About Digital Song Collections
Digital Song Collections is devoted to making large, well-organized collections of classical vocal music available in pdf format at a reasonable cost. As more musicians move to tablets for their performance and practice, DSC provides an alternative to downloading multiple scans or snapping numerous pictures of scores for use in score reading software. For teachers, all DSC collections are available in multiple-key editions that can be legally printed for students and their accompanists.
The DSC Difference
The majority of classical music scores available for download on the internet are optical scans of 19th-century editions in pdf format. While these are free, the quality of the scans can vary wildly. Many are spotty and crooked. Others contain personal markings, and few are scanned at a high dpi. Their printouts do not match the quality of the original scores, nor are they organized in any way.
A second type of score is often available for a charge on the internet. These are scores that have been entered in notation software and are touted as transposable to multiple keys. Typically, these scores are spread over many more pages than the printed originals, and their transpositions, while note accurate, are difficult to play from because they simply move the notes up and down. These scores cannot and do not match the quality of typeset editions in multiple keys.
The scores available from Digital Song Collections have been typeset in notation software developed by DSC’s founder, Terence Kelly, and have been modeled on printed editions. Transpositions have been reworked carefully to be legible, and keys have been thoughtfully selected to suit standard voice ranges. All the collections have been thoroughly indexed in a table of contents, and any individual song can be found quickly and easily. The scores themselves are 600-dpi-image printouts in pdf format. They print cleanly on modern printers and are easy to read on the Ipad Pro, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, or a comparable android tablet. They work well with score reading software like forScore or Mobile Sheets, but the only software necessary to use them is the free version of Adobe Reader or a similar pdf viewer.