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Thank you 🙏.
I like notation, but I never thought of it the way you have just described it. I like your analogy.
@McD what was the thing about audio to midi or something like that? But speculation was that it would only be available on certain iPads?
No. Note entry drawn on staff. It’ll import midi and MusicXML (historically buggy). Upcoming releases, spilt at wwdc keynote, will supposedly transcribe from audio. https://www.staffpad.net/springing-forward
Thank you @xor.
What are the prices of the different extensions?
On the developers conference there was a very short demo of Keyboard to notation in real-time for the M1 iPad by the Staffpad creative lead. I’m expecting an update. They also announced a merger with MuseScore so I also expect the update to follow a desktop strategy and cost us. Dropping prices on the current version seems to follow that model… drain the forecasted buyers and then announce 2.0.
I’d love to see the IOS software models but honestly this is a niche product that needs desktop prices with a iPad discount.
It’s really good at what it does and I’ll probably drop another $200 on discounted libraries. The results are stunning.
Here is a sample of the sale prices, the more expensive ones are usually 99.99:
The stock libraries are perfectly fine. Their weakest link are the strings, which are still quite serviceable. You don’t need to invest in additional libraries. The stock piano l actually prefer to any of the third party ones. I went for several months with only the stock sounds and was happy with them.
These days I spend more time in staffpad than AUM or Drambo. I prefer the workflow, sounds, and final result.
Something I don’t see mentioned is that the handwriting recognition has gotten quite good in recent updates. I rarely have any issues with it any more.
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Very much this. The lack of distractions in StaffPad is partly why I have finished most pieces in there compared to other environments. It forces you to just get on with writing music.
Thanks!
Is it possible to use Staffpad without a pen (apple pen or other) ?
Whoa! This will be the first IOS app I've bought in months. Will check out the stock library before throwing money at IAPs I may not actually need.
Thanks!
No. It’s for handwriting music and needs a fine touch point to generate
thin lines. However, that cost needs to be assumed before purchase. I recently imported a short piano motifs midi project into StaffPad and
used cut and paste with my finger and never fired up the pencil.
It's the best iPad app for composing a symphony, and it helped me to familiarize myself with some of the less common symbols, but it's so much slower and more cumbersome to experiment with melodies...and they could just make the gesture-based note entry optional, but instead there's a learning curve to figuring out the shapes, angles, pixel boundaries, etc.
It seems like there are several variables affecting whether or not it registers a symbol correctly, and if any one of those values is outside of an unknown range, StaffPad will say ??? instead of guessing...and if it guessed wrong, you'd still have to delete the symbol either way.
After watching Tantacrul talk about redesigning MuseScore, it's hard not to notice the minor inconveniences, like when two buttons are frequently used in conjunction, but are located on separate toolbars.
At the same time, its unique track freezing/playback thing is pretty genius, and I look forward to the day when someone develops an AU host with this capability.
Anybody know how long this sale is going to last?
I want to take some time to evaluate the stock sample library, before buying any IAPs.
I don’t know for certain but the i picked up the PC version earlier and this had 17 days of sale remaining:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/staffpad/9wzdncrddkrb?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
I gather that if i want to see the battery charge of my Apple Pencil, I should add the Batteries widget to my Today View.
EDIT: Figured it out. I have to tap the + button, not the Customize button.
Oh boy.
Loaded up a String Orchestra template.
Drew in the whole note symbol for each part.
No sound. No transformation of my drawn whole notes to notation.
Somehow managed to enter two half notes and those generated sound. Unable to reliably reproduce this behavior.
This fails the “how usable is it before I have to read the manual/watch videos” test. Not going to splurge on any IAPs for the time being - would be a waste of money unless my experience with this thing gets a LOT better.
My expectations were too high.
Q for those who use the app successfully: suppose I'm very good at reading/writing scores, knowing orch symbols well, etc., but have bad handwriting. Do you think I can use StaffPad and make it work? How good/bad is its ability in reading handwriting?
Very good.
Watch their videos -
https://www.staffpad.net
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=staffpad
https://staffpad.zendesk.com
I don't think it's very lenient in its handwriting detection, but I think you could learn it. It's equal parts dexterity, and figuring out what the algorithm will accept. It takes a bit of practice.
@MobileMusic @Skyblazer: Thank you very much for the info. Well, I might have to bite the bullet very soon then. Oh my wallet...
My early impression is that it's handwriting recognition is not very forgiving. I worked through the Basics tutorial and it was a slow process for me. I had to repeat the same stroke with Pencil many times to get the app to recognize the stroke.
I rewatched the StaffPad Getting Started video. The explanation and demo of how to write notes into the score was so poor - depressingly so. I think the app has to have the correct combination of "modes" to allow that note entry at the speed that he shows, which he does not mention at all. Just a terrible instructional video.
Personally, I love StaffPad, but have never seen the point of sinking desktop-levels of money into the sample packs. Suits me just fine with the built-in, and then exporting the MIDI to desktop where I have significantly better samples.
If you’re familiar with the old, original palm pilots the handwriting recognition is more like graffiti. You learn the strokes it expects, it doesn’t learn your handwriting. My handwriting is terrible and I’m amazed that the iPad can usually figure out what I mean. It’s going to take a long time before I learn how to write m, p and f to get staffpad to recognize it. I even had trouble in the tutorials with crescendos and decrescendos.
Anyone know how to get back to that intro tutorial?
That's key. The drawn circle must show as a beautifully rendered whole note.
If the app didn't get what you intended the bar shows green (or maybe blue) but
a white bar with font rendered notes will play immediately.
If you have a whole page of what looks like handwriting you need to work on your input
technique... insure circles are close and fit within the lines, etc.
Damn... I should have read the rest of the thread first in case someone else addressed this
or you updated your complaint.
I'm not giving up on StaffPad by any means. It's just that my expectations were higher than reality.
I know I need to do a lot of manual reading, video watching, and practice with the Pencil to make use of this app. It's not like AUM and the simpler synth apps where I can just fire up the app and get something useful immediately.
For the best handwriting detection I typically zoom into the bar on working on to allow for the largest circles and such. Every note must convert immediately into a font note or I "press hard" to invoke the eraser and draw again. I repeat until any note, beam or accidental is recognized as such. When a valid bar it recognized the app converts it to
audio and you can hit play. There's a play head like in a DAW.
The more time you invest in creating with these constraints the fast you get.
There are many time saving tips with my favorites being:
make a line of rhythmic possibilities (we might be able to share a templets of these)
cut and paste from that line into instrument parts (saving note entry time)
slide the note heads to the desired pitches
generate a lot of music in piano motifs and import the resulting midi
use the rhythms and any useful counter-point or harmony
if a section sound dull... edit to taste
remember cut and paste to re-use motifs material. The violins create a theme
and it can be cut and pasted to other instruments and shifted octaves as needed
to suite a cello for example
How to get StaffPad to recognize your notation?
@xor @GovernorSilver: thank you for the info! Looks like I'll really need to watch those tutorial videos. Also thanks to others who chimed in on best practices for handwriting recognition. 👍
I tried drawing a whole note the same way as shown in the video.
I think nothing short of a perfectly drawn oval will register with the app, which sucks for me because I'm terrible at hand drawn art. Can't even draw good looking stick figures.
Compounding the problem is the measure lines will sometimes turn blue or other color, which seems to indicate some sort of secondary mode of operation, but this not explained in the intro tutorial video. When the color is different, you can draw lines and ovals all you want but nothing happens.
There does seem to be a kind of martial arts aspect to this - zen with the pen, developing the perfect combo of touch and speed, etc.