

Etude sheet music app coming to iPhone, iPad - dangrover
http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/03/15/etude-sheet-music-app-coming-to-iphone-ipad/

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replicatorblog
This looks awesome. I love apps that go after markets that would typically be
thought of as "unsexy".

From the looks of it you get the game like elements of a Rockband, but a
longer term benefit of learning to read music. I imagine it will be kind of
lame on the phone due to size, but with an iPad or keyboard accessory it will
be amazing.

I'm not sure how big the market for sheet music is. However, consider the kind
of people who learn to play instruments: children of well educated, affluent
parents. The addressable market could be bigger than a lot of markets that
seem large on PowerPoint slides, but are unaddressable because of market
limitations (e.g. iLike).

If you can pay for a kid's piano lesson, a few dollars for sheet music will be
nothing.

I'm really looking forward to this!

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yan
Feature brainstorming: Can it listen to the music the user is playing and
figure out where in the piece the student is playing and scroll along as it's
being played?

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gyeh
Heck, you can take this to the next level and make it a guitar hero game for
real instruments. A lot of music teachers wouldn't have jobs anymore...

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yan
The new GarageBand does that via a MIDI input..

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stcredzero
Killer app: A sheet music display app that can recognize the 2nd to last
measure and turn the page for you. Would also work if a parent could stand 30
feet away in the wings and flip the pages via Wifi or bluetooth.

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apowell
Just initiating a page turn by tapping the right half of the screen would be a
dramatic improvement over paper.

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smokinn
Why flip pages at all?

I like yan's suggestion of detecting the music in the app and scrolling along
as the person plays.

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warfangle
As someone who's played with sheet music, I can pretty confidently say that
functionality would be extremely annoying.

Imagine reading along with a marquee. Yeah, it's that annoying. I'd much
rather it flip virtual pages than scroll along.

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darkxanthos
I play music too and would like the scrolling score. Maybe it's more of an
issue of it's less comfortable now but far more comfortable later.

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warfangle
Perhaps, but think of it this way. There's a reason typography focuses on line
length in written text - it's easier to read something if you have a decent
reference point [1]. A long line makes it easier for your eyes to get off
track.

The same thing happens in music. Dividing things into measures and lines
allows our brain to "chunk" it. Part of the chunking mechanism is returning
your visual focus to the beginning of the next line.

Part of reading is the connection of eye movement to new information. If you
no longer need to move your eye to get a new measure/phrase/note, it's
patently more difficult to notice the change. That's why marquees are useful
for short lists of phrases that repeat often - and not entire articles. Maybe
scrolling music might be decent for karaoke or games like guitar hero - but
the information encoded into one bar of classical staff is orders of magnitude
greater (and one of the reasons I despise, say, piano rolls in most digital
audio authoring software).

Disclaimer: I have only been reading sheet music for two decades; this may or
may not qualify me to comment on the benefits or detriments of an
autoscrolling marquee of sheet music instead of paginated sheet music.

[1]<http://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/em/>

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silencio
I just wanted to add on more to your thoughts: when I play piano with sheet
music, I "chunk" as you mention, but I also look ahead anywhere from like one
measure to an entire page to refresh my memory and see what I need to play
next, and/or how I should transition from one section to the next. I also find
that these definite divisions by lines and pages of music help memorizing and
visualizing what to play. I would love it if there was an app that listened
along and flipped/shifted pages over automatically, but marquee scrolling
would be disastrous to the way I read sheet music.

(Disclaimer: I've been playing piano for over 15 years of my 21 year existence
on this planet, is that enough to comment on my personal preferences? ;) )

On the other hand, throughout the years I spent singing in choirs and with
specific situations like guitar hero, a marquee style method of presentation
never posed a problem as long as I could see at least a measure or two ahead
at a time. Likely because of the information density you mention - singing and
guitar hero never felt as demanding as playing piano.

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warfangle
Oh, absolutely. To be able to play nontrivial pieces without looking ahead
two-to-three measures is nigh impossible.

Reading music seems to be very interesting - after you truly know a piece, the
notes seem to simply be reminders for muscle memory. It's not like reading a
book - you do that when you learn the book. Sight reading is fairly difficult!

As for duration of experience, it's not necessarily the length of time.. but
whether you've ever truly learned a piece.

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zzzmarcus
There's also Tab Toolkit which is similar and very cool:
<http://www.agilepartners.com/apps/tabtoolkit/>

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puffythefish
Is there anything like this for OS X?

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dwynings
Nice work, Dan!

