Classical Kids iPad Apps (Beethoven Lives Upstairs and other books)

I was recently invited to review a new app that should be near and dear to the hearts of many music educators, a series of iPad books about music and musicians called “Classical Kids.” The series involves award-winning books such as Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Mr. Bach Comes to Call, and Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery (and other titles).

There are both student and teacher versions of the app. The teacher apps sells as a complete edition for $119.99, and you can also download just Beethoven Lives Upstairs for the teacher for $19.99, with the option to buy other books for $19.99 each. The student edition is orginally free, and then books may be purchased for $9.99 each. The teacher versions offer a metronome, printable quizzes, a recorder, and teacher’s notes (adding historical and social background to the app).

I was provided a download code for Beethoven Lives Upstairs, teacher edition. The book offers a background track which, I believe, are the same audio files you can purchase individually in the iTunes store for $9.99 each. While the audio book plays, static images (sometimes panned) show on the screen of the iPad. You can also choose to read the text of the narration while the audio plays. Considering that each mp3 album sells on iTunes for $9.99, Classical Kids for Students is a good deal. Not only do you get the audio for each book, you also get images and printed text. This is for a 45 minute audio book.

At the same time, interactive apps such as “A Monster at the End of This Book” have shown the level of interactivity that is possible with app-books for $3.99 or $4.99. I’m not saying that the award winning books by Susan Hammond aren’t worth $10, but I wonder if the average consumer will buy the book (student edition) for $10. iOS customers do purchase apps more often than Android customers (this is well documented, but I won’t go into that here), but a $10, $20, or $120 app is going to make iOS customers think twice. Additionally, a search in the Apple Education Volume License Store does not show that an educational discount is available for the app. So if a school would want to outfit both students and a teacher with the app, it would be cost prohibitive to do so.

I appreciate the teacher resources, which would make it much easier to imbed the app into instruction–particularly at this time of year when it can be hard to keep kids involved with a few days left of school (many schools across the country are out already). I hate to be negative, but the resources (both the background information and quizzes) seem to be embedded PDFs, and the quiz is mainly fill-in-the-blank/short answer which may be beyond the ability of many students in the target audience. As nice as the background information may be, I’m not sure that these resources justify the extra $10 per book over the student edition.

The content of the books is superb. The visuals just don’t take advantage of the interface of the iPad. At the very least, there should be an option to show the current spoken text on the screen, not just an option of picture or screen. I understand that the app is a better value than the current mp3 resources that are available in the iTunes on the same subject. I understand that these are award winning projects. I understand that these are long (45 minute) resources. I know that some teachers will buy them because they love these books. But I fear that the lack of interactivity of the app leads to a lesser product than it could or should be. I’m not the author or the publisher, but if this were my app, I would do a number of things:

• Redesign the app to make it more interactive. I’d hire Callaway based upon the work they’ve done with Grover, Thomas, and Miss Spider.
• Sell each book independently.
• Sell each book for $5.
• Offer the resources as a separate package of PDF files available via download–perferrably for free–from a website.
• Recreate tests so they match grade level ability, and perhaps make some extra activities, too (crossword puzzles, word searches, etc).
• I would consider offering schools a Educational Discount on the “student editions” of the books.
• And most importantly, I’d be aiming for a much larger audience. I don’t think these books should be geared mainly towards the music teacher or music student–they should be geared towards all students. If 1000 music educators buy the app, that’s a total income of $119,990 (not yet counting Apple’s 30% cut). If 10,000 music teachers buy the app, that’s a total income of $1,119,900. If 100,000 customers buy a single book for their children at $4.99, that’s a total income of $499,000. If 1,000,000 customers buy the book for their children at $4.99, that’s $4,990,000 total income. In other words, the lower price is justified by the larger market. There are over 75,000,000 iPads out there, and more iPads in schools daily. Market saturation HAS to be the goal.
• Make the app so good, and so interactive, that reading specialists throughout the country want it on student iPads everywhere.

In summary, the app is a great concept that doesn’t quite perform in the area of interactivity as you would wish on the iPad, and the teacher resources are probably not worth the premium that you pay for them. The app is probably misdirected as being mainly for music education, when the books themselves…reworked to be more interactive…should be for a much larger audience. Again, the written content of the books and the audio is top-notch. But the app just isn’t all that it could be.

 

 

A plethora of riches…another PDF Music Reader, by The Gig Easy

For the past years, The Gig Easy has made iPad stands for performance settings. I wrote a short note about their product in January of 2011. They have continued to make mounts for the iPad, including a very good looking portable stand. This evening, I was contacted by the company as they have released their own PDF music reader. The app was released on June 1st, 2012.

Let’s just stop there for a moment. Another PDF music reader for the iPad? Have you ever searched for PDF music readers on the iPad? There are dozens, including some of my personal favorites like forScore, unrealBook, and DeepDishDesigns Gigbook. Any rational person would ask, “Why would you invest development dollars into an app category that is so overloaded?” The answer would have to be: a) You think you can make a better product, b) you think you can put your own spin on a product, or c) you want to provide a complete solution for your customers. In my opinion, The Gig Easy is focusing on points b) and c) above.

On June 1st, Bill Murray tweeted: “Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $200 million but I was just as happy when I had $100 million.” That is how I feel with PDF music readers on the iPad. We have a plethora of riches; other platforms have incomplete solutions for PDF music readers.

So, how does The Gig Easy iPad app work? Overall, very well. The app can interact with Bluetooth page turning devices (AirTurn and PageFlip Cicada). Pages turn very fast and images are clear, although I optimize all my PDFs with PDF Shrink and I am using an iPad 2 (I am not sure if the app is optimized for the new iPad). The main interaction with the app occurs on the bottom toolbar, which looks like the Mac OS dock, and it can be toggled off and on.

As you can see above, the app offers choices for help, settings, song info (metadata), pitch pipe, metronome, annotation, set lists, and your song library. I won’t discuss all of these features, but the annotation feature and the song info feature deserve some additional attention.

As I’ve said repeatedly on this blog, I believe that annotation is a key feature for any PDF music reader, and I refuse to take a PDF music reader seriously–as both a musician and a music educator–without this feature. On this app, annotation works well, and you can zoom in and out with standard iOS gestures (zoom and pinch). The app gives you the ability to customize the color for pens, highlighters, and text. There are also a number of music symbols (with a nod towards forScore) that can be used in a score. With those symbols, if you touch the box and continue to drag down and up, you can fast forward through all the symbols, and by touching the box and continuing to drag left and right, you make the symbol larger or smaller. The dragging feature also works for the color box, but alters the opacity of the color.

The song info feature is also worth a closer examination. The app allows for the storage of title, project, artist, genre, instrumentation, arranger, composer, notes, key, tempo, length, image quality, as well as the abilty to preview the scores in different formats (1 page, four pages, or nine pages at a time), hide pages, and to set the background color of a page. In other words, there is a lot of functionality in this feature.

There are some key features that are missing in this app, compared to unrealBook and forScore. For example, the original version of The Gig Easy does not seem to have a way to set “hotspots” or “links” through which to jump quickly ahead in a score. There is no way to link and audio file to a score or to play an audio file through a score. And there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to scroll quickly through a song. File management is a bit archaic whereas you need to use iTunes to upload and delete documents, although you can import a PDF directly from a website. There is no Dropbox integration at this time. The addition of Dropbox would be my first priority.

Overall, I think The Gig Easy has created a great app. There are a few features that should be added, but the app is already a nice addition to other offerings by forScore, unrealBook, DeepDishDesigns Gigbook, and Music Reader. Some users may find the Mac-like doc easier to use than some of these other programs. The app has an initial price of $3.99, although pricing of apps are dynamic over time. I particularly like the fact that The Gig Easy is committed to providing both hardware and software for the iPad for the use of musicians first (other people can make use of The Gig Easy products, but they are first and foremost music products).

Disclaimer: I did receive a promo code with which to review this app.

Addendum 6/3: I received a note from the developer regarding my statement that there is no way to quickly move through a score. I was referring to a slider bar to move backwards and forwards quickly through a score. There is a way to jump pages (not in the way I am looking for), so I thought I would let the developer’s words speak for themselves (there is nothing confidential in this reply, so I share this information freely).

I wanted to point out one solution to one of your complaints – that there was no way to ‘turn pages quickly’. If you have the Page Number feature turned on (which it appears you do in your photos), the Page Number appears in the upper right corner of the page.

• Tap the Page Number and you will get a drop down. If you are playing only a song, the drop down will have all the pages and you can tap any page to go directly there. If a page is hidden it will appear in the list dimmer, but is still tapable.
• If you are playing a set, you will again get the drop down but the left side will show all the songs in the set and the right side will show the page numbers for the current song. You can again jump to any page, or any song in the set.

You can do a similar thing from the Song Info page – though that would not be as fast during a performance… however, Song Info lets you go to any page (the small page number wheel near the bottom of the Song Info page) – and then use the LOAD PAGE button.

As a note, you can reposition the page number by tapping, holding, and dragging the page number elsewhere on the page.

 

 

Some great forScore resources (link)

Do you use forScore for PDF-based music reading? If so, you may have noticed that forScore allows you to import custom icons for annotation. Two weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Kathryn B. who shared these resources for me, and I wanted to share them with you!

http://stuffineedtotelltheworld.pbworks.com/w/page/53577962/forScore%20Stamps

I still need to make a custom icon of the Harry Potter type glasses (i.e. “Watch”) that I use in my scores.

In a follow-up e-mail, Kathryn made a good point that forScore should be making all of these resources available on their webpage (allowing for user contributions).

 

Andy’s Song

My four-year-old son is a singer. Whenever he’s doing anything–and I mean anything, he’s singing. The exception (most of the time) is when he watches TV.

[editorial note: he's been rather stuck on Curious George on Netflix for some time now. We're rather sick of that monkey, and every human in that show is an idiot. Furthermore, as naughty as George might be, he never gets in trouble.]

I’ve been noticing that Andy keeps falling back on one song more than any other, which I’ve written out in Notion for the iPad and placed into this post. It is the same pitch sequence of “Twinkle, twinkle” at “Like a diamond in the sky,” or “ABCs” at “H, I, J, K, L M N O P.” He’s changed the rhythm to what appears above (16th, 16th, 8th), and he repeats the first measure over and over, seldom resolving the phrase.

What intrigues me is that he always starts on the same first pitch (a G above Middle C). I don’t know what this means for his future music making, but as a music educator, I keep my ear attuned to what he’s doing with music.

Last year, one of our favorite driving games was to sing. The difference is that he would try to sing the theme from Pixar’s Cars 2, and when I would sing along, he would get mad and tell me to sing something else, particularly the theme to Wonder Pets. Eventually, the theme from Cars 2 became “his song,” and Wonder Pets became “my song.” So, we would drive places, both of us singing our songs at the same time. If I tried singing with him, he would insist that I stay on my own song. Do you think this kid will start composing like Charles Ives?

[editorial note: the beginning of the Wonder Pets phone song is my phone's ring tone. "The phone...the phone is ringing."]

 

 

MIDI vs. MusicXML

This evening, I was offered a promo code to an app that functions as a MIDI workstation. I declined the offer, mainly because I already own the app (i.e. I had already purchased it). I never wrote about the app because I feel that MIDI is an outdated standard for music education. I believe that MusicXML is the proper standard for music education.

You might disagree with that statement. If you do, and you’d be willing to let me post your contrary opinion, please send me an e-mail (the e-mail address is on the right sidebar).

MIDI is a way to allow a computer to both read data from an external instrument, as well as to send data to external instruments. MIDI represents the basis of all sequencers and notation products that are on the market. The “MIDI cable” has become somewhat of a dinosaur, replaced by USB connections, and external MIDI boxes have been replaced by the Core MIDI functionality of operating systems (including the iPad). So MIDI is still used–but not in the direct way it was in the past.

Think about the MIDI needs of an educator…most of the time we’ll fall back on a traditional notation package to act as a MIDI controller or sequencer, utilizing sounds directly from the computer rather than external instruments. Music educators are often aided by the use of notation (versus just playing something into the computer), and MIDI often becomes the headache connected to the process of writing music. For example, you want use Finale by playing in notes, but then need to set up the keyboard connection. At the same time, you want what you are playing to sound through your computer and not the keyboard, so you find yourself fiddling with MIDI connections and setup options. Or, you find a song that is available in a MIDI format on the net, and with hopes of saving yourself hours of working with Finale or Sibelius, you import it into your notation package. To your dismay, the original MIDI file is a mess, barely legible and full of errors from instrumentation all the way to time signatures and key signatures. And you will not be able to import any printed diacritical markings, lyrics, or text.

Herein lies the power of MusicXML. Write a song for any instrumentation group, export to MusicXML, and import into any other notation app, maintaining all of your original score elements. Granted, there are still issues (in part connected to the app or program used to write or read the MusicXML file) with MusicXML. But import/export with notation accuracy is a world of hurt with MIDI and much improved with MusicXML. It is so much improved that I wish an international rule would be created which would only allow Finale, Sibelius, and MuseScore to save their files as MusicXML files, period.

The power of the iPad and core MIDI is the invisible nature of MIDI. If you plug your keyboard (via USB through the camera connection kit), and it works (ours do not–Keystation 49i–very frustrating), it just works. There are no settings to mess around with. This is not true of the PCs and Macs I have worked with in the past. A number of apps take advantage of that core MIDI feature (see the iOS Musician blog for more information on those apps), and this really points the way for the future of iOS apps and mobile music. Granted, all the apps still have their limitations compared to their desktop versions or brethren–but I dare say that today’s iPad apps can do a far better job of notating and playing music than desktop versions could when they were originally released (the exception might be the Notion desktop app which is still relatively new to the notation industry).

Again, I’m approaching this from the angle of music education. Music performance, particularly music with electronic instruments (synthesizers, drums, etc.) has a far different use for MIDI. As an example, I think about unrealBook (iPad music reader) and its ability to control some MIDI features. That feature isn’t intended for me as a music educator, it is intended for performers in the electronic music. MIDI has a place, and is still crucial. But in terms of music education, the best place for MIDI is hidden, and for MusicXML to be the standard that we utilize.