Smartnotes in Music

So I'm trying to figure all this out. I've been reading blogs, checking twitter, asking around. I have realized that a lot of people have WAY more stuff than I do and have been using it A LOT. This grant is a huge step forward, but I had nothing before. Not even a sound system. So I am a bit overwhelmed with all of the boxes.

I see there are a lot of people who have a 10-15 step process for getting music on the iPad. I agree with many that it would be nice (essential?) for publishers to offer properly formatted files for the iDevices. This would cut out 8-9 steps.

I have been looking at the free Smartnotes application and trying to figure out if this is the best use of my time. It seems like a game changer. So--what can we do? We import a .pdf using dropbox, the internet, or iTunes. The program allows us to highlight, annotate, copy right on the iPad. Thats pretty cool. It also allows us to create voice memos attached to the document. That is even cooler. You can attach video to the document (alternate fingerings attached to specific spots?? marching band drill?). Then you can upload the document or email it to the teacher.

So I think this might be useful. Students could keep their music folder in DropBox and download it whenever we were singing. It should keep the annotations and voice memos right on it. With headphones in students could be recording/listening to rehearsals from today or two weeks ago. I could see students singing into the iPad and rehearsing again at home that night just by opening their dropbox account.

The trick is to get that set-up where I am not at school dealing with scanning and accounts all Saturday (yes, I'd like a grad student intern) and its easy enough for the kids so they want to use it.

Crazy? Let me know.