
Show HN: Flat – Music notation software: Web-based and Real-time collaboration - gierschv
https://flat.io
======
nodesocket
Awesome jobs. It has been a long time, but in high school I was on nationally
competive drumline and spent a lot of time with
[Finale]([http://www.finalemusic.com/products/](http://www.finalemusic.com/products/)),
[Sibelius]([http://www.sibelius.com/home/index_flash.html](http://www.sibelius.com/home/index_flash.html)),
[Forte]([http://www.fortenotation.com/en/](http://www.fortenotation.com/en/)),
and
[Noteworthly]([https://noteworthycomposer.com](https://noteworthycomposer.com))

Great to see the evolution to web. Struggle a bit with triples, specifically
quarter note. The editor always wants to insert sixteenth note triplets.

------
pc86
Initial thoughts after playing one popular score[0] in FF dev 46.0a2 (3/2). I
can only see four measures per screen, which is fine. However, by the time it
scrolls to the next page it's already played 2.5-3 measures so really all I
see is a constantly scrolling mass of notes, none of witch are the ones being
played at the moment.

Playing another popular score[1] I get constant notifications of other people
entering the score, which seems to slow down the animation a bit behind the
audio. The slow scroll of the staves when the song moves to the next line also
makes the animation a bit sluggish until it gets to the top and is smooth
again (but starts scrolling about 1.5 measures later anyway).

It seems like a neat project but the playback usability leaves some to be
desired.

[0]
[https://flat.io/score/56cbc1e390851c1618bae44a](https://flat.io/score/56cbc1e390851c1618bae44a)

[1] [https://flat.io/score/56cf72ecebcadbb864b63c11-hello-
adele](https://flat.io/score/56cf72ecebcadbb864b63c11-hello-adele)

~~~
espadrine
Is there a reason to have a scroll at all?

When seeing the pagination, I imagined the app's author thinking it would make
people right in their element. However, realistically, importing the
annoyances of paper scores to the browser seems like a mistake. It makes more
sense to have the score go infinitely towards the right, which they do on
their non-default ?layout=track option.

As an aside, what about the legality of publishing copyrighted music that can
be played without paying royalties?

~~~
rannoup
We had and have so many debate over that topic. Actually, both ideas are true.
As you I would prefer the track view, but many had claimed the "page view".
One thing for sure, the scroll isn't convenient at all... We're working to
address that and improve the overall experience :)

------
ninjakeyboard
As an electronic musicial
([http://www.soundcloud.com/decklyn](http://www.soundcloud.com/decklyn)) I'll
give you some feedback from years of hanging out in a DAW. I'll bring up my
perspective on some points others have offered and a few other items primarily
related to usability. Note that I've spent a lot of time in a piano roll
rather than notation software so my experience is very colored but hopefully
this is somewhat useful.

1) The need for instruction others have cited I think is a bit over-stated - I
was able to get in and start writing immediately without any introduction.

2) Using social media for login eliminates the barrier to entry for me
personally. I was fine signing in. Sure it might be fun to allow an ephemeral
experience if people just want to check it out but I wouldn't put that at the
top of your backlog.

3) Placing notes. IMO placing a notes should be a toggle not a draw function.
I don't want to select a note and delete it - I want to double click it and
have it disappear as you would in pencil mode in a daw. At the same time, I
don't want to click a note and then click on the length of the note to change
it - I want to drag the selected note's length.

3) If I want to change a notes length, I'm forced to change a group of notes
existing at the same time. I'm assuming this is a limitation of the modelling
- eg that for each fragment of time, a group of notes exist together. This
inherently limits me from producing music. If I want to write a quarter note A
and two eigth notes C and then D I have to draw a twice and then tie it - this
is a lot of work IMO. Again maybe it's because I'm used to the piano roll in a
daw and I haven't worked in notation software as much but I fell like it
should behave somewhat similarly - that notes are more of a toggle.

Using ties doesn't seem intuitive - although it lets me span the length of a
single note, maybe you could have a tool that treats notes like a grid and
lets me click a noted and drag it in the grid - vertically for pitch and
horizontally for length.

Just some ideas based on things that I found where a bit difficult for me to
get done having a quick trip through.

It's cool though - thanks for making this. I'd consider laying ideas out here
on the go.

~~~
dublinben
As someone who has used both a DAW and musical notation software in the past,
it must be mentioned that they are two completely different paradigms. This
product is designed for writing musical notation. A DAW is designed for
manipulating the arrangement of samples in a multitrack timeline.

~~~
thirdsun
That's a very narrow description of a DAW. OP was specifically talking about
the piano roll - a feature that obviously differs from traditional notation
but is still very much related since both aim to achieve the same goal.

A DAW surely isn't limited to sample-based arrangements. In that light your
description of a DAW isn't wrong, but very much unrelated to the point OP was
trying to make.

------
joeyrobert
This is great and an idea I've toyed around with building. I think we'll
eventually see web-based music composition and DAWs in the browser take off.

As someone who's become used to composing with guitar tablature (a la Guitar
Pro) instead of musical notation, it'd be great to see this mode supported as
well. The fact that this has MIDI export built in is another great feature and
a requirement to prevent lock-in. Good job.

~~~
TylerE
I doubt that. Audio software needs to run with as low a latency as possible...
so you want to be really close to the metal.

~~~
joeyrobert
I agree. High-end audio manipulation will remain native, but I think for a
simplified use-case (composition, lower quality renders) the browser is a good
sell.

That and the tooling is almost here with MIDI.js[1], Web Audio[2] and Web
MIDI[3] as a working draft.

[1] [https://github.com/mudcube/MIDI.js/](https://github.com/mudcube/MIDI.js/)

[2] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_API)

[3] [https://webaudio.github.io/web-midi-api/](https://webaudio.github.io/web-
midi-api/)

~~~
cocoggu
Hey! I'm head of audio and MIDI at Flat.

In fact, latency and audio quality (because of file sizes for sampling and
because of available resources for synthesis) are two big limitations in a
browser.

We have big expectations about the upcoming Audio Workers (
[https://github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-
api/issues/113](https://github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-api/issues/113) ) to
release advanced synthesizer.

Also, we want to enjoy the capabilities of the MIDI output features, in order
to route MIDI signals to Virtual Instruments on the computer (through virtual
MIDI ports)

------
pervycreeper
So, I managed to import one of my compositions here:
[https://flat.io/score/56d88e7af9e84f623ce60fb0-sonata](https://flat.io/score/56d88e7af9e84f623ce60fb0-sonata)
If anyone wants to test out collaborative editing, be my guest.

Some thoughts: the typography is rudimentary (lots of spacing issues and
collisions), the number of notational features in lacking (can't seem to find
how to add a turn or Italian tempo markings, for starters). Note entry is
inconvenient (although I didn't try using MIDI), not so happy about the TOS as
far as rights to your own work is concerned. I also had a number of failed
attempts at xml importing, not sure what eventually led to a sucess. The
interface is also pretty simple and intuitive to use, especially compared to
native apps.

~~~
rannoup
Hey, thanks for the thoughts.

Indeed there are still many notations lacking. We're doing our best to ship as
fast as we can. Regarding the import, music notation softwares are not
sticking to the standard and it's a real pain to be "compliant" with them...
:( Yours finally worked due to a hot fix we did ;)

Regarding the ToS, we didn't think them this way but I completely understand
that it can be a concern. Will update them within the upcoming days.

Best,

------
monsk
As someone who recently switched from academic music composition to a
corporate job, this is really cool.

I've used Finale in its various versions for over 6 years now, and it's still
widely considered in academia as the best notation software, not because of
its ease-of-use but because of the depth to which one can add weird/special
notation to the score.

In my experience, either composers are using Finale, or a combination of
Sibelius and Adobe InDesign. This being said, most of the (albeit mostly
American, or Americans in Europe) composers I have met/worked with often use
notation software as the last step in the composition process.

The collaborative aspect of Flat.io is really nice, but until the depth of
notation catches up to the desktop clients like Finale/Sibelius, I have a hard
time seeing (at least) concert/academic composers make the switch.

Side note: is it possible to rebind the note values to different keys? I've
gotten so used to Finale's 4=eighth, 5=quarter, command+(NUM) for
duplets/triplets, etc.

------
verst
I'm a hobby pianist with occasional paid gigs. I'd love to use this to play
along with scores. Here is my feedback purely from a playback perspective. I
haven't tried entering / editing any scores yet.

Some issues:

\- Vertical page scrolling is not as intuitive. Could the pages be moved into
place from the right? (horizontal scrolling).

\- Scrolling is not at all smooth and just far too slow throughout (regardless
of the mode used).

\- No support for multiple systems per page. In other words, if the page could
fit more measures, the next measures should be wrapped.

Feature requests:

\- Consider allowing a no scroll mode - just skip to the next page.

\- Also, allow configuring of page turns X beats ahead of the playback
location. For example, I prefer folks to manually turn my pages 1-2 measures
before the end of the page as I will have memorized the remaining measures.

\- Could you provide an option for the score to resize to use the maximum
available vertical space?

\- Landscape page mode?

\- Hide entire instruments (therefore reducing the system height).

\- Support multiple systems per page (line wrapping of measures).

~~~
cocoggu
Thanks a lot for your feedback!

You can switch to a vertical mode with the button on the top right corner
(||||). It should also mitigate the scrolling issue. Meanwhile we will do our
best to increase performance on huge scores.

For your features requests:

-A no scroll mode will definitely come

-Yes, you're right, for now it's made for listening but not for playing we will soon add a "Performance" mode in order to smoothen the "page turns" and to do it automatically with the sound.

-That's a neat idea we will consider it

-It's already available in the display options (the second button on the top of the first page, on the right of the instruments button)

-In fact it's a good idea in order to have more space when working on a piece

-You can have multiple systems in a single page. I assume that you have many instruments. We try to keep instruments grouped, not to have instruments scattered through multiple pages when possible

------
simonw
This is a very impressive piece of work. It's addressing a similar problem to
my friend Adrian's project www.soundslice.com - the complexity of hosting
interactive sheet music online is enormous.

~~~
gierschv
Indeed, especially for the engraving / editor interactions / audio playback.
We launched our beta in December 2015.

------
cpr
Looks tantalizing, but I couldn't find any demo videos, which would be crucial
for understanding how it works.

~~~
cocoggu
Here are some demo GIFs about how to use the editor:
[https://flat.io/support/editor](https://flat.io/support/editor)

------
SamBam
How is a user supposed to find out what this site really _does_ without
putting in an email address and agreeing to terms of service?

So many sites do this:

> Cool Title!

> Sign up here.

> Some Web 2.0-looking boxes with a few words about how cool the thing is.

> Sign up here.

With no obvious way to something that isn't either a sign-up box or a few more
meaningless words.

And then way down at the bottom in tiny font I see "Music Score Editor." Ah-
ha! I think, and click. No... that just scrolls me back up to those
meaningless words.

Next to that is "Guitar Tabs." Now that one DOES lead to an example. There is
a real example! With no way of guiding me to this link, in tiny font at the
bottom, and under the previous meaningless link.

And finally I realize that there's a link to the top, "Popular", which is not
a helpful word and is, again, next to a meaningless link ("Education", which
leads you to more words).

~~~
cpayne
I think you might be a bit harsh.

First thing on the landing page, it says: "Write your music scores online"
Create, collaborate and discover sheet music with your web browser

I found the "popular" link pretty quickly. Click that, and if you STILL
unclear on the site, then no matter what they do, you're unlikely to be
happy...

~~~
noahlt
I agree. If "Write your music scores online" is not enough for you to
understand the product, then you are probably not a target user.

Similarly, lots of ad tech and dev tools landing pages are unintelligible to
people who probably don't want to use the product, but perfectly reasonable to
those who might.

~~~
logicrook
I can't see how you can make such a comment while being efficient. When you're
looking for some software, you don't want "X that does Y". There are already
solutions (maybe hacky ones) to do Y, so you want some X that will be good in
your workflow. And this is not something you can decide with "Do Y.
Awesomely." Honestly the current page is not so bad, but it is still a far-cry
that the convincing thing: a demo, a quickstart tutorial, or a video.

------
gnud
Would love to try this, I mean, absolutely love! But there's no mention of
cost anywhere, and the link to the TOS is dead. So I'm not signing up just
yet.

~~~
gierschv
For now it's completely free for the individual accounts (education accounts
have a small fee: [https://flat.io/edu/pricing](https://flat.io/edu/pricing)).
The individual ToS are available here: [https://flat.io/legal/tos-
individual](https://flat.io/legal/tos-individual)

~~~
gnud
Just found the TOS while browsing. The link under "sign up" (leading to
[https://flat.io/legal](https://flat.io/legal)) was the one I referred to as
broken.

    
    
        (...) you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive,
        royalty-free and perpetual licence to use,
        copy, reproduce, distribute, adapt, re-format,
        modify,  publish,  translate,  licence,  sub-licence,  
        and  exploit  the  User  Content anywhere and in any
        form for the purposes of providing our Service (...)
    

Yeah, I'm sticking to Lilypond, thanks.

~~~
gierschv
@gnud Thanks for the link, we will fix this shortly. This part of the ToS
applies to the public & shared content that can be accessible by everyone on
the internet ;-)

~~~
etjossem
As written, it applies to the "music, sounds, text or information that you
make available or create whilst using the Service" and gives Flat a
"worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free and perpetual licence to use, copy,
reproduce, distribute, adapt, reformat, modify, publish, translate, licence,
sub-licence, and exploit the User Content anywhere and in any form." [1]

I can see why artists might be a little concerned about this.

[1] [https://flat.io/legal/individual-terms-of-
service.pdf](https://flat.io/legal/individual-terms-of-service.pdf)

~~~
gierschv
We will update them in next few days / weeks to be more precise about private
and non-shared content. This actually more apply to public content (e.g. you
can see on "popular" pages).

~~~
etjossem
Nice to hear, cool.

------
markvdb
Professional classical guitar teacher here.

At this stage, it's too early for this to be useful in my personal teaching
practice. You undoubtedly have a feature comparison matrix. Hats off for what
you've already accomplished.

AND I can see almost immediate use for your app at the stage it is in, with a
slightly different angle!

My solfege colleagues would kill for a simple way to integrate music notation
and text. Or a quick and easy way to build rich solfege exercises.

I suspect that that may be much easier both to pull off and monetise than yet
another (and for now rather feature poor) music notation app.

~~~
adrianh
Hey, check out my product Soundslice (soundslice.com), which I think might
interest you. We're not a notation editor -- we let you combine (existing!)
notation with audio/video and share that with students. See
soundslice.com/teachers and let me know your thoughts, if you're up for it.

------
arturadib
GitHub for music sheet. The execution of this app is just so delightful. Next
up: Forks and pull requests? :)

~~~
radarsat1
Just use lilypond in a github repo. I guess that is too complicated ;)

~~~
bjt
Github has special rendering for Markdown and CSV files. Would be _awesome_ if
they did the same for Lilypond and/or MusicXML and made such files playable.

------
qq66
Wow! It's Etherpad for music scores. Very impressive and very useful to people
like me who don't have the interest in purchasing or maintaining something
like Sibelius but want to explore musical ideas with other people. Hope it's
not too expensive when it exits beta!

~~~
cocoggu
Thanks a lot! We will always keep a free version and later (but soon) offer a
premium plan.

~~~
qq66
I'd like some way to write music like a piano roll or a pad system, or just
some alternative to Western classical notation, which I find hard to translate
to sounds in my head.

~~~
cocoggu
We will probably release a piano roll view in order to simplify any MIDI input
first, so stay tuned!

------
gman83
I'm curious what you're using for the backend.

~~~
gierschv
We use Node.js / Lua / Python, depending which services. For example for the
engraving part we use some common code shared between the frontend/backend,
same for the audio rendering.

------
laurentoget
Can someone remind me why i am supposed to need an internet connection to
score a piece of music?

~~~
cocoggu
An offline version is about to be released, and if you ask why a web-based
version, it can be very useful for Chromebooks for example.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
But why would someone use this instead of Finale, Sibelius, or even MuseScore
or Lilypond, all of which are very much better at score editing?

It's really not hard to email someone a Sibelius (etc) file for editing, or
even to work together in a session over Skype/Facetime.

I suspect the number of Chromebook owners who can't live without an online
music collaboration solution isn't huge.

~~~
rannoup
Things is that Finale and Sibelius are expensive. They're not very intuitive
and convenient for beginners. We do not expect to come as a pro software like
them.

Finally we're only 1 year old they're more than 10. Give us some time ;)

------
artemisart
Since there's no search available : [https://flat.io/sitemap-
scores.xml](https://flat.io/sitemap-scores.xml)

------
kerryritter
Is there a similar tool for guitar tablature (not guitar pro)? This is
fantastic.

~~~
gierschv
You can actually have tablatures if you create a document with a guitar &
check the box "Tabs" :-)

~~~
jdcarter
I was confused about this, too. I added an "electric bass" part to the auto-
created "my first score" and didn't see a "tab" option. Browsed through the
"support -> editor" page and didn't see anything about tab parts in there,
either. I only saw the tab option when creating a new piece.

~~~
rannoup
Indeed. The next instrument modal will be much more intuitive for that.

------
botw
As a music beginner, this is what I am looking for. I thought a site where all
hymns are gathered, shared, edited and played, with lyrics aligned.

------
eivindga
Nice work! I like it a lot!!

~~~
rannoup
Thank you :D

