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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

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.

yalimgerger 15y ago
Tonara does this.
- dangrover 15y ago
  I'm excited about Tonara, but the app itself seems like a tech demo for that specific technology. They have yet to experience the pain of a thousand cuts that (that my team and I have gone through) that is working with the music publishing industry. The thing with these apps is that people who don't really understand them group them all together. "Oh, another music-y app for fancy music people!" While their app now is not remotely a competitor, if they actually get some real funding, they could pivot in a number of ways to compete against apps like mine, because they've been able to position themselves well in the "music app startup" slot by presenting at TC.
zach 15y ago
The hurdle for this is that to do it well, you need polyphonic pitch detection, which you could say is a little tricky. However, I worked on the prototype for a music app that does polyphonic pitch detection for a greater effect than page turning. It listens and follows along note by note as you play your (real) guitar and, as you hit the notes properly, actually uses the master tracks of rock songs to give you a very cool sensation of playing the real song. It's called Rock Prodigy: Guitar and is free with per-song IAPs if you want to try it out.
- waqf 15y ago
  Following an existing score should be a lot easier than de novo polyphonic transcription. For example, you could almost just track the beat while ignoring all the pitches.
  - zach 15y ago
    With a rhythm-game type app, you can dictate what the user is supposed to be playing. With a sheet music app, not so much. People will want to play the first few measures over and over, try something again after messing it up, stop and take it from the top and so on. If you turn the page too soon or scroll the music the user is playing off the screen, the customer reviews are going to look like Armageddon has come. The only way I see that works understandably and well enough is to recognize when the last measure of the last staff is completed. Even that may be incompatible with some music, but it should work well enough in general.
  - high5ths 15y ago
    It's impossible to do that with a lot of non-standard notational music. And even with standard music, "the beat" is annoying to track and changes FAR more than you'd expect. Good musicians are constantly altering the beat in subtle and unsubtle ways.
    - dangrover 15y ago
      Exactly. Rhythm quantization is one of those things that no app ever gets right.
      - phlee 15y ago
        I've been working on converting midi/virtual midi input (from a performer) to notation in real time for an iPad notation app. It really is hard - I spent a tremendous amount of time on it, an still plan on improving it indefinitely after the feature ships.
        dangrover 15y ago
        Dude, your app rocks. We tried to get in touch with you a while back with no response.
        phlee 15y ago
jerf 15y ago
I'd think out of the box on this, and just give the user another channel to control the page turning. The most natural choice I could see would be some sort of eye or head tracking. Though I suspect that rather than trying to guess where they are in the sheet music, I'd just give them a visual target off to the right or left that if they gaze upon/turn towards it the page turns forward (or back). The problem with solutions based on tracking where we are in the music, then inferring the correct action, is that it still encodes assumptions about when the page should be turned, which is great... until it's wrong.
- nandemo 15y ago
  > I'd think out of the box on this, and just give the user another channel to control the page turning. The most natural choice I could see would be some sort of eye or head tracking. I think the most natural is a pedal, which has actually been implemented. Grandparent's suggestion of ambient audio seems rather inadequate. Pianists don't turn pages always at the very end of the page. They read ahead, and how much they read ahead depends on the particular passage.
  - jerf 15y ago
    "which has actually been implemented." Yes, I implicitly added a requirement for myself that I not merely duplicate off-the-shelf tech, because that would be boring. One characteristic of that solution is that it requires additional hardware, whereas head tracking (and maybe eye tracking) could be done with the same setup pictured in the article. But I would totally agree that given a pedal, that will be the superior solution on almost every level. Truly, nothing else speaks with the input clarity and precision of a simple button.
neonscribe 15y ago
Here's a much simpler solution: a page-turning pedal: http://www.bilila.com/pagescore_turner http://www.bilila.com/pagescore_turner
- high5ths 15y ago
  Or http://airturn.com/ http://airturn.com/
usedtolurk 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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__ 15y ago
    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.
- Bud 15y ago
  Another real-life need for pages (and page numbers) is for easy reference in rehearsals. You don't want to wait while 100 people figure out how to scroll to a given point without common reference points (although, yes, bar numbers would work, too). I also heartily agree with the commenter who noted that continuously-scrolling music would be disorienting in real use.
- dangrover 15y ago
  Tried that with the iPhone version that came out in March last year. In practice it was silly and people liked the iPad version better.
  - muxxa 15y ago
    I wonder have you thought of splitting pages in two, and showing the top half of the next page while you are playing through the bottom half of the current page? This would keep pages static. (I wish this could be implemented on my Kindle also, as I often push the button for the next page too early, and then have to turn back again to read the last 3 words).

yalimgerger 15y ago

Tonara does this.

dangrover 15y ago
I'm excited about Tonara, but the app itself seems like a tech demo for that specific technology. They have yet to experience the pain of a thousand cuts that (that my team and I have gone through) that is working with the music publishing industry. The thing with these apps is that people who don't really understand them group them all together. "Oh, another music-y app for fancy music people!" While their app now is not remotely a competitor, if they actually get some real funding, they could pivot in a number of ways to compete against apps like mine, because they've been able to position themselves well in the "music app startup" slot by presenting at TC.

zach 15y ago

The hurdle for this is that to do it well, you need polyphonic pitch detection, which you could say is a little tricky. However, I worked on the prototype for a music app that does polyphonic pitch detection for a greater effect than page turning. It listens and follows along note by note as you play your (real) guitar and, as you hit the notes properly, actually uses the master tracks of rock songs to give you a very cool sensation of playing the real song. It's called Rock Prodigy: Guitar and is free with per-song IAPs if you want to try it out.

waqf 15y ago
Following an existing score should be a lot easier than de novo polyphonic transcription. For example, you could almost just track the beat while ignoring all the pitches.
- zach 15y ago
  With a rhythm-game type app, you can dictate what the user is supposed to be playing. With a sheet music app, not so much. People will want to play the first few measures over and over, try something again after messing it up, stop and take it from the top and so on. If you turn the page too soon or scroll the music the user is playing off the screen, the customer reviews are going to look like Armageddon has come. The only way I see that works understandably and well enough is to recognize when the last measure of the last staff is completed. Even that may be incompatible with some music, but it should work well enough in general.
- high5ths 15y ago
  It's impossible to do that with a lot of non-standard notational music. And even with standard music, "the beat" is annoying to track and changes FAR more than you'd expect. Good musicians are constantly altering the beat in subtle and unsubtle ways.
  - dangrover 15y ago
    Exactly. Rhythm quantization is one of those things that no app ever gets right.
    - phlee 15y ago
      I've been working on converting midi/virtual midi input (from a performer) to notation in real time for an iPad notation app. It really is hard - I spent a tremendous amount of time on it, an still plan on improving it indefinitely after the feature ships.
      - dangrover 15y ago
        Dude, your app rocks. We tried to get in touch with you a while back with no response.
        phlee 15y ago

jerf 15y ago

I'd think out of the box on this, and just give the user another channel to control the page turning. The most natural choice I could see would be some sort of eye or head tracking. Though I suspect that rather than trying to guess where they are in the sheet music, I'd just give them a visual target off to the right or left that if they gaze upon/turn towards it the page turns forward (or back). The problem with solutions based on tracking where we are in the music, then inferring the correct action, is that it still encodes assumptions about when the page should be turned, which is great... until it's wrong.

nandemo 15y ago
> I'd think out of the box on this, and just give the user another channel to control the page turning. The most natural choice I could see would be some sort of eye or head tracking. I think the most natural is a pedal, which has actually been implemented. Grandparent's suggestion of ambient audio seems rather inadequate. Pianists don't turn pages always at the very end of the page. They read ahead, and how much they read ahead depends on the particular passage.
- jerf 15y ago
  "which has actually been implemented." Yes, I implicitly added a requirement for myself that I not merely duplicate off-the-shelf tech, because that would be boring. One characteristic of that solution is that it requires additional hardware, whereas head tracking (and maybe eye tracking) could be done with the same setup pictured in the article. But I would totally agree that given a pedal, that will be the superior solution on almost every level. Truly, nothing else speaks with the input clarity and precision of a simple button.

neonscribe 15y ago

Here's a much simpler solution: a page-turning pedal: http://www.bilila.com/pagescore_turner http://www.bilila.com/pagescore_turner

high5ths 15y ago
Or http://airturn.com/ http://airturn.com/

usedtolurk 15y ago

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 15y ago
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__ 15y ago
  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.
Bud 15y ago
Another real-life need for pages (and page numbers) is for easy reference in rehearsals. You don't want to wait while 100 people figure out how to scroll to a given point without common reference points (although, yes, bar numbers would work, too). I also heartily agree with the commenter who noted that continuously-scrolling music would be disorienting in real use.
dangrover 15y ago
Tried that with the iPhone version that came out in March last year. In practice it was silly and people liked the iPad version better.
- muxxa 15y ago
  I wonder have you thought of splitting pages in two, and showing the top half of the next page while you are playing through the bottom half of the current page? This would keep pages static. (I wish this could be implemented on my Kindle also, as I often push the button for the next page too early, and then have to turn back again to read the last 3 words).