

Rethinking Sheet Music, With A Few Bells And Whistles - dangrover
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2011/09/15/140502368/rethinking-sheet-music-with-a-few-bells-and-whistles

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mkuhn
A company that launched at TC Disrupt does this: <http://tonara.com/>

"Think of it as sheet music for the iPad generation. Tonara is an iPad app
that can map your keyboard pounding to the right place on the sheet music, and
then magically flip the page at the right point.

Married to a store selling sheet music, it’s pretty clear that something
interactive like this will do to sheet music what Kindle did to hardback
books. TechCrunch’s panel of judges were dubious of the size of the market,
but our guess is this company will be quietly have its tip jar filled high as
it plays a requiem for sheet music anthologies." -
[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/09/startups-
techcrunch-d...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/09/startups-techcrunch-
disrupt/)

They also have a nice video showing it in action:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBXJZKTOcpw>

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stygianguest
The main problem with sheet music is copyright law. Its differences across
Europe will make anyone's head hurt. If that weren't enough, the established
publishing industry is extremely conservative. In my experience the musicians
--that is users-- would be the last and least hurdle.

~~~
dangrover
This times a million.

~~~
jambo
Just for some context, Dan is the guy who built Etude.

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cperciva
As an orchestral violinist, my biggest pain point is that I can't mark bowings
into one part and have them appear in the parts for everybody else in the
section.

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danteembermage
I think a killer feature for this (or a competitor...) would be auto-turning
pages using the ambient audio. "While I am playing piano and have no hands I
have to deftly change the music, therefore I need another _human_ " is a huge
pain point for performing pianists.

~~~
usedtolurk
Is there even a need for pages anymore? Wouldn't it be nicer to have one long
continuous sideways scroll in landscape mode.

Even better if the App was able to match the scrolling speed to the playing
speed automatically.

~~~
high5ths
Playing speed changes over time, and the problem with continuous scroll is
that musicians often need to look away from the music -- at their hands, feet,
at other musicians or the conductor -- and if the music has moved in the
meantime, it is disorientating and not useful. That's why a page-based model
is still the only way to work, even when you think a scrolling model is more
efficient.

~~~
__david__
Not only that, but a lot of times you memorize different sections by their
physical placement on the page. To lose that orientation would make
memorization harder.

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zach
Congrats, Dan! What a great write-up. So glad to see how far this has come.

Leaving aside the practical matters native to the iPad, I think not having an
extensive classical selection is one of the best ways you could be dinged. It
speaks the app's value and a desire to use the app more. And it leaves the
door open for a followup story.

~~~
Bud
It's not the place of any app to solve the problem of needing a full classical
library. Various websites, from Art Song Central to IMSLP to Choral Public
Domain Library have already attacked this need with vigor. There are a LOT of
good PDFs out there already that can be used right now in forScore without any
need to pay Steinway or anyone else for things that are in the public domain
already.

<http://imslp.org/>

<http://www.choralwiki.org/wiki/>

<http://artsongcentral.com/>

~~~
dangrover
If all you need are PDFs, you can use any PDF reader. This app does a great
deal more than that.

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DanielRibeiro
Interseting how many startups tackling music business. I was quite interested
in a similar startup named Tonara, which debuted on Techcrunch Disrupt[1]
earlier this week.

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20105113-250/tonara-
puts-s...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20105113-250/tonara-puts-sheet-
music-on-ipad-listens-to-musicians-play/)

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dwynings
Congrats on the acquisition Dan!

It's awesome to see how old school companies are making the transition to
compete in the digital era.

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bengl3rt
Original story: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3001020>

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binarray2000
Synthesia does a very similar thing with Guitar Hero-like scrolling but uses
MIDI (so, no sound recognition, you need a MIDI keyboard).

<http://synthesiagame.com/> (no affiliation; happy user)

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Bud
Most of the things people are hoping and wishing for in this thread have
already been solved in the excellent app forScore:

www.forescoreapp.com

I'm a professional classical singer and have used forScore in performance.

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WalterSear
If only someone would rethink music notation successfully.

~~~
oblique63
Agreed. I'm currently working on a startup that's focusing pretty heavily on
that (<http://www.tabrat.com/>), and let me tell you, even if somebody were to
get it 'exactly right', it would still be quite the uphill battle to get it
adopted. That's assuming it's a legitimate re-imagining that deviates from the
current system of course, and not some C++ style superset. Nothing wrong with
teaching an old dog new tricks (in fact it's what we're planning to do in the
meantime), but it wouldn't really be anything new, because that is exactly how
music notation evolved to be how it is today (excluding tablature for fretted
instruments, which should be considered a good, albeit limited, innovation in
it's own right).

The people that use notation the most, and take it the most seriously, are
usually the ones that have invested a ton of time learning to sight read and
knowing how to properly express their ideas in it; hence they are almost
certainly going to be hesitant about switching to a new format. We musicians
tend to be a conservative bunch; after our first few years
playing/experimenting, we pretty much solidify what we like and hardly ever
deviate from it afterwards.

I (a guitarist) for example, only really play 2 brands of strings, I have
already made vast generalizations in my head about what amp/guitar/pedal
brands I like and don't like (as opposed to judging on a product-by-product
basis like I would for most other things), and I don't see that changing soon.
Likewise, once you develop your notation style, it would probably be hard to
really think of trying something new when you've just come up with a cool riff
and get caught up in the heat of the moment trying to build on it.

Although I can't wait to see the day the next evolution in songwriting starts
getting widely adopted, I can't say that what we have now is really that bad.
Traditional staff sheet music does makes it easy to 'visualize' what a piece
sounds like, and that's a feat that even well notated tablature can sometimes
struggle to convey.

As for my startup? We just want musicians to be able to precisely jot down
something like this on a moment's whim (fx and all):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU52hGo3nNc>

~~~
icarus_drowning
Yeah, my degree is in Music Theory/Composition, and while I understand where
people are coming from when they complain about music notation, I can't see
myself investing any significant amount of time learning an alternative system
when I already have the current system down well enough that I can sight-read
and sight-sing a vast majority of music.

tl;dr I'm not giving up the ability to look at an orchestral score and have a
pretty good idea of how it sounds just to learn that skill all over again.

