I bought my latest iPad almost three years ago when I started playing the organ at St. Markʻs Episcopal Church. After weighing the pros and cons of reading music from a tablet, and especially, since the choral music is distributed via Dropbox, I went ahead and took the plunge of purchasing an iPad with a large 13″ screen and forScore, the dominant music-reading app. (Previously I had a iPad mini which would be too small for reading music on an organ console, especially one with three manuals.)

I had been motivated lately, to use my iPad more and more because I am finding it increasingly difficult to read music without enlarging it. I think back to the good old days when I used to read music in miniature score! At my age, I just canʻt do it anymore, and when I canʻt see the music, I canʻt play the right notes! Macular degeneration not withstanding, getting old is not for sissies! … (sigh!)

My greatest challenge was turning the pages. I was accustomed to seeing several pages at once, and to only view a single page at a time on the iPad, with its awkward page turns made it too challenging to use in the fast-paced service at St. Markʻs, especially when many pieces of music happen in quick succession.

Oh, I tried using facial gestures — one of the features of forScore to turn the pages. You can set up a wink, or a head turn, or mouth movement to turn to the next page. However, I found this unreliable, mainly because the music rack at St. Markʻs sits high and the camera couldnʻt see my winks or mouth move. Even when I took peopleʻs suggestion to turn the iPad upside down, it didnʻt help.

I also bought a Bluetooth pedal, which works well, except that there is nowhere to mount it on the St. Markʻs console, which is very crowded with toestuds and volume pedals. A friend of mine mounts his Bluetooth pedal on the crescendo pedal, but again, I found this location to be unworkable — both for locating it without looking, and then clicking it. Either the page didnʻt advance or two pages turned at once. Not good.

So, up to now, I have relied on my three-ring notebook for playing services, with printouts of all the music I needed — in chronological order — with some pieces having multiple pages taped together, eliminating page turns. I still use my iPad for rehearsals where I set up Setlists to put all the music in order.

Recently I have been following forScore chat groups, and someone mentioned a small Bluetooth button called a Flic. It was a little larger than a thumb piston, but it could be positioned and repositioned any number of places on the console.

Hereʻs what a Google search says:

For organists, Flic smart buttons offer a discreet, wireless way to manage sheet music (e.g., in apps like forScore on iOS) or to trigger registration changes in virtual organ software like Hauptwerk. Because of their small size, they can be easily mounted onto toe studs, pistons, or the edges of a MIDI keyboard.

Why Flic is Popular for Organists

No Wires: They connect via Bluetooth to your tablet, eliminating the need to run cables across the console.

Compact & Unobtrusive: Organ consoles are incredibly tight, and standard foot pedals can get in the way. Flic 2 buttons are the size of a coin, making them easy to mount anywhere your hands naturally rest.

Multi-Action Triggers: Because each button registers three distinct inputs (a single press, double press, and press-and-hold), you can assign a click to go to the “next page”, a double click for “previous page”, and a long press to “return to the beginning”.

It was this video which sold me:

Best of all, the Flic button could be mounted on the console, just like another thumb piston. So I bought a pack of 3 and mounted two of them at St. Markʻs. They are repositionable, so I can take them when I leave.

So … (big breath)

My debut using the Flic buttons will be on Ascension, May 14th, when we will sing “Hail thee, festival day” sung to the Ascension texts. This hymn is a nightmare, for this organist, anyway, because of the odd-numbered verses sung to one melody, and the even-numbered verses sung to another melody, alternating with a recurring refrain. I cannot tell you how many times I have been thrown for a panic because upon finishing the refrain, I didnʻt know what verse was next. I tried singing the verse number (instead of the words) but at the end of the refrain, I still wasnʻt sure what verse was next.

Setting up forScore with this scheme was easy — I just copied the refrain and placed it between the alternative verses. That means the hymn is now 13 pages instead of just 3 pieces of paper!.I even highlighted each verse in yellow, for example verse 2.

BUT … but … but …

Normally I use a different registration for the refrain and for the different verses (see my notations in red for the piston number). That means that at the end of each page I must press TWO buttons, and the timing is super critical. The buttons canʻt be pressed simultaneously, but one after the other — all in the space of a split-second breath between phrases.

1. Hit the Flic to turn the page.
2. Hit the appropriate piston number to change the registration.

Weʻll see whether this old dog can learn new tricks!