Notebook Thursday: Whither the Notebooks?

Pocket-sized staff-paper notebooks, as I noted in my last post, have become rather difficult to find. Both Moleskine and Roterfaden seem to have discontinued their offerings. I went on the hunt for some new options, and over the next few months I'll try these out.

The Unemployed Philosophers Guild has some that look like Schirmer sheet music, which is cute. But they seem overpriced, and several decades of well-intentioned gifts have convinced me that I can't write in gift-shop journals. So I am not including these in my trial. 

First up is the pocket-size N&J Musician Notebook. The paper is decent, the staves are printed on both recto and verso, and there's a good number of pages; this one comes closest to the Moleskine/Roterfaden proportions. Drawback: it's perfect bound, so you can't open it and have the pages lie flat. 

Bärenreiter offers these in colors such as Liszt Blue and Beethoven Aubergine, which are probably already indie band names. They're thin, 16 spreads each, so they will actually fit in a pocket or an instrument case; unfortunately, that page count probably means I will complete one song per notebook. The lines on the right are wide rule (BOOO).

These ones are variously described as Henle (front cover) and Hal Leonard (back sticker). Chaos! The musty faded blue has a vintage-schoolroom feel that I quite like. (Maybe not quite as charming as the fragile vellum wrapped around each new red-stamped Roterfaden insert, but what is?) Inside, both the recto and the verso have staff paper. I suspect these are going to become my favorites, which probably means they're next in line to be discontinued. Stock up now!