[tatx]

Just wondering - wouldn't it be easier, not only for music notation but also for math and other scientific notation, if there was an on-screen keyboard custom-built for this very purpose with the required symbols and movement keys? After all, why require a stylus and why sketch the characters when you can just as easily type (actually, typing may turn out to be a much faster input method). Is there a real benefit to sketching or is it something else.

Why wasn't handwriting recognition a big success?

[haberman]

What you're describing is more or less how existing programs work. For example, here is a screenshot of Sibelius:

http://img.informer.com/screenshots/5045/5045272_3.jpg

Notice that "keypad" in the bottom right corner. That's the "on-screen custom keyboard" you're talking about.

But this isn't very convenient:

1. There are a lot of symbols. So many that the keyboard is divided up into six sub-keyboards. Unless you know the program well, it's a bit of a mystery where exactly to find the right symbol.

2. And it's actually more complicated than that because some of the symbols are actually modifiers of other symbols. For several of the symbols you see (sharp, natural, flat, dot, tie) you can't actually draw them independently, they only exist as attachments to another note. So the keypad works differently when you are dealing with those symbols.

3. Plenty of marks aren't even covered by the keypad and its six panels. For those you have to go searching in the numerous other menus in the app. You start getting a Microsoft Word-like problem: how do you design menu bars that show all the options without taking up the whole screen.

I really think it would be easier to draw what you mean -- if the app is actually good at recognizing what you mean.

[jhpaul]

Speaking from a music composition point of view, the ability to simply write a note on "paper" is huge. There's a big difference between sitting at a piano with a tablet that you write on and a laptop with a keyboard and mouse. Even with a custom "music keyboard" getting the nuance of written music through digital input is slow, difficult and frustrating. For years we've been able to hook a keyboard into composition software, but writing in dynamics and other notation meant clicking through menus and sub-menus in crowded, tedious interfaces.

The ability to write as you think/feel it and have the computer handle digitization is a big step, and hopefully allows composers to just write, without working around their software's limitations.

[hellofunk]

What you describe is an app called Notion for iOS, and it's pretty bad. I'd take pen and paper over Notion any time. This app definitely approaches the pen/paper situation much better. It doesn't try to be a MIDI music app, it tries to improve on the process of just using your handwriting, which I think is a better fit for a tablet.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Music is hard because there's simultaneous linear and horizontal organisation. So picking symbols and placing them can be harder than it looks.

I'd like to see this app being used for something simple-ish like the Prelude in C from Bach's WTC. The usual notation shows three independent lines - two in the left hand - and I don't know if the app has enough awareness of context to make that easy.

I haven't used Sibelius or Finale for a while, but last time I looked you had to enter the lines separately. You couldn't just "write" them in one pass and make them fit together, as you can on paper.

As for handwriting - I don't think anyone really wants it. QWERTY is faster, easier to read, and more accurate.

Symbol input (math, music, etc) is different. But for basic text, I don't think there's any clear advantage to using handwriting for input.

[chairleader]

Experienced composers and arrangers will have spent years writing on staff paper, building speed and accuracy. This shorthand and muscle memory will be irreplaceable for their target market.

You get a sense of the experience watching the video: quarter notes are just a short diagonal line, all the note stems are perfectly vertical.

In a way, this problem space is perfect fodder for automation. If a musician can sightread off of your chicken-scratched sheet music, the computer will be able to do a decent job too.

[pervycreeper]

Being able to select a note value from a palette, and then just drawing the head without having to bother with stems and beams would be a time saver in this case.

[codeulike]

The app seems to allow a sort of shorthand

'A quick slanted line is what StaffPad wants for quarter notes and smaller; simple circles or ovals for half notes and whole notes.'

http://www.sibeliusblog.com/news/staffpad-is-a-music-handwri...