Page-turning for product engineers—and anyone in a pinch
Seven tactics to help you page-turn for a pianist
If you need to learn how to page-turn for a pianist—and you’re impatient, short on time, or care about doing it a bit better—this post is for you.
Duluth Chamber Music Festival concert in Aug 2022, with Yun-Ting Lee (violin), Jonathan Vinocour (viola), Dane Johansen (cello), Sayaka Tanikawa (piano)… and yours truly (turning pages)
For people in a pinch
Product engineers are impatient. We want to ship. We never have enough time to figure out the perfect way, but we have to make it work. Plus we have a performer side: we’re always thinking about the audience, and we want the product to look good and work well for them.
You can fill in the analogy.
Is this guide complete and definitive?
No—and neither is any shipped product!
What do I know?
Last week, I was in your shoes. At the Duluth Chamber Music Festival, a fellow organizer was the obvious choice to page-turn: he’s a professional musician and wasn’t playing in the concerts. But he had his hands full with other things, so he asked if I would do it.
So I, an amateur violinist, stepped in to page-turn for the pianist, Sayaka, in the Brahms G Minor piano quartet. I found myself Googling “how to be a great page-turner” an hour before rehearsal, not finding the StackOverflow answer for it… and mostly figured it out on the fly.
How’d it go?
At both concerts, I turned all the pages without any close calls. What really mattered, though—as the product engineer knows—was “user feedback.”
The second-best compliment came from the pianist, Sayaka. In the car ride home from the mainstage concert, she said, “I forgot Jess was there! That has only happened twice. I want to take Jess everywhere.”
The best compliment came from an audience member, a public school music teacher and cellist who came to chat backstage after the mainstage concert. He said: "You were turning pages?" Mission accomplished.
Now, onto the meat of the matter!
Page-turning is like infrastructure
The first thing a product engineer should know is that page-turning isn’t like product engineering—you want to be like infrastructure:
If you're doing it right, you're invisible.
You’re on-call even when you're not “doing anything.”
Reliability is key. One mistake can screw things up for the pianist, all the musicians playing with the pianist, and the audience. (No pressure!)
The practical art of page-turning
To do something well and reliably, you want to play both offense and defense. You want to ensure success, and prevent mistakes.
Below are the tactics I found most helpful in each category, ordered from most to least important to me.
Offense: to ensure success
1. Count like you’re playing.
As the music is going, count as if you were counting during a rest in your part while playing the piece. My professional musician friend and fellow organizer was surprised to learn I do this, but I couldn’t imagine doing the job without it.
Why count? I find that over a long period of time, and across all different pieces of music, it’s too slow and mentally taxing to follow the music primarily by reading the notes, and you’ll be more likely to lose your place. (I do scan the notes as an extra check.)
Plus, counting has other great side-effects:
It makes you anticipate and turn the page at the right split-second. (Just as subdividing helps you come in at the right split-second when playing.)
It makes you turn the page at an appropriate speed, because you constantly have the tempo in mind.
2. Position yourself to have a clear view of all the music.
This one is self-explanatory, but occasionally you might have to get creative. I had to improvise for one concert where there wasn’t enough space next to the piano to sit and see all the music. So while unusual, it was better to stay standing—and luckily the layout of the space let me stand unobtrusively against a doorway (and semi-behind a lamp) when not turning.
3. Figure out how many lines of music / number of measures in advance you need for three moments:
A) When you need to “perk up”—to start paying extra attention and mentally prepare for the next steps.
B) When you need to physically stand up (assuming you’re sitting) and approach the piano.
C) When you need to get your left hand on the sheet music.
To make this concrete, for me during the Brahms G minor piano quartet, the timings were:
Perking up: the start of the second-to-last line
Standing up: usually around the end of the second-to-last line, though there were a few exceptions based on how the part was printed.
Hand on the music: this varied based on the tempo and time signature, but was usually between 3-6 measures.
Moment C) was the trickiest to get right, especially because I’m short. Since I couldn’t reach the top corner of the right-hand page of the sheet music without getting in the way of the pianist, I flipped from the middle of the top edge of the page, which is harder to work your finger under. Rehearsal was critical for getting a (literal) feel for how to do this.
4. Figure out notable page turns.
What is “notable” depends on the piece as well as the version of the sheet music the pianist is using.
4a. Negotiate spots where the pianist wants to turn the page.
There may be parts of the music where the pianist has a long rest or cadenza before the page turn. It’s probably better for the pianist to turn the page in these spots.
In these spots, have the pianist write their name in the bottom right corner of the page, so both of you will see it and neither one of you can forget. (I learned this particular tip from Sayaka.)
4b. Identify spots where there is a significant musical change.
For example, if there’s a big moment/tricky spot for the pianist after the page turn, it may make sense to turn just a hair earlier.
Another example is if things suddenly get soft (in dynamic, feeling) right after. Here, you might also want to turn slightly earlier, and softly; then make as little sound (and motion) as possible as you step back to your chair.
4c. Identify special situations, like repeats.
It’s a good idea to circle the repeats—where they start and end—even in color!
5. Read the pianist’s part and body language.
If you’re able to read piano music, looking one degree closer at the part can help you refine when to turn a particular page. For example, if there are two simple, repeated measures at the end of a page (which are easy to memorize), a pianist may prefer to turn earlier.
A pianist will sometimes give a nod when they want you to turn. You’ll find following this direction quite natural—you just have to already be in position when they nod.
Defense: to prevent mistakes
1. Attend rehearsals and use them to experiment.
Mentally treat rehearsals like the real thing: try to not miss or flub any turns. But also treat them not like the real thing: this is the time to experiment more freely than you would in a concert.
Use the time to figure out #3 and #4 above.
Tell the pianist to say something if they don’t like it. But you will likely have a sense too—“oh, I stood up too early” or “that felt too close.” Great, adjust next time.
2. Notice every time you mess up and diagnose why.
In a long or complex piece, you’ll probably flub a few page turns in rehearsal. That’s okay. But figure out why, and what to do differently.
Diagnosing my mistakes in rehearsal led me to these additional tactics. These seem more personal and may not help you as much as it did me.
2a. Don’t get too into the music.
Ironically, the music can be a siren song for me. Getting swept into it can make me forget I’m doing a job.
2b. Don’t think about all the other things you need to do.
During one rehearsal, my mind wandered to semi-urgent tasks I had to do, and that caused me to miss or have close calls twice. (I ended up leaving for a few minutes to take care of those things before continuing.)
2c. Focus on the piano part, not the other lines.
Even though I’m a violinist, the violin part notes were too small to reliably track—and, not to mention, much less relevant to the job of turning pages for the pianist. Even when the piano had a long rest, I preferred to count and only peripherally track the string parts.
Priceless rewards
By this point, you might be wondering: why would anyone sign up for this? It seems like a lot of schlep.
But, to any amateur, I would encourage you to take the opportunity with any musical group you admire. I’d do it again in a heartbeat—for the rehearsals.
Getting to observe top-notch musicians rehearse for an extended time is an education you can’t buy. When I came home and practiced violin for the first time in two weeks, my ear picked up sound quality problems I used to not hear. I realized that listening to professionals rehearsing up close in person for a week caused the change: it raised the bar for what I expect to hear.
There are rewards even if you don’t actively play an instrument. When listening to the concert recording, having heard the rehearsals helped me better appreciate the details the musicians had deliberately worked into the final product.
Other resources
I hope you found this guide useful. I had trouble finding many other how-to guides to page-turning, which is why I wrote this one. Two others that stand out as practical are:
