App Information: TrueMetronome

Techinmusiced readers: I have recently revised my app review policy.  This is the first of what I hope will be a long list of posts that feature an app on the app store, with information provided by the app developer themselves.  This post is informational; it is not a paid advertisement; I do not personally own this app; nor is this an endorsement.  I have not needed a stand-alone metronome since the introduction of the iPad and iPad apps that are multi-function and include a metronome, but I certainly respect that developers are still committed to their product and making a better “widget.”  So, without any further adieu, here is information about TrueMetronome.

TrueMetronome is the only app worthy of being called a metronome. Almost all metronome apps boast about their accuracy, but users with sensitive hearing notice inaccurate beats all the time. It used to be impossible to create a perfectly accurate metronome on a mobile device. Despite the failure of other apps, perfect time is possible for TrueMetronome: its unique engine creates perfect beats with ABSOLUTE ZERO latency. For this reason, TrueMetronome is the most accurate metronome app on any mobile platform.

Sound quality is the second issue for software metronomes. Serious musicians prefer a natural sound filled with overtones, but all metronome apps play short synthetic samples (so that the first sound stops completely before the next begins). Thus, you hear an artificial, dead sound. Moreover, the identical samples playing at the same frequency can drive any man crazy! TrueMetronome solves this problem thoroughly: all sounds are recorded from real metronomes, a beat does not affect the gradual decay of its predecessors, and each beat’s sound is a little different from the others. All this contributes to the natural sound which is easier on your ears.

Finally, an aesthetic, thoughtful interface is an important aspect of any application, and TrueMetronome pays particular attention to it. Creating an electronic metronome interface is simple, but TrueMetronome does not cut corners: it recreates the look and feel of a real mechanical metronome; every mark on the scale is labeled with a tempo mark, the deviation angle of the pendulum depends on the tempo, and the tempo is selected by dragging the weight.

 

Chromatik Gets an Update

Yesterday night (May 12), Chromatik's most recent update went live on the App Store. This latest version is version 3.0 and it has a number of new features that are worth examining.

The most important updates in Chromatik v. 3.0–in my opinion–is that Chromatik now allows you to create hotspots in the score, making repeats, D.S., D.C., and Coda markings manageable with the app/service. It would be wonderful if the hotspots that were added to a score would be included if the score was added to a playlist and shared with others (saving them the effort of recreating those hotspots).

Additionally, if you are in the edit mode, you can now use a slider bar to quickly move backwards and forwards through a piece.

Although I know that some schools already use Chromatik in their teaching, these two additions make Chromatik an efficient option in the classroom. Without these two features (hotspots, quick turns), management in a rehearsal would be difficult (you would have to move page-by-page slowly through a score).

Yes, there are a number of features I would still like to see added to Chromatik to make it “fully” useful as a tool in music classes:

• I would like to be able to leave the seek bar on at all times (not just in edit mode).
• I would like to be able to write in colors, particularly red and blue.
• I would like to be able to set Chromatik to turn a page forward or back with a single touch on the right or left sides, instead of using the swipe (a single touch brings up the menu). Swiping is a complicated gesture that isn't great in performance (think about holding a tuba, or playing a piano, and swiping, versus a single touch).
• I would like to be able to attach an audio recording and include it on a playlist so that my students could practice with an audio track. This is crucial because iOS has the music library locked up. If Chromatik could work around this, it would be a HUGE solution to a major iOS issue.
• Chromatik is working on a feature that will allow you to sign up to a playlist with a code, rather than entering the e-mail of each student. This will be a huge improvement, but I do not think it is “live” yet.
• I'd like to see a way to get away from the e-mail subscription, for schools, as students under age 13 can't legally have e-mail addresses (but are in secondary level choirs that could benefit from Chromatik).
• I'd still like to see a tuner, metronome, and pitch pipe in the app.
• I love the fact that Chromatik offer music for purchase, even for groups. This is a huge step in the transition from paper to digital music. The problem I have with the purchase program is that the digital music available from Chromatik is the same price as buying a paper copy–and you cannot export what you buy to another program. In my mind, the digital copy should be less expensive as a paper copy–particularly if you can't take it out of Chromatik. As it stands, I would rather buy the paper copy at full price (and we have a local music store that gives us 10% off all year, and 20% during August). Or, I would pay full price if I could move the digital copy out of Chromatik as a high-quality PDF. In reality, I would like a digital copy that is less expensive that I could take out of Chromatik if I so wished/needed. I know the publishers are terrified of copyright infringement, and that Chromatik deserves to make money off of their services. It is a level of DRM (digital rights management) that I understand, but would rather be without.

And I'm sure that Chromatik has far more in store for the app than I can imagine. The recording feature isn't beneficial to me–in choir–because vocal students usually need a harmonic context for their performances. I would need a student to be able to play their part (on the iPad) and record at the same time. The fact is that SmartMusic does this–for vocal or instrumental music. But I can definitely see how the system could be used as the app improves over time.

At any rate, Chromatik's release of v. 3.0 has been pretty quiet (no major announcements), but it is a significant update that takes the app from the category (specifically, my category) of “app to be watched” to “app that can now efficiently be used in your classroom.” I give Matt Sandler (CEO) and the whole Chromatik team kudos for their work.

In my opinion, Chromatik still renders music on the iPad better than any app I've used (and I've used most of them). I think that files are slightly stretched to fill the screen (if necessary), but the end result looks very good…even on an iPad Mini (I'm waiting to buy an iPad Mini [and a MacBook Air, for that matter] until it is offered with a retina screen).

If you haven't signed up for Chromatik, do so today…it is free, and may become the way you distribute music to your music ensembles (you can actually set up band parts for the same score with different instruments–very cool). I think that I will be using it with my middle school choirs next year as they will be 1:1 iPad. I believe that Chromatik is also Air-Turn bluetooth page turing compatible.

 

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ReadWriteThink Trading Cards for iPad

I recently saw a tweet by Richard Byrne about ReadWriteThink's app, Tradiing Cards. There is a web-based version of this app as well.

Create Trading Cards for Historical and Fictional Characters - The Web Version ow.ly/kWkwZ

—
Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) May 12, 2013

The app is free, and you can download it here.

The app does keep you to specific templates, and could be used for any number of things. Here are two trading cards that I quickly put together:

A) Music History – Composers

B) Music Notation

If you are in an all-iPad school (or have access to the web version), perhaps this app might be a creative way to have students do background information on the songs they are singing, or to reinforce other things you are teaching in class (as a project or the dreaded “h” word [homework]). But does it count as work if it is fun to do?

It would be nice if you, as a teacher, could alter some of the fields (not all of the given prompts make sense for music education)…but again, this is a free resource.

The trading card aspect may be of interest to your male students as well–although they cannot put these in the spokes of their bikes.

These could be used for studying a test; perhaps you could choose the best trading cards over the year and print out a collectible set for your students at the end of the year–lots of opportunities here.

 

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Posts, a blogging app

I have been editing posts and pages today with Posts, a blogging app for the iPad, which works with WordPress and Blogger.  

If I’m writing on my iPad, I typically use Blogsy, which is another blogging app that has many more features and works with a wide variety of blogging apps.  I like Blogsy, but one of the blogs I follow stated that Posts was free, so I wanted to download it and try it.

Overall, it’s a bit easier to use than Blogsy, has fewer features, and it doesn’t automatically scale photos to your blog size (If you notice, the pictures I added to my last post extend past the visible point on the screen).

But other than that, Posts seems to work well, and it is free.  If you are a blogger, you might as well download it and give it a try!  If you need more features, Blogsy is still out there.

Latest Notion Update and Related Thoughts

Notion released an update to their iPad app today (1.2.49) that features transpositions, a new eraser function, and the ability to enter notes with your finger or a stylus versus the on-screen keyboard, fretboard, or drum pad.

A colleague of mine who is currently working in India (Hi, Nyssa!) wrote this morning to inquire if there was a possible replacement for Symphony Pro–what incredible timing on her part! Symphony Pro was a valiant notation effort by a team of three college graduates, and they had a program with a great layout, and it was always buggy–but it worked. As I reported back in February, the program is no longer in development, and is no longer available.

For quite some time, Notion for iPad has been the most comprehensive notation app for the iPad. There are a few other apps, but nothing else comes close in terms of a “real” notation app on the iPad. The inherent issue in my reviews of Notion is that I review apps from my perspective: a techie music educator with limited piano playing abilities…but enough piano ability that I prefer to enter notes in a notation app using a piano keyboard (either onscreen or an external core-MIDI keyboard). I forget that a large number of musicians–particularly children–have little or no skill playing the piano.

This is a natural thing to do (to forget that some people lack the very skills I would consider as “basic.”). One of my favorite quotes comes from the New York Times tech columnist, David Pogue, who says, “We geeks tend to forget that the majority of the world is made of non-geeks.”

That is a brilliants statement to keep in mind…it really is. Musicians (and music educators) need to remember that the majority of musicians may not know how to use a keyboard…particularly in this era when a piano is no longer needed in a house just to have music (which was true of the world before the recording industry began).

Until this morning, Notion for iPad required a basic knowledge of the piano, a fretboard (even less likely), or a drum pad to enter notes. That is no longer true. It might seem reasonable to ask, “Doesn't input by touch make complete sense on the iPad?” Well, yes, it does. But if you are going to write a serious app for music notation, and you had to prioritize development wouldn't you first choose to provide the most efficient way to enter notes, via a keyboard? That is what Notion did.

A representative from Notion discussed this on their Facebook page, where they make most of their announcements. The previous release of Notion allowed for displaying more than two measures per system, as well as the ability to zoom in and out of the music. For touch entry to work, Notion had to have zoom working. Well, zoom is now working and so is touch entry.

So, if you were a Symphony Pro user, Notion can now replace anything you could do in Symphony Pro (and of course, can do more with far better sampled sounds).

Back to my colleague Nyssa–she has been using Symphony Pro with elementary students because it allowed you to enter notes via touch. Now Notion will work for those students, and if you are a non-piano person, it can now work for you, too. This “simple” addition to the app (I'm sure there was nothing simple in the actual coding) allows the app to be accessible to a whole new level of users.

Notion is currently available for $14.99 at the App Store, (and yes, schools can buy it at a significant discount via the Educational Volume Purchase Plan) and comes with a wide selection of sounds–with an additional library of sounds available for in-app purchase at an affordable $29.99. In terms of a program that offers most of the tools needed by musicians in terms of composition, this is a great bargain. In fact, you can purchase an iPad and Notion for less than the cost of Finale or Sibelius (non-educational version, of course). The only caveat with Notion is to be aware that the app does take up a healthy amount of storage on your iPad at 1.6 GB, much of that sounds (and that is BEFORE the purchase of the additional sounds). If you school is running on 16GB iPads, space may be a consideration.

 

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