As promised a couple of weeks ago, here is my review of StaffPad. I will be happy to field any specific questions which might not be answered in my review.
I apologize to those who may receive this more than once -- I am posting it simultaneously on the Sibelius list, orchestralist, both finale lists -- the one at yahoogroups and the one at shsu.edu. I will state that there is already an update in the pipeline which addresses some of the issues I raise - I have tried to indicate which ones are supposedly being fixed/resolved in the upcoming update which is due to be released at the Microsoft Store in a couple of days. ********** A Quick Review of StaffPad After using StaffPad for a couple of weeks I have found much to like about this initial release of StaffPad. It does what it claims to do very nicely. It is obvious that the founders David William Hearn and Matthew Tesch have done a lot of research and work to decide what should be included in such a program and have done some excellent programming to accomplish that. StaffPad is rock-solid as an app. It has not frozen on me, nor has it trashed any of the files I have been working on. The web-site is: http://staffpad.net -- there is a form there for people to contact the developers. They are quick to respond and have been very helpful. This is an excellent version 1 of an excellent notation app, in my opinion. It will not replace the major notation apps such as Sibelius or Finale (at least not yet) but then it doesn’t try to. It frees the user from the mouse-or-keyboard interface of the big notation programs and allows the composer/arranger to concentrate on the music. StaffPad requires only the tablet and the pen, making it truly portable and easy to use anywhere at any time. And with practice the user will quickly feel like the good old days of using pencil and paper to jot down musical ideas and then flesh them out. David and Matthew have done an excellent job of bridging the gap between pencil/paper and the full blown “need a computer science degree to fully use” big-name notation programs. Things I love about StaffPad: 1) pen entry – using the Surface’s pen the entry of music is quick and easy, once the user has practiced imitating the penstrokes as shown in the tutorials. The pen is used for removing items also, holding down the bottom button while touching items with the tip. 2) entry of items for which a pen isn’t well suited is easy with items selected from pop-up menus. Those items can often be edited further, such as trills. Trills appear with a target notehead in parentheses and the user can tap the target notehead and drag left or right to change back and forth between half-step and whole-step trills. Tremolos are easily entered simply by tapping the tremelo selection from the menu and then drawing slashes across one or more stems. The user selects between 1, 2, or 3 slashes by tapping and dragging up or down. Other menu-selected items are easily edited onscreen. 3) playback – high quality sounds, accurate rhythmic playback, attention to dynamics. This attention to dynamics can be further edited by using the Expression icon. When this is tapped each staff is shown with a line representing the dynamic level the music will sound at. Beneath the line is highlighted in blue, making it easy to see what the volume level is. The user can drag this line into any contour desired, over-riding the default dynamic level for more precise playback of dynamics. If the user is unhappy with the edits they can be undone and StaffPad will revert to the default levels for the indicated dynamics. 4) use of the SurfacePro’s technology – the pen which ships with the SurfacePro3 has an end-button and two side buttons. The end button’s only use is to open up OneNote (silly limitation placed by Microsoft) but the two side buttons are put to good use in StaffPad. The lower sidebutton is the eraser – simply hold that down and drag the pen’s tip across an item to remove it from the screen. The upper side button is held and the pen tapped on something in the score to open the context menu. The screen can be zoomed in or out using the 2-finger method so that the user can zoom in to more accurately enter the notes or can zoom out to see more of the score. 5) StaffPad determines what sort of text is being entered according to where the text is entered. As text is entered StaffPad will suggest possible items to choose from. For example when entering text immediately beneath a staff typing the letter p brings up the selection of dynamics which begin with p and also the tempo indications which begin with p (all of the poco . . . possibilities). This removes the confusion over what type of text to enter that sometimes arises in the big-name notation programs. Text can be entered by using the onscreen Surface keyboard or the Type Cover or a bluetooth or USB connected keyboard. Using the onscreen keyboard keeps the user from needing to drag along any other peripherals and keeps the tablet flexible as a hand-held writing pad. 6) minimalist screen – StaffPad keeps the focus on the music and keeps the screen free of menus/ribbons unless and until the user wants to make use of the menus. StaffPad also keeps the menus which can be shown appropriate to what is being done with the music. Dragging up from the bottom of the screen with no measures selected only shows the Undo/Redo, Expression, Instruments, Transposing Score toggle, Export and Home icons. With a measure selected a menu pops up at the bottom which shows Undo/Redo, Delete, Cut, Copy, Add Bars, Remove Bars, Reverse Stems (only useful when more than one layer is used and the layers cross over each other), Transpose Selection, Select All, Export and Home. 7) Exporting the file can be done as Midi file, MP3/WAV, MusicXML or the score setup can be saved as a Template for future projects. 8) the inclusion of video tutorials, which should be watched several times to gain better understanding of StaffPad. I’ve suggested that they be placed on the StaffPad web-site so that a user can have them on one computer screen and be able to pause them while practicing on the SurfacePro3. That would also allow potential new users a chance to see things in greater depth before making a decision to buy or not. In the meantime, the video which does show at the top of the StaffPad homepage does demonstrate a lot of what the program can accomplish. The tutorial on note/rest entry is interactive, giving the user the chance to try out the penstrokes necessary. This is best viewed several times for better accuracy. There is much to learn about StaffPad and currently the only way to learn it is by viewing the tutorials and by trial-and-error. I hope that they will release a user manual for those of us who learn better by reading and doing than by watching. 9) the StaffPad founders David and Matthew are very responsive to users’ inquiries with replies to questions coming very quickly and worded very clearly. Far nicer than the major notation programs’ tech support staffs! 10) adding or removing instruments is easy and can be done at any time when working on the score 11) MusicXML import is excellent as far as pitch and rhythm accuracy are concerned – the only problem with StaffPad’s MusicXML import is in the limited number of predefined instruments in StaffPad, so editing needs to be done to get accurate playback if the original instrument isn’t available in StaffPad. So a C clarinet will be interpreted correctly by StaffPad as being a clarinet staff but unfortunately at this time StaffPad only has Bb clarinets predefined so the original pitches are kept but the instrument sounds a whole-step too low. This will be improved, I’m told, as StaffPad increases the number of predefined instruments and eventually includes the ability for the users to define their own instruments. 12) MusicXML export can work well if done properly – exporting from StaffPad while viewing the score as a transposed score gives strange results. However exporting from StaffPad while viewing the score in concert pitch is very accurate. This accuracy can be compromised when importing the StaffPad MusicXML file into another notation program for more complete editing and getting ready to print if the user lets the other program automatically define instruments based on data in the MusicXML file. However, if the user defines which instrument goes with which staff of the MusicXML file the results are very accurate. 13) The ability to turn on an overlay which allows the user to hand-write notations, draw circles around items in order to remember to pay closer attention to them at a later date, or do any of the other things by hand that people do while working on notation projects. This overlay does not affect any of the music – it is purely graphical. This overlay can be turned on or off, however this overlay will always print on both score and parts where the hand-drawn items appear. 14) Printing is very nice – both the onscreen fonts and the printed results look very elegant. Printing has some problems but these are going to be addressed in a soon-to-be-released update. The biggest problem in printing is that if there is more than one staff for the same instrument (for example a brass quintet which has to staves defined as “Trumpets”) then both staves are printed on the same part with no option at present to print only one of them. Changing the names of the staves in the score makes no difference – it is the predefined instrument which causes this. Printing gives the user the option of printing just the score, the score and all parts, all parts (but not the score), any selection of parts. This printing shortcoming is being resolved in the update due to be released by the Microsoft Store in a couple of days. Printed parts will also have mult-rests as of the upcoming update in a couple of days. I have found the following limitations in this original release of StaffPad. Some of them I have contacted the development team about and others I have not. An asterisk represents items I have inquired about and been assured they were being worked on for upcoming updates. I just inquired again about these issues and was assured that some of them are being resolved as of the update due to be released by the Microsoft Store in a couple of days. Others will take longer to resolve. 1*) limited selection of time signatures: 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 3/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 12/8, 2/2, 3/2, C, cut-time, with no ability to define a custom time signature. This limitation has been removed and custom time signatures will be possible in the update due to be released at the Microsoft Store in a couple of days. 2*) limited selection of predefined instruments with no ability to define a custom instrument – this will be resolved in an upcoming update but not the first update which is due to be released by the Microsoft Store in a couple of days. 3) all the standard major/minor key signatures with no ability define a custom key signature 4) the shortest note values currently recognized are 32nd notes/rests. 5*) score order is fixed – the staves must remain in standard orchestral order (horns above the trumpets even in a brass quintet score). Staff reordering will be possible with the update due to be released by the Microsoft Store in a couple of days. 6*) pen strokes are only recognized when they closely resemble the keystrokes demonstrated in the tutorials – this restriction is going to be relaxed as further development continues. It is somewhat possible to train your installation of StaffPad to recognize some of your strokes but if the program can’t recognize them there is a mechanism for sending the unrecognized measure to StaffPad for analysis. The more that people do that, the better the handwriting recognition engine will become. Using the two-finger zoom method to enlarge the staff where the music is being entered goes a long way to helping this situation. 7) selecting parts of the music for copying, deleting, transposing, has to be done in whole-measures or multiples of whole measures. Individual notes or selected measures can be dragged up or down to change the pitch, but the other editing functions operate on full measures only. 8) no support yet for pickup measures 9) clef changes only possible at start of measure and affecting only whole measures 10) repeats are possible to place in the score but they don’t play back - no support yet for D.C. or D.S., Fine, Coda although they can be placed as text. 11) Chord symbols – it’s possible to enter them as text above the staff but that’s not very elegant. More robust chord entry and display is planned for the very near future. 12) no way to put in ending brackets 13) notes are placed too close to a start-repeat barline and they can’t be moved for better visual clarity. I feel that the positives far outweigh the negatives and find that StaffPad is quickly becoming an important tool in my composing/arranging/engraving workflow. ********** -- David H. Bailey [email protected] http://www.davidbaileymusicstudio.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: [email protected]
