

Show HN: iPad port of my sheet music app Etude - dangrover
http://etudeapp.com/ipad/

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nanotone
Bravo! Seeing this app makes me want to get an iPad just to play around with
it. Well, almost:

As a fairly serious amateur pianist, I definitely appreciate that this could
let me ditch my dusty bookshelf of heavy scores, turn pages for me, and keep
track of my location on the page. But the real deal-breaker for me is that it
doesn't look like I can annotate the music with fingerings and expressive
marks. When first learning a piece I probably spend as much time scribbling on
the score [in pencil!] as I do reading it with fingers.

This would still be immensely useful for sight-reading though, where page-
turns are a much bigger issue than fingering and expression. But it seems
ironic to start out learning a piece with Etude, only to graduate back to
paper later.

All in all though, this is some really exciting technology.

Nitpick: the built-in synthesizer seems to have a pretty lazy right foot.
Pedagogically speaking it'd actually be better to drop the pedaling altogether
rather than obscure the harmony -- make it a setting? Even better: make it
respect pedaling marks in the score!

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dangrover
Yeah, annotation is coming in 1.2. Keep having to cut features to get the
thing out.

Looking into improving the synth as well.

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tel
It's sort of deeply ironic that the video doesn't play on iPads.

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dangrover
Yeah, will fix once I'm off of vzarr.

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glhaynes
Is yours the app shown on Apple's new iPad commercial?

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dangrover
Naw, that's TabToolkit :(

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rjett
Did TabToolkit come out after your app? The interfaces look very similar.
Would you ever consider incorporating other instruments into etude?

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ique
Completely unrelated but just found this and you might want to know, if you go
to a style like <http://etudeapp.com/music/style/9/ballad> and then click Home
in the breadcrumbs, you go to /home which lands you on a 404 page.

Also, do you have any plans to expand the music library?

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Entlin
Have you considered automatic page turning by analyzing the microphone input?

You would probably have to do 3 different position finding methods to gain
enough stability. Like combining (1) FFT note pitch recognition with (2) some
beat tracking algorithm and (3) some homegrown rhythm-analysis.

What do you think about that?

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kmfrk
That looks absolutely fantastic. forScore doesn't really seem to get the job
right, so I'm stoked about Etude.

Is it a universal app, or will I have to buy an iPad version separately?

EDIT: I just downloaded it, and it doesn't have In The Hall of the Mountain
King. I am disappoint.

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dutchflyboy
Looks great! The only thing that bugged me was the position indicator, as it
didn't have a very predictable motion. Sometimes it goes very fast, other
times it just stops. I understand that it's impossible to make the speed
constant, but at the moment it really doesn't look natural.

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dangrover
It goes at the speed of the music, depending on how long notes are held. I've
been experimenting with that animation...it does seem kinda uncanny valley
somehow

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manvsmachine
I'd suggest a combination of both mcav and cpr's suggestions. Highlight the
notes themselves instead of the area around them. Drop the jumpy marker and
replace it with a smoothly moving, constant speed vertical marker. It's a
commonly recognized and understood element (used in pretty much any and every
audio production / recording software). It also gives the viewer a better
sense of the tempo. Remember, tempo can change drastically over the course of
a song; the current marker doesn't demonstrate the difference between playing
shorter notes at a slower tempo and longer notes at a faster tempo.

~~~
Entlin
I agree, combining note highlighting and smooth moving marker would seem to be
the best way to go.

It's probably best if the moving marker is a 1-inch-wide bar that is very
subdued. In my head at least, this would work best.

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grinich
Why'd you choose to use vzaar.com? How much bandwidth does a showcase site
like this take up on average?

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dangrover
I chose them because they had a nice looking player and I was in a hurry to
get the site up. But they're pretty awful. They charge way too much for
bandwidth and the <video> alternative they put in the page doesn't play on an
iPhone/iPad. Support is kinda lame too.

Once I find a decent generic flv player I'm moving the videos to my normal
CDN.

~~~
Derferman
May I suggest Video for Everybody?

<http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody>

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pbz
What would be nice if there was some kind of foot activated gadget that would
talk with the ipad. When pressed it would flip to the next sheet. This would
eliminate the breaks when the player has to move the hand off the piano to
flip to the next page.

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nandemo
Like this?

<http://airturn.com/>

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zweben
"A Bluetooth version of the AirTurn is currently under development for the
Apple iPad, and is expected to be available towards the end of 2010."

Nice. Hopefully the iPad device is a lot less than $200 though.

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necubi
I'm very excited to try this! Sheet music reader seems like such an obvious
application for the iPad. Now I just have to think about how much I trust my
shaky stand with my $600 toy.

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alanthonyc
I've been anxiously awaiting the release of this app. I'm buying day one.

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redangstrom
Beautiful! Can I hook it up to any electric pianos?

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jawngee
Cool, but I can't make my own sheet music with it?

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jawngee
(I worked on Finale back in the mid 90's).

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dangrover
Hey, I'd love to get in touch with you and pick your brain about that if
possible! Thanks!

~~~
jawngee
Sure, jon.gilkison@gmail.com

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andyleclair
Congrats, Dan!

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J3L2404
Beautiful app and very well put together presentation. As soon as you hit the
page the video starts and demonstrates its functionality. Even the best
writers fail to fully convey the feel of use, so why not cut to the chase?
Congrats, I look forward to using it.

