I really want to try it out of curiosity, but as someone who doesn't actually know how to read, write, or play music I can't justify actually paying for it.
Staffpad: a new class of notation app
51–60 of 104 posts
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#52When I saw this my first thought was: We need something like that for Math / technical drawing. I can understand that music is a good first application of this technology, but entering mathematical and engineering-related content through such an interface could be a huge deal as well.
Flow charts and geometric shapes too.
Think Kit for Paper by 53 offers some diagram tools:
http://news.fiftythree.com/post/118777260503/introducing-thi...
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#53Interestingly, it interprets each pen stroke in the context of the wider piece of music, and makes use of temporal information such as the order the strokes are made in. Whereas classic OCR would just try and interpret the static 'picture': Key to the way StaffPad works is its method of recognizing your scribbles. It looks at every individual stroke you make and then interprets what you wrote based on the relationshi…
Fascinating - wonder if this is similar to how a Korean phoneme or an ideogram is assembled while typing.
Similar to how Chinese characters are written: with a prescribed stroke order learnt at school.
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#54Holy shit, this is amazing. For those that haven't written music before, previous programs are some of the clunkiest, slowest, most infuriating pieces of crap that I've ever had to deal with. This makes the process literally ten times easier, and so much more fun to use - and the MP3 export? Amazing. I'm actually considering using Windows because of this and the new hardware. If you had told me that two days ago I an…
It is a very cool piece of tech to be sure, but as a composer who has used notation programs almost daily for over a decade, this really doesn't solve any new problems, and it isn't anywhere near powerful enough for professionals (yet), so most will be importing files from StaffPad into Finale/Sibelius/etc. With a MIDI keyboard and some keyboard shortcuts I can enter music extremely quickly. To write a string of 8 16…
I like to write music away from a desktop/laptop computer or keyboard, and this app seems to be a significant improvement over apps like Notion for that purpose. So I would say that it definitely does approach a problem in a new way, with potential to get closer to solving the workflow than any other mobile app thus far. I don't think it is fair to compare it to a MIDI keyboard workflow which is really a different environment than what this app would be useful for.
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#55Curiosity: For all those ethusing about this, do you have keyboard skills? Piano was my primary instrument and my take on this may be skewed by the fact my primary instrument also turned out to be pretty good for composing music with, when you can literally bash out full chords in real time if the mood strikes you. If your instruments were all single-note instruments that don't hook up to computers worth a darn I cou…
When you write music with an instrument, often your ideas take on the idioms of that instrument, and the music you write is limited by your technique at the instrument. That's why I encourage composers to try writing without being at the instrument, as it gives you more freedom once you get used to it. This app appears to offer a compelling entry into that kind of workflow.
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#56Just wondering - wouldn't it be easier, not only for music notation but also for math and other scientific notation, if there was an on-screen keyboard custom-built for this very purpose with the required symbols and movement keys? After all, why require a stylus and why sketch the characters when you can just as easily type (actually, typing may turn out to be a much faster input method). Is there a real benefit to…
What you describe is an app called Notion for iOS, and it's pretty bad. I'd take pen and paper over Notion any time. This app definitely approaches the pen/paper situation much better. It doesn't try to be a MIDI music app, it tries to improve on the process of just using your handwriting, which I think is a better fit for a tablet.
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#57As far as I'm concerned, this is world-changing technology - a (seemingly?) easy to use, natural-looking, efficient data-entry mechanism that looks like something from the future. That is an absolutely fantastic demo - I was hooked on the background-video within 3 seconds, and found myself wishing the MP3 would play when he was exporting it at the end. Bravo.
Great use of background video indeed! It sold me the product without the need for any extra explanation!
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#58HN front-end devs: If you were to make a web version of this, would it be better to use canvas or svg? And why?
Either. http://www.vexflow.com/ and http://www.musicxml-viewer.com/ use canvas. http://www.alphatab.net/ and http://abcjs.net/ use svg.
Note that VexFlow works with both Canvas and SVG.
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#59Curiosity: For all those ethusing about this, do you have keyboard skills? Piano was my primary instrument and my take on this may be skewed by the fact my primary instrument also turned out to be pretty good for composing music with, when you can literally bash out full chords in real time if the mood strikes you. If your instruments were all single-note instruments that don't hook up to computers worth a darn I cou…
Some composers (especially those with perfect pitch) can write out music without an instrument. Mozart, Bach, etc. Many composers that use a piano will also write out the notation by hand without a MIDI interface. In the scene[1] from Amadeus, replace Salieri's quill and paper with a stylus and the iPad/Surface. I can see Staffpad software being useful for both types of composers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…
Perfect pitch (speaking as a professional musician) basically has no bearing on whether you can write music down without an instrument.
Re: Staffpad: a new class of notation app
#60Holy shit, this is amazing. For those that haven't written music before, previous programs are some of the clunkiest, slowest, most infuriating pieces of crap that I've ever had to deal with. This makes the process literally ten times easier, and so much more fun to use - and the MP3 export? Amazing. I'm actually considering using Windows because of this and the new hardware. If you had told me that two days ago I an…
It is a very cool piece of tech to be sure, but as a composer who has used notation programs almost daily for over a decade, this really doesn't solve any new problems, and it isn't anywhere near powerful enough for professionals (yet), so most will be importing files from StaffPad into Finale/Sibelius/etc. With a MIDI keyboard and some keyboard shortcuts I can enter music extremely quickly. To write a string of 8 16…
I guess this is the WYSIWYG thing all over again- in the beginning its nice to be able to see continuously what the finished document is going to look like, but after you become very fluent with the software having to draw everything or to manually fuss with the positions of stuff becomes very tedious. I'm far from being a professional, but with MuseScore I often find that I'm barely ever looking at the app since I'm concentrating on listening to the thing I'm transcribing and just using muscle memory to adjust the note durations with the keyboard; basically touch typing I guess. The professional arrangers I know are blindingly fast with Finale or Sibelius, kind of like watching a pro draftsman using CAD software, or a real recording engineer editing in Pro Tools.
One of the reasons that I often wind up using Lilypond instead of MuseScore is when I'm writing examples like a sheet of scales. I can write a little script that emits the Lilypond notation, and then render it with Lilypond.