How to Tape Your Sheet Music Together (So It Lies Flat and Turns Easily)
If you’ve ever watched a page slide off a music stand mid-piece, or wrestled a loose stack of sheets in a rehearsal, you already know the problem this post solves. Anyone who reads from printed music runs into it eventually: paper doesn’t cooperate. A page count over one, a breeze from an open window, or just an awkward turn, and a piece can end up on the floor at exactly the wrong moment. It happens often enough in ensemble and guitar orchestra settings that most players eventually go looking for a fix.
The fix, in principle, is simple: tape the pages together. Most people already know that much. What fewer people know is that there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, and the wrong way, which is genuinely almost everyone’s first attempt, causes nearly as much trouble as the loose pages did.
Why a quick tape job doesn’t hold up
The common approach is to grab a piece of tape and stick two pages together wherever it’s convenient. The result usually doesn’t lie flat. It bulges slightly along the join, so instead of sitting flush against the music stand, one edge lifts. That means the music can catch a breeze and shift, it won’t sit evenly on the stand’s lip, and if you try to fold it to carry it in a bag, the join creases badly and the pages don’t line back up cleanly next time.
What you’re aiming for
A good join does three things: it sits flush at the top and bottom of the stand rather than lifting off at an angle, it lies genuinely flat rather than bulging, and it folds cleanly enough to go into a folder or bag without the pages sliding out of alignment. Once you’ve done it once with attention to these three things, it’s a five-minute habit for every new piece you print.
Taping two pages together, step by step
- Lay the two consecutive pages side by side, facing you exactly as you’d read them off the stand. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to tape pages together out of order or upside down if you’re not paying attention.
- Align the bottom two corners first. This is the step that actually determines whether the join works. If the corners aren’t level and at the same distance apart, the result will sit off-center and won’t lie flat, no matter how careful the taping is.
- Check the top corners line up too, then tape along the seam: a strip roughly an inch (2.5–5 cm) long near the bottom, and one near the top. If you want extra security for pages that get handled a lot, flip the sheets over and add a short strip in the middle on the back.
- Fold along the seam with one clean crease. Done this way, the fold holds its shape and the pages stay aligned when they go in and out of a bag or folder.
Turning several pages into a booklet
Once a piece runs to four or five sheets, taping them end to end the same way starts to get unwieldy on the stand. At that point it’s worth building a small booklet instead:
- Tape all the pages together in sequence, the same way as above, corner-aligned and flat.
- Decide where the page turns should fall. A natural approach is to lay three pages open across the stand at once, with the turn falling between the second and third page.
- With that layout decided, turn the whole sheet over and tape the back seam where the pages meet, so the booklet holds its folded shape rather than flopping open.
Skip that last step and the booklet doesn’t stay closed. It’ll gape open on the stand and become as much of a hassle as the loose pages you were trying to avoid. With it, the pages turn in the right place every time and the whole piece behaves like a single, well-behaved booklet rather than a stack of paper.
A small habit, fewer problems on stage
None of this takes long once you know it, and it solves a problem almost every player who reads from printed music eventually runs into, whether that’s on a home stand, in a lesson, or shoulder to shoulder with others in a guitar orchestra. It’s also a natural companion to good habits elsewhere in how you prepare and read your music: if notation itself is still a bit unfamiliar, a full walkthrough of reading guitar sheet music is worth a look, and if you’re building out a library of pieces to print and prepare this way, the full sheet music collection is a good place to browse.
Hey Simon,
I do prefer masking tape to sticky tape. It’s stronger, lies flatter, and doesn’t go yellow over time and get crunchy like some sticky tapes do. The better quality tapes, like what we call here ‘magic tape’ works fine though. I don ‘t know what you call masking tape in the US?
When I tape two sheets together, I find that when I have the edges actually touching each other, the contact sometimes inhibits the page fold, sometimes even creating a kind of blip or bulge in the pages. So I line everything up, but then separate the pages ever so slightly before taping so there is a better “hinge” between the pages. I usually put three pieces (maybe 3cm long) on top, bottom, and middle. Then flip the pages over and try to tape over exactly where the other tape is so as to cover over any exposed sticky stuff due to the pages being separated slightly. Sounds complex but it’s easier to do than to explain :-0. It make a nice foldable / store-able package.
Great video. Thank you Simon. I’ve beed doing basically the same, but never thought of the booklet approach. Wonderful.
I also make each sheet narrower by cutting the vertical margins and leaving just barely 1/4 inch next to the score. That way I have almost nothing but music on the pages and the whole score is as short as possible.
Great video Simon! I use the same technique but never thought of taping the booklet! Thank you! One tip that helps me and may help others: I bend up the bottom corner of each page in the booklet area, for easy page flipping.
I’ve found that sticky tape wears out fairly quickly. After bend repeatedly it tears