Week 6: "Enhanced" Music E-Books

Electronic music publishing continues to excite me. I came across a more seemingly sophisticated form of music ebook than the ones I have encountered in my earlier research. 

Guitar.com praises Alfred Music Publishing by stating that they take "... music to a new level with the release of the world's very first Enhanced Music e-book in Apple's iBookstore" (Guitar.com, 2015). Upon reading the long list of features, as wells gazing upon the page above, the obvious question remained. How is this different from a website layout? There doesn't seem to be much left that is characteristic of and or resembling a traditional music book or "traditional" printed page. Later, I find out that Maxwell is reading my mail so to speak. He asks the same if not similar question:

"Despite the electronic book’s existence as far back almost as the very dawn of modern computing, the e-book now presents itself as brand new, as the shape of things yet to come. What is different?" (Maxwell, 2013, p. 30). 

I understand that we are trying to improve upon e-book page design, and that some of these additional features [i.e. "audio examples", "visual instructions", etc (Guitar.com, 2016)] are helpful to the consumer, but as far as design goes maybe simplicity and sophistication just haven't coalesced yet. Perhaps interactivity involves the marrying of the music scoresheet and notes and text there-in to sounds and leaving video out altogether. Maybe there should be page designs that can be made custom through settings that will help the consumer decide what kind of layout they would like to peruse through in their e-book. Either way, the "printed page" seems to be lost. 

References

Guitar.com (2016). Alfred Introduces the World's First Enhanced Music E-Books... 

     Retrieved from https://www.guitar.com/articles/alfred-introduces-worlds-first-          enhanced-music-e-books-alfreds-kids-guitar-course-now

Maxwell, J. W. (2013). "E-Book Logic: We Can Do Better". Papers of the   

     Bibliographical Society of Canada 51 (1), pp. 29-47. Retrieved                    

     from http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/bsc/article/view/20761/16996

Perera, I. (2016). Alfred Enhanced Music E-Book. [Screen Capture].

     Retrieved from https://www.guitar.com/articles/alfred-introduces-worlds-first-          enhanced-music-e-books-alfreds-kids-guitar-course-now