

iPhone App Digitizes Sheet Music, Teaches You Piano - dangrover
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/etude-iphone-app/

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jgilliam
Huge congrats on the app... with the iPad coming out, it's the perfect time
for this.

A possible area for expansion (or maybe even a new app entirely). There's a
whole world of classical music that is extremely competitive. Since you've got
the iPad sitting on their piano, use the microphone to record yourself playing
the song, and then it can be uploaded automatically and rated alongside others
who've played the song.

Then you can have a leaderboard for each song, and even an overall
leaderboard, like a global tennis rankings. They could challenge each other to
a "duel" like a tennis match, or there could be a tournament. People can have
their ranking, a profile, how old they are.

It would be hugely motivating to kids learning to play, and very
disruptive/democratizing to the whole classical music world.

~~~
wheels
Guitar Hero against other people online with real instruments could be an epic
music education tool.

~~~
ThomPete
That's what Jesse Schell talks about in his great talk at Dice.

[http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-
the...](http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the-future-
of-games-dice-2010/)

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gridspy
Congratulations Dan. Looks like you have created a useful, highly polished
little app. I'd buy it if I had an iPhone.

Have you considered making the keys on the keyboard start off a lighter shade
of blue and fade down to dark blue as they are held?

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redcap
Currently 6 months into learning the piano again, downloaded the app to give
it a whirl.

Very first impression, but the Continuous scrolling seems to be a little jerky
in places.

Edit: it's synching up with the notes as they scroll by which is your design
choice I guess. Smooth continuous scrolling wasn't something that seemed
appropriate?

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redcap
After listening to the following TED talk, I feel that your store could do
with some Chopin.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passio...](http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html)

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dangrover
There was a last-minute problem with the 2 Chopin songs that were ready to go
live with the app. Hopefully have em next week.

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redcap
Another comment: when playing through For Elise, it plows right through the 1
and 2 endings for each section when it should play the 1 ending before
doubling back and playing through again before playing the 2 ending.

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kellogs
The UI looks good, but I have a hard time imagining it in use. Isn't the
iPhone screen tiny for this purpose? Why not make a general laptop app or web
app?

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dangrover
Because I don't think Wired would cover it if it were a desktop/web app :)

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duck
Dan, was it your post on HN that got you on wired.com? Or how did that work?

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dangrover
No, unrelated.

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TrevorBurnham
I wouldn't have thought of sheet music as a killer app for the iPad, but now
that I think about it, that makes perfect sense. Anyone working on iPad stands
for instrumentalists yet?

I'm picturing entire orchestras switching from sheet music to digital
displays. The article mentions the portability and findability benefits of
replacing stacks of paper with a single screen synced to a sheet music
library. jgilliam posted here about the potential benefits of building games
on top of sheet music. But just in terms of simple usability for
instrumentalists, imagine sheet music that automatically flips to the next
page at the right time.

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wallflower
When I was in elementary school (even though I have not developed any musical
talent), my favorite part of music class was when the teacher (who was a
talented pianist) would sit down and play at his then-state-of-the-art
keyboard towards the end of class. His actual notes would show up on a huge
keyboard display where keys would light up, just like in your app. It was
fascinating and mesmerizing to see the visual patterns of some songs - and
that some complex songs weren't that complex.

Thanks for the beautiful app and memory trip.

~~~
yardie
When I was younger I played a cello solo of Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo.
It was almost 4 minutes in length and filled, at most, half a music sheet (~8
bars). Graphically the music wasn't complex, but it was all the little details
(soft, loud, fast, slow, extremely long holds) that made it interesting. Just
looking at it you wouldn't be able to make sense of it. Only through playing
it would the timing and pattern emerge.

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msg
I'm sure you've already thought of this, but it seems like now that you have
input of OCR sheet music, you should strongly consider output of OCR sheet
music.

Allow your player to set the metronome, then capture what they play on Etude.
Output a sheet music transcript that they can tweak, replay, and publish in a
marketplace of free music. People can transcribe public domain music, share
original compositions, or (tricky part maybe) cover licensed music.

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dejb
It looks like a nice app but does it actually do anything that is different
from the multitude of desktop apps in this genre?

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pchristensen
Primarily, it doesn't require a desktop - useful if you're sitting at a piano.

It's also a very polished app with a convenient in-app sheet music store.

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dejb
> Primarily, it doesn't require a desktop - useful if you're sitting at a
> piano.

Yes I had worked that part out. My question wasn't intended as criticism. The
context it appeared in lead me to believe there was something else new about
this but I couldn't find it so I asked. I have an interested in this area. By
the looks of things this would be particularly good with a larger screen such
as the ipad.

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Heston
Great idea, poor hardware choice.

Really - this would be an amazing app for an aspiring musician but the iPhone
screen would make this experience much less enjoyable than it should be.

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ryanhuff
I think that's where the ipad would do a better job at simulating full sheet
music. I suspect the developer has this in mind already.

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Raphael
You're in the money!

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fmeyer
wired wrong again, if it's using midi I'm pretty sure the application doesn't
digitizes anything.

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sp332
It's digital _sheet_ music, not audio.

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CoreDumpling
The point still stands, though: the app doesn't digitize the sheet music, it
displays it from sources that have already digitized it.

Unless the scores are beying keyed in by hand, the actual digitization of the
sheet music is basically a specialized OCR:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_OCR>

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asmosoinio
Doesn't it mean it digitizes the "process" of sheet music -- the whole thing
from notes to someone playing it? Not just the sheets with the notes on them.
This meaning for "the app digitizes sheet music" makes sense, at least for me.

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ww520
Big congratulations to Dan. Excellent app. I like it when people deliver real
apps.

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jasonlbaptiste
Fuckin baller!

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stuntmouse
Kudos.

