DIY keyboard music rest

My Yamaha p45 plastic piano's keyboard has a basic plastic music rest that slots into the top of the keyboard.  Unfortunately, it's only half the height of A4 paper (so sheet music flops over), only two A4 pages wide (portrait orientation), and I often use sheet music that's three or four pages wide, or want somewhere handy to put the next piece of music.

My simple solution, so far, to dealing with the inadequate music rest was to use a thick cardboard folder sitting on the supplied rest and bulldog‑clip music sheets to it.  But since it liked to skid off the music rest onto the piano, so some adhesive velcro was attached to the rest and the cardboard folder.

Out on a gig it wouldn't be too bad to just put a standalone portable music stand behind the piano, but that takes up too much space at home (and still a pain at gigs).  You end up with a collection of overlapping stands—one for the keyboard, another for the music, another for a light.  And although a reading light could be attached to a sturdy music stand, I found positioning one so it doesn't reflect off the white keys in a seriously annoying way while you play was next to impossible, so I soon abandoned that idea.  I contemplated several different solutions:

1. Make a larger version of the slot‑in stand, and hope that it'll fit into the piano without any problems.  My old Technics SX‑K200 portable keyboard had a very lightweight, but sturdy, (around 5 mm thick) wireframe music stand, that zig‑zagged up and down in a large “M” shape.
2. Or something that attaches to the bottom of the piano, using the leg mounting holes.
3. Or, make a larger music stand that attaches to the box stand I've just made.

I went with the middle option (since it will suit me best for separating, transporting, and re‑assembling things when I take the piano and furniture out to gigs), though I think the last choice would be better for a permanent piano stand.  And I took the opportunity to move the rest a bit further back and a bit higher up.  I find music rests on upright pianos to be too close for my eyesight, and too low down (frequently giving me a crick in my neck).  Conversely, I feel that the music rest on a grand piano is too far removed from the keyboard.  The music rest on my organ is much further back and higher up than an upright piano, but not as remote as a grand piano, you play more upright without hunching over or looking down (I rarely need to look at my fingers when playing the organ), and it's not a very far reach to turn pages.  I find that far more ergonomic.

I cut up some metal parts to make brackets, and fitted a shelf to them to use as the music rest.  The local hardware store sold plastic‑coated pre‑made shelves which was just about the perfect size for the music rest.  They only came in white, which fits in with the traditional black & white colours of pianos, and everything being black has proved to be a nuisance when working under subdued lighting.

There's some square‑section aluminium tubing going under the piano, and screwed into the mounting holes the piano has for attaching to a Yamaha's L85 furniture stand.  Though the music rest could have been attached to the piano stand, instead.  It has some elbow joints to bring things up to just above the keyboard.  More square‑section aluminium tubing with a curtain rod going through the middle of them as an axle for the music rest to pivot around.  And a right‑angle aluminimum strip is sandwiched between the tubing and the melamine‑coated wooden shelf.  Then there's a metal strut with a hinge attached between it and the music rest, and the other end has a foam‑padded metal right‑angle section to brace against the piano box stand, to hold the music rest at the best angle for reading sheet music on it (to suit my height, and have no reflections from the lighting—even with sheetmusic in plastic sleeves, or reading off a shiny computer tablet screen).

The music rest can be dropped down backwards to get out of the way when a pianist is playing without music, dropped down forwards to be less cumbersome while carrying (and isn't so wide that it lands on top of the few controls the piano has at the left‑hand side, though now I realise I should have slightly off‑set it to the right by a few millimetres, so that it can't shove sideways against the edge of a white key when folded down—I think I'll leave my fabric dust‑cover on top of the keys when I transport it, as padding).  I could add another hinged short strut behind the prop, so it can be folded back horizontal, to make a work table.  And the square‑section tubing can be pulled apart to remove the music rest from the piano.

For comparison's sake, I've sat the original music rest (showing how small it is) in front of the new one for this photo, which has four A4 pages of sheet music sitting on it.  The original was inadequate at holding just one sheet, it'd droop over backwards unless you had very stiff paper.  With two sheets, it sometimes managed (if they were taped together, their join might resist flopping over the back of the music rest).  And it might sort‑of manage three sheets taped together, hanging past the edges.  But dealing with multiple separate sheets was a major pain, they had to be clipped to something.  Now, I won't have to face that problem again.

And I'm tempted to do something similar with my organ's music rest.  It's similarly short, though is around three pages wide, and has a very small (too small) lip at the bottom so some things like to cascade off the front.  I've spent many years sitting sheets lower down into the finger hold of the pull‑down keyboard cover because it holds them in place better.