Sometimes I get asked the fastest way to import music into forScore on iPad. Most of my colleagues store their music in Dropbox or Google Drive so I made a video showing off how you can drag PDFs directly from one of these services into forScore by using the Files app and forScore in split-view.
Apple announced three new Macs yesterday that will use their new M1 chip. This will allow unprecedented increases in power, speed, and battery life. It will also allow iOS apps to run on them natively.
I have shared some real quick impressions below. If you want to hear more about this transition, Will Kuhn is on the upcoming episode of the podcast to talk about his impressions, amongst other topics in technology and music education. That episode should drop over the weekend.
The new Mac operating system, Big Sur, is coming out tomorrow. This update is dramatic in numerous respects. You will immediately notice a fresh coat of paint. The user interface and app icons will feel a lot more like they do on iOS.
I am excited because iOS app developers I care about are finally starting to announce Catalyst apps in volume. Catalyst is Apple's technology that allows developers to easily turn their iPad apps into Mac apps. There have been relatively few good examples of this over the past year. GoodNotes 5, Streaks, Twitter, and Home, are a few of the ones I use regularly, but the list isn't long.
Instapaper has a Mac app as of today (yay), and forScore is launching one tomorrow. I expect to see a lot more in the coming weeks. It seems like changes to this new OS have finally provided developers the tools they need to make their iPad apps "good enough" to ship on the Mac.
While I usually wait to install releases like this, forScore will be enough of a productivity boost for my Mac workflow that I will be reckless and install it tomorrow, most likely. This will put my online teaching software setup at risk, but I think it is worth it. I am tired of having a beautifully curated music library on the iPad and not on my most powerful machine. Until forScore ships iCloud syncing, I plan to move my "true" sheet music library to the Mac version.
It’s official: forScore will be coming to the Mac this Thursday, Nov. 12th! https://t.co/vLEEMnnKwh
— forScore App (@forscoreapp) November 10, 2020
If you depend on any creative professional music software, audio interfaces, or other apps you aren't sure will be compatible with Big Sur, don't be like me. Wait! I have a fallback Mac mini I can use if things get ugly.
If you are wondering what score editing software is compatible with, fortunately, Scoring Notes has already got the scoop. Read their article below.
Music notation software, macOS Big Sur, and Apple Silicon M1 Macs:
As far as Sibelius, Finale, Dorico, MuseScore, and Notion, are concerned: Broadly speaking, Big Sur does not appear to affect these applications much one way or the other. We don't expect users already working on macOS Catalina to be negatively or positively affected by Big Sur when working with these applications — and whenever a new OS is involved, status quo is very welcome news indeed.
A number of teachers have asked me about the new iPad Air that Apple announced last month. It has been updated to look and function a lot more like the iPad Pro line and many are wondering if they need to go Pro or if the Air will satisfy their needs.
iPad Air and iPhone 12 (announced last week) reviews are out, and I have been reading through them this morning. Here are a few that stood out to me:
2020 iPad Air review: Almost Pro | Sixcolors.com
iPad Air Review: Forward-Looking | MacStories.net
The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro | Daring Fireball
iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro Review: The Best iPhones-but Note for the 5G
Based on everything I have learned so far, there has never been a better time to buy Apple's entry level products. The regular iPhone 12 and iPad Air are spectacular products, and I am guessing that a very large majority of users, even tech nerds, and professionals, are going to feel totally satisfied with them.
I have not tested pro apps like StaffPad, Ferrite, or LumaFusion on the iPad Air because I am still using the 2018 model iPad Pro. My educated guess is that you would not feel limited by the iPad Air, even if you use these apps. You would especially not feel limited using music apps like Tonal Energy and forScore.
When it comes to the iPhone, I am more compelled by the new Mini size and the Pro Max size (which comes with a much better camera system than the regular 12 Pro). Reviews for these are not out yet.
I will probably upgrade my phone, and it will probably be the Pro Max, just because I have a 9-month-old and want to take the best pictures possible of him. That said, I really miss the iPhone 5 days of the tiny phone and might consider a Mini in a future year if I read good things about it later this season.
I am going to keep my iPad Pro around for a bit, but if the Mac were ever to come equipped with a touch screen and Apple Pencil support, I would have to re-evaluate needing the larger-sized iPad Pro and whether or not I need an iPad altogether. I do miss the comfort of the smaller iPad size, particularly for reading, and my gut says that this iPad Air might satisfy my needs down the road.
Conclusion - You probably won't regret not going Pro on Apple's fall lineup of products, but the differences are definitely in the details so make sure you read up on them first.
Dr. Christopher Cicconi, Assistant Professor of Music Education, and Director of Bands and Orchestra at Towson University, joins the show to talk about selecting meaningful repertoire for your ensemble. We also talk about score study with iPad Pro apps, involving yourself in your music teaching community, and yes, I go on a tangent about my favorite new weather app.
App of the Week:
Robby - Weather Line and Carrot Weather
Chris - Fidelity
Album of the Week:
Robby - Trust in the Life-force of the Deep Mystery - The Comet Is Coming
Chris - Game of Thrones Highlights - Spotify Playlist | Mad Max: Fury Road Soundtrack
Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Chris - Towson University Profile Page
Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!
Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS
Thanks to my sponsor this month, MusicFirst.
Thanks to my sponsor this month, MusicFirst
David MacDonald returns to the show to talk about the hardware and software in our virtual teaching setups. Then we speculate about touchscreen Macs and consider how Apple's recent App Store policies might impact the future of creative professional software on iOS.
Topics include:
Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
David MacDonald - Twitter | Website | Blog
Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!
Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS
Today's episode is sponsored by MusicFirst:
MusicFirst offers music educators and their students easy-to-use, affordable, cloud-based software that enables music learning, creation, assessment, sharing, and exploration on any device, anywhere, at any time.
MusicFirst Classroom is the only learning management system designed specifically for K-12 music education. It combines the flexibility of an LMS with engaging content and powerful software integrations to help manage your students’ progress, make lesson plans, and create assignments.
And for younger students, MusicFirst Junior is the perfect online system for teaching elementary general music. It includes a comprehensive K-5 curriculum, hundreds of lessons & songs, and kid-friendly graphics to making learning and creating music fun!
Whether you’re teaching remotely, in-person, or in a blended learning environment, MusicFirst will work with you to find a solution that fits your program’s unique needs. Try it free for 30 days at musicfirst.com.
David’s teaching setup.
My teaching setup.
…From far away.
Speaking of forScore coming to the Mac, I continue to hear chatter in the technology community about touchscreen Macs. The design of Apple's forthcoming macOS update, Big Sur, has larger, more spread apart, user interface elements, indicating that it might be getting prepared for touch input. This would align well with Apple's transition to putting their own silicone chips in their devices this year.
I have no idea if Apple is making Macs with touchscreens, but I find it hard to believe they would take their existing Mac laptop and desktop designs and simply make the current screens touchable.
At Apple's developer conference this past June, there were obvious signs that Apple wants developers to adopt design elements from macOS in their iPad apps and vice versa.
Silicone enabled Macs will run touch-first, iOS apps natively, and Apple has been working hard to make their technologies consistent across all platforms. I wouldn't be surprised if touch screen Macs came out of the box with Apple Pencil support. And if Macs have Pencil support, no one wants to awkwardly hold a pencil up in the air in front of them and draw on a horizontal screen.
Here is where I am going with this. With sheet music apps like forScore finally coming to the Mac, and Apple technologies being shared across devices, I am starting to think that I would love a Mac with a display that folded back on its keyboard. Something that I could plug into my audio interface and large screen monitor to edit audio on at home, and then flip onto my podium and read scores off of during band rehearsal. They could charge nearly anything for a 14 inch MacBook Pro in this format and I would buy it.
Who knows if it would be an optimal experience? Who knows if it's what Apple is planning? Who knows if it is anywhere near ready? Not me. It will be very curious to see what happens over the next few months as Apple has announced that some Macs will make this transition by the end of the year.
In the hustle of our school semester starting, I forgot to post about possibly the most exciting app news I have heard this summer.
After writing about it and talking about it on the podcast for well over a year, I am pleased to say that forScore has announced they are making a native Mac app. It will be coming this fall, alongside their version 12 update. Read all about version 12 here...
forScore comes to the Mac in a big way with a brand new, fully native experience built for some of the most advanced and powerful devices out there. forScore runs on macOS Big Sur, both on Intel and Apple Silicon-powered Macs, and it’s included with forScore for iOS and iPadOS as a universal purchase. That’s right—it’s absolutely free for everyone who has ever bought forScore.
From the looks of it, forScore is using Apple's Catalyst technology, which allows iPad apps to be ported to the Mac.
While I have not seen the Mac version of forScore, I have been testing the iOS version of forScore 12. It's great! My favorite small (but significant) feature is that you can now annotate while viewing two pages at a time without the app jolting into annotation mode. You just write directly on the screen with the Apple Pencil and your markings appear immediately.
I store my score backups on my hard drive's file system, which is how I access them on the Mac. But I store my most frequently read scores in forScore on the iPad. I am glad the experience of interacting with my sheet music will now be consistent across both devices.
Something I have felt would need to happen for this to be useful is iCloud syncing. forScore says that is coming too...
Bringing forScore to the Mac is just the beginning—a whole new platform means a whole new set of opportunities. From subtle refinements to major new features already in development like iCloud Syncing, we’re building the future one step at a time.
We’re just getting started. Again.
Using a Mac version of the app with the need to maintain two separate score libraries would have been a nonstarter for me. As an added side benefit, I can see this getting me to use forScore on the iPhone. Its not the best screen size for sheet music, but every now and then, I'd like to be able to take it out of my pocket and reference a score real quick. The problem is that it is never real quick because none of my scores are there!
I could not be more excited about this announcement!
Left: A draft of a Canvas page, written in a text file on my computer. I used the Markdown syntax for headings, lists, and links. Right: What the Canvas page looks like once the text on the left is imported into the course page as HTML.
My district’s LMS of choice is Canvas, which is pretty stressful to work with. From most accounts I hear about other LMS software, Canvas is far from the worst. “You go to war with the LMS you have” I once heard.
Lately, I am writing my Canvas content in Markdown and storing it as text files on my computer.
Why?
Canvas is littered with user-hostile behaviors. Each class is a separate container. All files, pages, and assignments are quarantined, requiring multi-step procedures for sharing between courses. On top of this, the organizing tools are a mess. I am never 100 percent sure where to go. Even when I do, I have to wait for the internet to load each new thing I click on.
Instead of one file repository that all courses pull from, each class has its own separate Files area.
Canvas is equally difficult for students. All of the course pages and content are just sort of floating in space. It’s up to the teacher to link the material together meaningful, but the tools to do so are inelegant and unintuitive. My music program has resorted to a website for communicating most general information since it exposes the hierarchy of its structure to our viewers. In other words, we control where every page lives, and our students can get to any part of our site from the navigation bar at the top of the page.
The WYSIWYG web editors you see within most Canvas pages, assignments, and announcements are equally frustrating. They are clunky, the text field is tiny, the buttons for all the tools are ambiguous, and I lose my data if the page refreshes itself or I lose connection. Additionally, it’s hard to anticipate what my formatting will look like before actually clicking the save button.
Lately, I am writing my Canvas content in Markdown and storing it as text files on my computer. By editing in Markdown, I can create content in third-party apps, work with data offline, control where files are organized, search them from the Spotlight, and quickly export as HTML for input into the Canvas HTML editor when I am ready to publish.
I like native applications because the good ones feel designed to look like the computing platform. For example, the forScore app on iOS uses similar navigation buttons and fonts to Apple’s own Mail, Keynote, Pages, and Notes. This way, I don’t feel like I am learning new software.
Native apps that deal with documents store files on my hard drive. I can easily organize them into my own folder system, work on them without an internet connection, open the same file in different applications, and search them from the Spotlight. Document-based apps update your file as you edit your data. Websites often lose your data when they run into issues.
I don’t write anything longer than a sentence or two into the text field of a website. Instead, I draft them inDrafts and move my work to iAWriter for longer projects. Both of these apps can preview Markdown.
Markdown is a shorthand syntax for HTML. It empowers me to draft web content without actually writing code. Skim this Markdown syntax guide to see what I mean. You can learn the basics in five minutes.
Drafts and iA Writer have one-button shortcuts to convert Markdown to formatted text or HTML. Here is an example of Markdown, and what it would look like once converted to rich text or HTML.
# Blog Post Title
Here are *three things* I want to do today.
1. Work out
2. Sit in the hot tub
3. Grill some chicken
Let me tell you more about them.
## Work out
Today I will work out on my bike. My wife once said, and I quote:
> The earlier in the day you aim to do it, the more likely it is to happen.
## Sit in the hot tub
This will be relaxing. Maybe I will listen to a podcast there. Here are some recent favorites...
- Sound Expertise
- Sticky Notes
- Upgrade
My favorite podcast player is [Overcast](https://overcast.fm).Once an app like Drafts or iA Writer converts the Markdown to rich text, it would look like this:
A good Markdown app like iA Writer will convert the syntax to rich text for you and copy it so that you can paste it into an application like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or your website.
I could have just as easily exported the resulting rich text to a Word document or Google Doc and all of the formatting would have been properly executed.
iAWriter can also export my Markdown as HTML like this:
<h1>Blog Post Title</h1>
<p>Here are <em>three things</em> I want to do today.</p>
<ol>
<li>Work out</li>
<li>Sit in the hot tub</li>
<li>Grill some chicken</li>
</ol>
<p>Let me tell you more about them.</p>
<h2>Work out</h2>
<p>Today I will workout on my bike. My wife once said, and I quote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The earlier in the day you aim to do it, the more likely it is to happen.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Sit in the hot tub</h2>
<p>This will be relaxing. Maybe I will listen to a podcast there. Here are some recent favorites...</p>
<ul>
<li>Sound Expertise</li>
<li>Sticky Notes</li>
<li>Upgrade</li>
</ul>
<p>My favorite podcast player is <a href="https://overcast.fm">Overcast</a>.</p>Because Markdown can be converted to HTML automatically, I have found it less stressful to actually write my Canvas pages, announcements, and messages to parents in Markdown and then pasting the resulting HTML into the HTML editor of Canvas. I store my Markdown files in a folder of text files, with subfolders for each course. I have favorited these folders so that they are always accessible in the iA Writer sidebar. These folders are easily accessible. Because I am writing in plaintext, the result feels much more like writing in a simple note app than it does a word processor.
iA Writer links to folders of text files on your hard drive. But it looks like a simple note app.
Here is an example of a Canvas announcement intended to be shared with one of my band classes early this fall. It contains an embedded Google Form families sign as an agreement to our policies. Markdown and HTML can be written in the same document and iA Writer treats it all as HTML when you export it.
I got the HTML embed straight from the Share menu of the Google Form setup. I didn't need to know any code to make this message!
On the left: a Markdown document that contains HTML code for a Google Form embed. On the right: pasting that as HTML into the HTML editor in Canvas.
How the resulting announcement appears to students.
EDIT: When I wrote this post, I fogtot to add one benefit to having all of these files on your computer… even though Canvas messages don’t support formatting like headings and bold, I draft those in iAWriter too. It is SO much easier to find and re-use old emails I have sent to parents when they are searchable from my computer. Have you ever tried to search your Canvas ‘Sent’ folder? It’s terrible! Local computer copies for the win!
My studio computer and associated hardware.
When school let out in March, I wrote My Very Straightforward and Very Successful Setup for Teaching Virtual Private Lessons. The impetus for this post, and its snarky title, was an overwhelming number of teachers I saw on Facebook fussing about what apps and hardware they should use to teach online when all you really need is a smartphone, FaceTime, and maybe a tripod.
I stand by that post. But there are also reasons to go high-tech. I have had a lot of time this summer to reflect on the coming fall teaching semester. I have been experimenting with software and hardware solutions that are going to make my classes way more engaging.
I have been hesitant about Zoom. I still have reservations about their software. Yet, it is hard to resist how customizable their desktop version is. I will be using Google Meet for my public school classes in September, but for my private lessons, I have been taking advantage of Zoom’s detailed features and settings.
For example, it’s easier to manage audio ins and outs. Right from the chat window, I can change if my voice input is going through my Mac's internal microphone or my studio microphone, or if video is coming from my laptop webcam or my external Logitech webcam. This will also be useful for routing audio from apps into the call (we will get to that in a moment).
Zoom allows you to choose the audio/video input from right within the call.
Zoom also allows you to AirPlay the screen of an iOS device to the student as a screen sharing option. This is the main reason I have been experimenting with Zoom. Providing musical feedback is challenging over an internet-connected video call. Speaking slowly helps to convey thoughts accurately, but it helps a lot more when I say “start at measure 32” and the student sees me circle the spot I want them to start in the music, right on their phone.
You can get really detailed by zooming in and out of scores and annotating as little as a single note. If you are wondering, I am doing all of this on a 12.9 inch iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, using the forScore app. A tight feedback loop of “student performance—>teacher feedback—>student adjustment” is so important to good teaching, and a lot of it is lost during online lessons. It helps to get some of it back through the clarity and engagement of annotated sheet music.
Selecting AirPlay as a screen sharing option.
AirPlaying annotated sheet music to the Zoom call using the iPad Pro and forScore app.
As much as I love this, I still think Zoom is pretty student hostile, particularly with the audio settings. Computers already try to normalize audio by taking extreme louds and compressing them. Given that my private lessons are on percussion instruments, this is very bad. Zoom is the worst at it of all the video apps I have used. To make it better, you have to turn on an option in the audio settings called “Use Original Audio” so that the host hears the student’s raw sound, not Zoom’s attempt to even it out. Some of my students report that they have to re-choose this option in the “Meeting Settings” of each new Zoom call.
If this experiment turns out to be worth it for the sheet music streaming, I will deal with it. But this is one of the reasons why I have been using simple apps like FaceTime up until this point.
My Zoom audio settings.
My Zoom advanced audio settings.
I have been experimenting with a few apps by Rogue Amoeba that give me more control over how audio is flowing throughout my hardware and software.
Last Spring, I would often play my public school students YouTube videos, concert band recordings from Apple Music, and warm-up play-alongs that were embedded in Keynote slides. I was achieving this by having the sound of these sources come out of my computer speakers and right back into the microphone of my laptop. It actually works. But not for everyone. And not well.
Loopback is an app by Rogue Amoeba that allows you to combine the audio input and output of your various microphones, speakers, and apps, into new single audio devices that can be recognized by the system. I wrote about it here. My current set up includes a new audio device I created with Loopback which combines my audio interface and a bunch of frequently used audio apps into one. The resulting device is called Interface+Apps. If I select it as the input in my computer’s sound settings, then my students hear those apps and any microphone plugged into my audio interface directly. The audio quality of my apps is therefore more pure and direct, and there is no risk of getting an echo or feedback effect from my microphone picking up my computer speaker’s sound.
A Loopback device I created which combines the audio output of many apps with my audio interface into a new, compound device called “Interface+Apps.”
I can select this compound device from my Mac’s Sound settings.
Now I can do the following with a much higher level of quality...
Logic Pro X is one of my apps routing through to the call via Loopback. I have a MIDI keyboard plugged into my audio interface and a Roland Octopad electronic drum pad that is plugged in as an audio source (though it can be used as a MIDI source too).
The sounds on the Roland Octopad are pretty authentic. I have hi-hat and bass drum foot pedal triggers so I can play it naturally. So in Logic, I start with an audio track that is monitoring the Octopad, and a software instrument track that is set to a piano (or marimba or xylophone, whatever is relevant). This way, I can model drum set or mallet parts for students quickly without leaving my desk. The audio I produce in Logic is routed through Loopback directly into the call. My students say the drum set, in particular, sounds way better in some instances than the quality of real instruments over internet-connected calls. Isn’t that something...
Obviously, there is a reason I have previously recommended a set up as simple as a smartphone and a tripod stand. Smartphones are very portable and convenient. And simple smartphone apps like FaceTime and Google Duo make a lot of good default choices about how to handle audio without the fiddly settings some of the more established “voice conference” platforms are known for.
Furthermore, I can’t pick up my desk and move it to my timpani or marimba if I need to model something. So I have begun experimenting with multiple camera angles. I bought a webcam back in March (it finally just shipped). I can use this as a secondary camera to my laptop’s camera (Command+Shift+N in Zoom to change cameras).
Alternatively, I can share my iPhone screen via AirPlay and turn on the camera app. Now I can get up from my desk and go wherever I need to. The student sees me wherever I go. This option is sometimes laggy.
Alternatively, I can log in to the call separately on the iPhone and Mac. This way, there are two instances of me, and if I need to, I can mute the studio desk microphone, and use the phone microphone so that students can hear me wherever I go. I like this option the best because it has the added benefit of showing me what meeting participants see in Zoom.
Logging in to the Zoom call on the Mac and iPhone gives me two different camera angles.
This process works well once it is set up. But it does take some fiddling around with audio ins and outs to get it right. SoundSource is another app by Rogue Amoeba that takes some of the fiddly-ness out of the equation. It replaces the sound options in your Mac’s menubar, offering your more control and more ease at the same time.
This app is seriously great.
This app saved me from digging into the audio settings of my computer numerous times. In addition to putting audio device selection at a more surface level, it also lets you control the individual volume level of each app, apply audio effects to your apps, and more. One thing I do with it regularly is turn down the volume of just the Zoom app when my students play xylophone.
Rogue Amoeba's apps will cost you, but they are worth it for those who want more audio control on the Mac. Make sure you take advantage of their educator discount.
EDIT: My teaching set up now includes the use of OBS and an Elago Stream Deck. Read more here.
I went a little overboard here. If this is overwhelming to you, don't get the idea that you need to do it all. Anyone of these tweaks will advance your setup and teaching.
This post is not specific about the hardware I use. If you care about the brands and models of my gear, check out My Favorite Technology to read more about the specific audio equipment in my setup.
I remember seeing the introduction of StaffPad for Windows Surface tablets back in 2015. Applications that convert handwriting to music notation were not widespread yet and I was absolutely shocked by the demo videos.
My amazement was immediately followed by frustration when I leaned this was a Windows only product. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I understood. The iPad was (and is) widely held as a superior tablet for consumer and professional use, but iOS did not have proper stylus support at the time. There were only third party options, and none of them leveraged the operating system for the level of accuracy that the Apple Pencil now provides.
When the iPad Pro launched months later, I thought "surely StaffPad will now be possible." Turns out I was right. Though it has taken many years, the StaffPad team has been hard at work, and the product is now available for iOS.
I have been beta testing StaffPad for the past month. I consider myself to be testing it largely from the perspective of a music educator, specifically a middle school band director, which means that I am doing things like...
Reconstructing missing flute parts from my music library using the original score
Arranging extra percussion parts for works that are sparse in percussion writing
Writing short folk melodies to use in our sectional curriculum
...pretty basic stuff. If you want a very balanced and comprehensive review of all the StaffPad features, not just the ones I depended on, I strongly recommend you check out the Scoring Notes review by David MacDonald.
TL;DR: If you want to skip this review, I'll get to the point:
StaffPad is an exceptional tool for music educators. It is elegantly designed, astoundingly intuitive, and makes exactly the right trade-off for what a teacher would and would not need in a pro-level score editor. It is a best-of-class example of what a professional 'iPad-first' app should look like. It legitimizes the platform by being a tool that executes tasks that no other computing device can.
While I believe StaffPad near-perfectly conceived, it's hand writing recognition is a headache to use at times, and it needs to improve a lot in this area for me to consider it rock-solid-dependable. Fortunately, I got better at it as I wrote this review.
Ok, let's get to it.
UPDATE: I spoke at length about my experiences using StaffPad on my pocast. Listen and subscribe below.
The design of StaffPad is one of the most impressive I have ever seen. It is undeniably professional, but maintains the elegance and simplicity you would expect if you are familiar with Apple’s native iOS apps. It manages not to be overbearing with buttons and knobs, yet none of the tools seem too far away or too many menus deep.
Let's look at the home page.
Everything is beautifully laid out in a way where my eyes naturally gravitate towards the information relevant to me. There isn’t any information on this screen that doesn’t need to be.
Home shows just recent documents, Library shows all of your stuff, templates shows the customary templates you would expect from a score editor, and Collections shows some pre-made StaffPad scores designed to show off the sound library. I appreciate how the Templates page is not bogged down with dozens of rare options like Mariachi Band.
The Store button takes you to a screen where you can buy sound libraries and other extensions. More on that later. Discover takes you to some helpful introduction videos.
I am going to get into note input in a bit. Before that, I want to pontificate the nature of writing notes with a pencil on a touch surface.
At launch, the iPad made a promise to simplify computing for every person, allowing you to touch directly what you want to do on the screen and removing the abstraction of pointing and clicking, the preferred interface of personal computers for decades.
John Gruber, amongst other Apple commentators, have recently had a lot to say about the original promise of the iPad; about how it has maybe lost its way as it has tried to become more like the Mac, introducing inscrutable multitasking gestures and imitating professional PC software rather than leveraging the strengths of a touch interface. There is a great conversation about it on his podcast, which makes special reference to how revolutionary the original GarageBand app was for iPad.
I mention all of that here because I think StaffPad perfectly fulfills that original iPad promise. Writing notes directly on the screen really is the way to write music, as it removes all abstractions and lets you just touch where you want things to go. It also exists in a category of rare, niche, and professional iPad apps that a) cost real money, and b) could not really exist on a Mac. I already wrote about this a little bit here.
So what features exactly does StaffPad have? If you want an exhaustive list, check out StaffPad's help page. It is very detailed and straightforward.
Though StaffPad’s website has a great introduction video, the help page lists everything StaffPad can do in a concise manner.
If you need specialty engraving features and every editing feature money can buy, you need Dorico or Sibelius (but choose Dorico). If you need a sketch app for music notation, that can make 90% of your score needs come true from the comfort of your couch, StaffPad has you covered.
There are trade-offs. But for my basic purposes, they are just the right trade-offs. For a handwritten sketch app, StaffPad strikes exactly the right balance of what it does and what it doesn't do, especially considering the quality of the resulting scores. There aren't a lot of ways to customize your score's layout, but StaffPad makes really good default choices about how to stylize the final product.
I appreciate that everything StaffPad does is very discoverable and not buried too many layers deep. Most things, you can just write directly on the screen with the pencil (though I had a lot of trouble with articulation, and especially with dynamics). StaffPad attempts to solve the problem of organizing features by using what I call a "double tool bar." I am sure they have a technical name for it. Basically, the tool bar shows one set of tools, and when you tap the upward or downward facing arrow on the upper left corner of the screen, it shows another set of tools.
If I knew the logic behind how StaffPad has organized these tools, I would probably be able to find them better, but because the options are selectable from two sides of the same toolbar, I often get confused which "side" of it I need to be on to get what I want. At least changing it over is only a tap away.
One side of the tool bar has buttons which contains the following...
Play, pause, forward, backward buttons.
Button to trigger Reader mode.
Button to toggle a metronome.
Options to change the voice (of which there are four).
Button to toggle an annotation mode. This mode allows you to scribble freely on your score and highlight certain sections. This mode is necessary because regular strokes draw notes on the staff by default. I can’t think of any standard notation editor that allows freeform annotations with a stylus since most of them are not designed for a tablet.
A loop tool. This tool is great but buggy. It does what you would expect. It allows you to circle a section of music and then copy, paste, or duplicate it. This is a nice way to solve the problem of there being no keyboard shortcuts for selection, copy, and paste, in the app. Sometimes StaffPad crashes when I use it.
The famous three-dots button. (which in most apps means "more") This button takes you to most of the notations that you cannot write on the staff directly with the Apple Pencil - trills, fermatas, rehearsal markings, etc. This button is so frequently accessed that I kind of wish it showed up on both sides of the tool bar. Furthermore, it would be great to be able to edit the order the options appear, rather than scrolling to the right every time I need a rehearsal marking.
Fenby. - a digital assistant that you can talk to. Fenby is wicked cool. Similar to digital assistants like Siri, however, it works really well only when it works. I got used to telling it to "add strings" or "transpose" the score, but there are other commands listed on the StaffPad website that I could not get to work.
The other side of the tool bar includes buttons for...
Undo and redo buttons. Which, again, are so commonly needed that I wish they showed up on both sides of the tool bar. You can use the new text gestures introduced with iOS 13 to three finger pinch (copy), three finger spread (paste), three finger swipe left (undo) and three finger swipe right (redo). Once you get the hang of these, you really start to fly.
Also, a bonus note (and my favorite take away from Paul Shimmons' StaffPad review): copying a selection of music in StaffPad, and pasting it into another app results in a beautifully formatted score excerpt. It’s nice touches like this that make StaffPad a delight to work with.
Copy and paste using the new three finger gestures in iOS 13 is very natural.
Button add/remove instruments. This screen is super elegant and I love it.
Automation layer. You can actually draw your automations right onto each stave with the pencil. It is too bad this is a feature I will not use that much, because the implementation is really slick. I hope that all iOS DAWS consider adding Apple Pencil support for automation layers.
Button to toggle transposing vs. non transposing score.
Playback buttons. Again, these are on both sides of the toolbar but I use them far less often than some of the other options.
Button to access version history.
Share button. The share menu is ridiculously elegant and straightforward. It has all of the export options you would want, and appears very clean. My only complaint is that it does not work the way standard iOS share buttons work where once you share something, the share menu is no longer active. In StaffPad, it is more of a "mode" that you enter in to. I don't prefer this, but it is also not the end of the world.
Home button to go to the main screen.
Settings button. This screen is really straightforward and easy on the eyes. This is the one case where I do wish StaffPad would add more options. The screen is designed nicely enough that I would not mind scrolling downward for more options.
For example, I would like to be able to customize the tool bar or choose for the Apple Pencil's double tap gesture to do something other than initiate a lasso select.
Fenby. I do not think this feature is useful enough to put on both tool bars.
Ok so here’s where the rubber meets the road. StaffPad only accepts note input through the Apple Pencil. I have written about this elsewhere. I would love for StaffPad, like Notion, to have a Mac counterpart. But it’s not designed that way. Because Windows operates on a tablet, Surface users of StaffPad do not need to distinguish between tablet and PC operating systems. StaffPad runs on Windows, period. macOS is a different operating system than iPadOS, so there is no way I can run StaffPad on my Mac.
Interestingly, the main PC score apps, Dorico, Sibelius, and Finale, have made no attempts at an iPad app. I find that we are in this weird fragmented stage with Apple software where nearly any productivity app (I am thinking iWork, the Omni apps, even now Photoshop) can run on any Apple platform and even sync your work between devices, meanwhile niche pro apps still tend to exist on only one platform (Pro Tools/Ableton on the Mac and forScore/StaffPad for the iPad for example). These niche pro apps take unique advantage of platform conventions (the ability to work with complex audio streams in the case of DAWS on the Mac, and the Apple Pencil in the case of iPad).
Maybe its for the best. But I can’t help but feel like StaffPad would be superior if I could snap my iPad into the Smart Keyboard Folio and enter notes from there, or boot up a Mac version and enter notes with a MIDI keyboard..
Because I can’t do that, it is imperative that StaffPad’s handwriting recognition is air tight.
Simply put: it doesn’t register for me all the time. While I am getting better at it after a month of practice, it has a way to go. Sometimes I write really messy and get surprisingly great results on first pass. Other times, I write as slowly and neatly as I can and StaffPad doesn’t convert the notation.
Fortunately, StaffPad’s rules for notation conversion are very thoughtfully considered. Unlike Notion, notes do not convert until I tap somewhere outside the current measure I am composing. This means I can stop and think as long as I want before moving on. StaffPad also leaves anything that it doesn’t recognize in my own handwriting while converting the rest. This means I do not have to worry about an ambiguous pencil stroke being converted into StaffPad’s best guess, and I can go back and fix it later. Speaking of fixing things later, there isn’t a need to be too careful, because notes that end up a line or a space to high or low can be held with the pencil tip and dragged wherever you want on the staff.
This video shows off the design, features, and note input of StaffPad in action.
StaffPad’s design ingenuity continues to shines in the details. You are allowed to write whatever you want in a bar, regardless of if it fits in the time signature or not. StaffPad also allows you to drag the bar line to the right with the pencil if you run out of room. These considerations work well for my brain, because there is less cognitive overhead. I feel like I am writing with a pencil and paper, not a computer.
Still, there are times that I have to try numerous attempts before achieving success. The StaffPad support team recommended that I do notes in one pass, articulations in another, and dynamics in yet another, until I gain confidence with the system. They also recommended that I try to write the notes at approximately the size they will appear once converted. This advise helped but I am still making more mistakes than I would like.
My wife is a professional artist. She uses the iPad Pro to do illustrations and design mock ups. In other words, she has way better control of a pencil than I do. I asked her to spend some time writing various different musical symbols, at varying speeds and sizes. She, too, was perplexed at which of her pencil strokes worked and which ones didn’t.
StaffPad’s help documentation (again, excellent) makes it look really easy. The examples of handwriting are really loose. As a percussionist who detests how other score programs handle drum set notation, I would love to be able to write drum parts as easily as the support documentation illustrates. No matter how hard I try to imitate it, I am getting inconsistent results enough so that I am reluctant to try these features again in the future.
While I am reflecting on note input, I need to acknowledge that StaffPad has, by far, the best implementation of erasing that I have ever seen for the Apple Pencil. There is no double-tap, or need to tap a button on screen to turn on the eraser. You simple press harder! It takes a little getting used to, and it is easy to press too hard when attempting to compose and erasing by mistake. But overall, I wish all apps would adopt this style. It is truly a dream.
Hard press to erase in @StaffPad is by far the best implementation of erasing with Apple Pencil I have seen in any app. It is even more seamless than if the Apple Pencil added an eraser to the other side. I’m seriously ruined for eraser tools in all other software. pic.twitter.com/fTJxDpsgVB
— Robby Burns (@robbyburns) February 13, 2020
Most of my testing for StaffPad included preparing for my recent band concerts. My Concert Band has 10 percussionists and some of my music had only three or four parts. I also have some flutes in my Jazz Band this year, and planned some repertoire that does not have original flute parts. Arranging these additional parts took place while I was on leave for the birth of my first child and was awaiting a return to school, where I would have only two weeks to prepare this concert before the performance date.
Headaches aside, the lightness and simplicity of StaffPad’s design, mixed with its direct note input, made this an indispensable tool for me in the past month. Projects that would have had more overhead using a heftier score editor like Dorico were a breeze using StaffPad and iOS. The iPad’s portability made it easy to sneak little additions to my work into busy days of carrying, holding, and feeding a newborn in one arm while sitting on the couch in my living room rather than at a desk.
Between pencil input and the tool bars mentioned above, there are a handful of features that are hidden beneath contextual menus that are achieved by long pressing on various places in the score. Long pressing in a measure allowed you to change the time or key signature. Long pressing on bar lines allows you to change their style or add measures to the music, add lyrics, text, or chords. These menus are very tastefully done, and as I have already mentioned, they have just enough features that they are confusing to dig through, but just enough that I was never wondering where something was. The lyrics and chords options are not as in depth as other score applications, but they were just right for my needs.
There are features available to third party apps that I believe should be in every app. I was disappointed that StaffPad did not follow a few of these conventions.
Specifically, I wish StaffPad supported Split View. iPad apps can now share half the screen with another app. StaffPad only works in full screen.
This was frustrating for me, particularly in my arranging project mentioned earlier. I wanted to be able to open forScore on one half of the screen for a reference of the full score, and then compose in StaffPad on the other half of the screen. StaffPad customer support informs me that they experienced weird multi-touch results when StaffPad was on half of the screen and that it doesn’t work. But I would still like to see it happen.
You can use other apps in slide over view, which is where you drag an iPhone-sized version of an app over top a full screen app for quick reference. You can see if the screenshot below that this is really too small to be tenable for score reference.
Referencing a score is awkward because StaffPad doesn’t support the iPad’s splitview feature.
Spitfire and cinesamples audio libraries, amongst others, are available as inn-app purchases. They sound fantastic! Given how seamlessly they work with StaffPad, it is astounding how easy it is to get good sounding playback. If only using advanced audio plugins with score apps was this easy on macOS and Windows.
That said, I am extremely hesitant about buying these plugins. These samples, once purchased, only work with StaffPad on iOS and cannot be used with any other program like they can be if you purchase the PC versions of these plugins directly from the companies that engineer them.
StaffPad is a unique composing application that leverages everything unique about the iPad to provide what I anticipate will be an indispensable tool for my work as a music educator. While the handwriting recognition doesn’t always work as I expect, it gets better with each update and also as I practice it.
StaffPad is elegantly designed and makes trade-offs that position it as perhaps the most natural score editor I have ever worked with. I am so glad that this app exists both as a tool for my professional work, and as a statement about what the iPad can be. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a score app that balances power and ease as long as they acknowledge that there is a learning curve and a price.
Want other opinions? Check out these reviews:
Scoring Notes: StaffPad wows with long-awaited iPad release and new free StaffPad Reader
Technology in Music Ed | Chris Russell: Working with StaffPad
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