Ivar Stand-up Music Cueing Desk / Drafting Table

Materials: Ikea Ivar components, Staples BookLift Copyholder, project wood, brackets and screws, power drill, level

Description: I'm a cellist who is a member of a professional string quartet (lydianquartet.com) and cello piano duo (ghduo.com), as well as a guest player with many different chamber music groups. As a result of all this conductorless work I can spend many hours studying scores and marking cues in cello parts so that I know who has the primary voice, when to come in after many bars of rest, whose part or voice I'm together with, etc.. While some musicians are going digital and playing from full score on either laptops or iPads, I still like the old fashioned method of making markings using pencil on sheet music, especially for those emergency calls when I'm asked to fill in for somebody last minute.

As that has meant many hours hunched over sitting at the kitchen table (not a good thing for my lower back, along with New England snow), I read about the value of stand-up desks and decided to see if I could reconfigure my now 20 year old Ivar setup in my home office.

I repositioned the worktable at a higher level and in tilt position, then screwed in a plastic copyholder at the upper end and two project pine strips from Lowes on the bottom to hold sheet music, pencils, highlighters, etc. As we have an old house, I used a level when I put in the strips, so I let ergonomics win out over aesthetics (yeah, it's crooked). The copyholder can be removed if I want to use the full drafting table as its screw is angled.

I may eventually get rid of the Ivar unit and go with track shelves for a little more space in this tiny room (Rakks.com makes a nice folding wall mounted drafting table), but this is a start. Hopefully my back will thank me.

~ Joshua Gordon, Massachusetts, USA