it for reading on the road; nice for long documents, since the Kindle screen is much easier on the eyes than a computer screen. As I said, I love my Kindle.

One thing I've avoided doing is purchasing electronic sheet music because it seemed to me that would be pointless. However, I thought I'd give it try just to see if there might be anything useful with electronic sheet music. So I turned on the Kindle's wireless and went to the Kindle Store.

I started by downloading a sample first. Strike one. Sheet music samples are one page only, the page which reads

End of this sample Kindle book. Enjoyed the sample? Buy Now or See details for this book in the Kindle Store.

Since this was a test, I looked for an inexpensive piece of music. I ordered Johann Sebastian Bach's Flute Sonata No. 2 in E-flat Major (BWV1031). Cost: $1.56 for the flute part. Most sheet music is optimized for the Kindle DX, but it is still readable on both other Kindle devices, including Kindle for PC. Even on the DX, I doubt it would be large enough to read from while playing. Strike two. You can't print anything from an electronic edition, so this is useless for playing.

So maybe it would be useful for studying a piece of music and making notes before playing? Strike three. The annotation function does not work on electronic editions of sheet music.

Yooooou'rre out!