Neat gadget - touchscreen music stands

[yaliceme]

Hello xkcd fora. Thought some of you might find this cool:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/283190948/hacking-4-muzik

^I'm actually directly involved with this. We're making a portable, 20" touchscreen music stand that completely eliminates the need for paper sheet music and its many problems. It allows hands-free page turning, annotation sharing, and online storage of your sheet music library (so you'll never lose a page again).

We want to launch the first one in March 2012 because of an upcoming national TV appearance. All the manufacturing is coming together, and the last big hurdle is finishing software on time. To help meet the goal, we're holding a hacking competition in NYC to attract developers, designers, and techy musicians. We have until next Tuesday January 17 to raise the event budget at that Kickstarter page.

Right now, I'm really trying to raise our visibility... literally every time someone backs us, at any amount, we move visibly closer to the top of the "popular this week" page. If we make it to the top, we'll become a featured technology project and all kinds of people will see us.

There are also some really cool rewards for higher backers, such as pre-orders of the actual device. Nothing even gets charged unless we succeed. But again, it's the number of backers that raises our visibility, so any amount would be great, especially if you re-share.

If anybody has questions, I'm totally here and ready to answer them.

yaliceme

[phlip]

Normally we don't allow spammy self-promoting links like this in the first few posts by a new user... but I'll allow this one, as it actually looks kinda cool.

[AvatarIII]

is there a specific reason that it was decided to not just make this an android/ios app? or will there be an app in addition to the hardware?

if so, why not release a paid app to build funds and brand recognition?

[Dream]

is there a specific reason that it was decided to not just make this an android/ios app? or will there be an app in addition to the hardware?

I have to ask, have you ever tried to read a score? They're huge, and for many pieces, very detailed. A 7 inch tablet is not going to let anybody read a piece easily.

If anybody has questions, I'm totally here and ready to answer them

First off, I'm very glad you're doing this. In particular, the networking and real time editing aspects of the system are real benefits to music ensembles. But looking through the kickstarter site, there are several things I'm not clear on.

Where do I get scores for this, and how do I integrate existing scores?

How does score editing work? Is there a file format for editing, or is the editing more like annotating over a digital image of a page?

Will the software support non-standard notations, or alternative scoring methods? As a computer musician, I'm mostly interested in how this product could allow me to share a score with acoustic musicians, by expanding notation in ways specific to the piece at hand.

[AvatarIII]

is there a specific reason that it was decided to not just make this an android/ios app? or will there be an app in addition to the hardware?

I have to ask, have you ever tried to read a score? They're huge, and for many pieces, very detailed. A 7 inch tablet is not going to let anybody read a piece easily.

no i haven't, but i figured a 7 inch tablet could easily show one page of score at a time, instead of 2, and could be scrolling. but you sound like you are pretty knowledgeable on the subject and I'm not going to feign knowledge about a subject i know nothing of.

[Dream]

Well, you'd sort of start at A3 size, and go up form there, usually. See, a line of a stave needs about an inch and a half minimum, vertically. Horizontally depends on the density of the notes being read, but anything from an inch up to six inches for very technically complex passages. So a tablet might average about fifteen to twenty bars per screen, which is not very much at all. It would be hundreds of pages for a symphony, and page turning happen so often as to be a real pain.

Also, scrolling is very, very hard to do, because the scrolling has to be at the pace of the music, which means some kind of score following algorithm to sync with the music, or some kind of real time control by the performer, which is a distraction. It's also hard to read moving notation.

[AvatarIII]

Well, you'd sort of start at A3 size, and go up form there, usually. See, a line of a stave needs about an inch and a half minimum, vertically. Horizontally depends on the density of the notes being read, but anything from an inch up to six inches for very technically complex passages. So a tablet might average about fifteen to twenty bars per screen, which is not very much at all. It would be hundreds of pages for a symphony, and page turning happen so often as to be a real pain.

Also, scrolling is very, very hard to do, because the scrolling has to be at the pace of the music, which means some kind of score following algorithm to sync with the music, or some kind of real time control by the performer, which is a distraction. It's also hard to read moving notation.

assuming a piece of music is played at the right rate, the score would just need to scroll at that rate, right? music has it's set speed, i suppose people practicing at half tempo could just change that setting to scroll at half speed.
also you say it would be hard to read moving notation, but how about if the score moved one bar at a time instantly, rather than a steady flow?
there wouldn't be any page turning, it would just go on and on.

aside from the practical implications, a "demo" app on android and ios would raise brand awareness. people could see what the stand could do, at least at a basic level.

and even taking practical difficulties into account, a $5 app at 100% (minus whatever % the market place takes) profit for amateurs, and people that don't want to spend a lot of money on an expensive bit of kit. would give these guys a second income from the project.

[Dream]

assuming a piece of music is played at the right rate, the score would just need to scroll at that rate, right? music has it's set speed, i suppose people practicing at half tempo could just change that setting to scroll at half speed.

There isn't a set speed for music. Many tempo changes are gradual and are a collaborative outcome of communications between several musicians. They'll be different every time.

how about if the score moved one bar at a time instantly, rather than a steady flow?

Musicians will usually read ahead of where they are currently playing, by an amount that is different depending on the speed and complexity of the score. I can't imagine looking ahead to see what's coming then looking back to where I am now, only to find that where I am now isn't physically where I left it.

and even taking practical difficulties into account, a $5 app at 100% (minus whatever % the market place takes) profit for amateurs, and people that don't want to spend a lot of money on an expensive bit of kit. would give these guys a second income from the project.

Well, it's not my project, but I can't imagine taking on another development stream in the run up to a product launch is a good idea. And if the porting wasn't absolutely perfect, then the marketing effect would actually be worse than useless, giving people the impression that the actual product was just ordinary notation software with an expensive display added on. That would mean the mobile app would have to be a very significant part of the development effort, not just a bolted on extra. It also really doesn't show off the entire point of the exercise, which is the replacement of score paper on a music stand with an equal but digitally augmented version of itself. There's a place for mobile apps for score reading, but it isn't a replacement for a paper score on a music stand. This thing is.

[AvatarIII]

assuming a piece of music is played at the right rate, the score would just need to scroll at that rate, right? music has it's set speed, i suppose people practicing at half tempo could just change that setting to scroll at half speed.

There isn't a set speed for music. Many tempo changes are gradual and are a collaborative outcome of communications between several musicians. They'll be different every time.

how about if the score moved one bar at a time instantly, rather than a steady flow?

Musicians will usually read ahead of where they are currently playing, by an amount that is different depending on the speed and complexity of the score. I can't imagine looking ahead to see what's coming then looking back to where I am now, only to find that where I am now isn't physically where I left it.

Oh, okay, as a non-musician, I didn't know that. I suppose in my imagination, reading music is much like playing guitar hero

and even taking practical difficulties into account, a $5 app at 100% (minus whatever % the market place takes) profit for amateurs, and people that don't want to spend a lot of money on an expensive bit of kit. would give these guys a second income from the project.

Well, it's not my project, but I can't imagine taking on another development stream in the run up to a product launch is a good idea. And if the porting wasn't absolutely perfect, then the marketing effect would actually be worse than useless, giving people the impression that the actual product was just ordinary notation software with an expensive display added on. That would mean the mobile app would have to be a very significant part of the development effort, not just a bolted on extra. It also really doesn't show off the entire point of the exercise, which is the replacement of score paper on a music stand with an equal but digitally augmented version of itself. There's a place for mobile apps for score reading, but it isn't a replacement for a paper score on a music stand. This thing is.

that's fair enough, and I knew you weren't on the project, but you seemed to know what you were talking about.

It was just general wonderings really, but if not a bolt on to this project, it's a possible idea for a second project once this one reaches fruition.

[EvanED]

is there a specific reason that it was decided to not just make this an android/ios app? or will there be an app in addition to the hardware?

I have to ask, have you ever tried to read a score? They're huge, and for many pieces, very detailed. A 7 inch tablet is not going to let anybody read a piece easily.

no i haven't, but i figured a 7 inch tablet could easily show one page of score at a time, instead of 2, and could be scrolling. but you sound like you are pretty knowledgeable on the subject and I'm not going to feign knowledge about a subject i know nothing of.

7" is very very small when it comes to music. Most music is actually printed on paper which is significantly larger than even 8 1/2 x 11 (which is already very nearly twice the linear dimensions of an iPad -- 13.9" diagonal). Some of the reason for that (less frequent page changes) would be mitigated by an app that automatically scrolls, but not all.

I think what you'd want is for the page to act as a scroll, and move up after you read a couple lines down. I don't know if you'd want it to be an instant jump or a gradual (but relatively fast) scroll, or what. It'd definitely need a lot of usability testing for how often you scroll, how you scroll, how much before and after the current point you show, etc.

[Yakk]

I'd try this if I was going to do this:

Code: Select all

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  |11111 22222|
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  |11111 22222|
  |11111 22222|
  |11111 22222|
  \-----------/
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where 1 and 2 are tablet computers, networked together, displaying the same content. Then again, I consider making hardware to be outside my area of expertise. Others will find making hardware the easier part!

[EvanED]

Looking at the actual kickstarter site, it looks like they're displaying two pages side-by-side. (I think this is a mistake and they'd be better off turning it to portrait mode, but whatever.) With that, they could "scroll" by emulating flipping the page at a similar time as a human player would.

(I'm slightly skeptical still at the size if they're planning on doing something like what's in the first image; I know I wouldn't want to read that. In particular, I don't think you can just scan most music and put it there, for instance. I think you'd have to reformat it to put far less on one page. I ran the numbers and half of a 20" screen is almost exactly the size of an 8 1/2x11 sheet (just a hair smaller, in fact), and as I mentioned that's small for music. I've read music off of scaled down photocopies, and it's decidedly less pleasant.)

Edit that said, I think it's a pretty neat idea. I mean, I played cello back in high school and we've got things like 40-bar rests and even still, every once and a while there will be an obnoxious page turn that you have to stop playing for. For instruments with less downtime it's probably even worse, and we've probably all seen, for instance, pianists who have someone sitting next to them whose sole purpose is to turn the page. Doing it automatically would be pretty spiffy.

[yaliceme]

Wow, looks like a lot of discussion took place while I was away! Dream has been answering most of the questions spot-on... you can indeed get an ipad app for music display (they already exist), though I personally don't know how *anybody* can read normal sheet music at that size (I've been playing piano since I was 5, and participated in a lot of ensembles in high school playing piano and percussion). I think it says something about how annoying sheet music is that some techy musicians try and make it work anyway. So yes, everything Dream says in all posts is true, and I second them as a member of the team. I'll go through and answer questions that haven't yet been addressed.

Normally we don't allow spammy self-promoting links like this in the first few posts by a new user... but I'll allow this one, as it actually looks kinda cool.

^ahaha, this made me laugh. I appreciate it... I've been a long-time lurker on the boards, and an even-longer time reader of xkcd, but somehow never actually made an account.

[yaliceme]

First off, I'm very glad you're doing this. In particular, the networking and real time editing aspects of the system are real benefits to music ensembles. But looking through the kickstarter site, there are several things I'm not clear on.

Where do I get scores for this, and how do I integrate existing scores?

Well, a simple way is you can scan-to-pdf any paper sheet music you might already have and put it on the device (and hopefully on cloud storage, perhaps). We're also planning to have a library of public-domain music that's accessible to users. Eventually, we'll put in place a store much like iTunes where you could purchase a non-public-domain score for an appropriate fee (no details yet on the exact pricing model of this; don't quote me on anything). The Big Vision is to have essentially all the world's sheet music at your fingertips, anywhere you have an internet connection.

How does score editing work? Is there a file format for editing, or is the editing more like annotating over a digital image of a page?

First, disclaimer that I'm not technically on the core software team, though I talk to them. I'm more of a geeky marketing person with basic computer/programming knowledge -- enough (I hope) to not be a total tech idiot, but not enough to write serious code for our product.

From my most recent discussion with software on this topic, we don't currently use a special file format just for us (e.g. bach.mzk or what have you). Non-PDF information (tags, annotations, etc) are stored in another file next to the PDF. We have PDFs saved and work with them directly, though they have to be converted to PNGs on-the-fly for the image viewing widget. Again, this isn't public, so don't quote me, and things could change if we decide a different way is better.

Will the software support non-standard notations, or alternative scoring methods? As a computer musician, I'm mostly interested in how this product could allow me to share a score with acoustic musicians, by expanding notation in ways specific to the piece at hand.

You can make notations directly to the touchscreen. We'll likely have a pop-up keyboard and probably a symbols library if you prefer your annotations nice and neat, but you can always just draw on it as if you're using a pencil.

[yaliceme]

and even taking practical difficulties into account, a $5 app at 100% (minus whatever % the market place takes) profit for amateurs, and people that don't want to spend a lot of money on an expensive bit of kit. would give these guys a second income from the project.

Well, it's not my project, but I can't imagine taking on another development stream in the run up to a product launch is a good idea. And if the porting wasn't absolutely perfect, then the marketing effect would actually be worse than useless, giving people the impression that the actual product was just ordinary notation software with an expensive display added on. That would mean the mobile app would have to be a very significant part of the development effort, not just a bolted on extra. It also really doesn't show off the entire point of the exercise, which is the replacement of score paper on a music stand with an equal but digitally augmented version of itself. There's a place for mobile apps for score reading, but it isn't a replacement for a paper score on a music stand. This thing is.

Spot-on again; only thing I'll add is that although we are indeed not planning any mobile app (pretty much for the reasons listed), there will be PC software, though I don't expect it'll be sold as its own product (it'd be bundled with the purchase of a music stand). This is because we do anticipate some users needing to access their scores on a device other than the music stand itself (for instance, if the stand is owned by your ensemble and you use it for performance and group rehearsal, but then need to access the annotated scores at home as well). Anyway, even if a PC stand-alone is never sold, you CAN get access to a limited-release beta on our kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/283190948/hacking-4-muzik/

[yaliceme]

Looking at the actual kickstarter site, it looks like they're displaying two pages side-by-side. (I think this is a mistake and they'd be better off turning it to portrait mode, but whatever.) With that, they could "scroll" by emulating flipping the page at a similar time as a human player would.

About the two pages side-by-side... a lot of sheet music is printed in books, and the editing/spacing of notes and staffs is printed in a way to optimize viewing with two pages at a time, with page turns strategically placed where there is not as much going on (though such places are difficult to find in some pieces). So for instance, in a piano book, the page-turn transition might be in a place where you at least have long chords in one hand and can quickly reach up. But the transition from the left-hand page to the right (no page flip) might be in the middle of a nasty run of 16th notes in both hands. That's ok with a two-page spread, because it's quite easy and natural for your eyes to saccade up to the top of the next page. It'd be more inconvenient if you had to page-change, even hands-free, on a device that's only displaying one portrait page at a time.

(I'm slightly skeptical still at the size if they're planning on doing something like what's in the first image; I know I wouldn't want to read that. In particular, I don't think you can just scan most music and put it there, for instance. I think you'd have to reformat it to put far less on one page. I ran the numbers and half of a 20" screen is almost exactly the size of an 8 1/2x11 sheet (just a hair smaller, in fact), and as I mentioned that's small for music. I've read music off of scaled down photocopies, and it's decidedly less pleasant.)

True, 20" is perfect for 8.5x11" standard, but may still be small for some large scores. However, we think the problem of large, non-standard sheet music is somewhat of an edge case for now (unless we get a whole bunch of likely first-adopters telling us otherwise). I do recall taking home my piano teacher's huge croatian piano books and photocopying them to 8.5 x 11", and it was always an adventure of finding the right combination of margin-cropping and image-shrinking to get it to fit without being too small. But I made it work for 8.5"x11" paper, and I would be willing to make it work for 8.5x11" digital.

We are planning a larger music stand for conductors, however, for networked collaboration within ensembles. Conductor scores are almost always too large to comfortably shrink.

Edit that said, I think it's a pretty neat idea. I mean, I played cello back in high school and we've got things like 40-bar rests and even still, every once and a while there will be an obnoxious page turn that you have to stop playing for. For instruments with less downtime it's probably even worse, and we've probably all seen, for instance, pianists who have someone sitting next to them whose sole purpose is to turn the page. Doing it automatically would be pretty spiffy.

Ah, yes... the pianist's page-buddy. I used to be extremely careful and paranoid about selecting my performance page-turner... someone who can read sheet music well and ALSO understand how far in advance to turn the page while taking cues from me. With this, I can just use a foot pedal and do it myself.

[EvanED]

Looking at the actual kickstarter site, it looks like they're displaying two pages side-by-side. (I think this is a mistake and they'd be better off turning it to portrait mode, but whatever.) With that, they could "scroll" by emulating flipping the page at a similar time as a human player would.

About the two pages side-by-side... a lot of sheet music is printed in books, and the editing/spacing of notes and staffs is printed in a way to optimize viewing with two pages at a time, with page turns strategically placed where there is not as much going on (though such places are difficult to find in some pieces).

I guess it depends how you have things set up. I was thinking about doing a more gradual transition than just page-at-a-time scrolling. Say go with my "scroll" idea and go up half the page height or something. Then there are no page splits at all.

This idea might be less convenient for something like the piano. If you've got a foot pedal controlling the scrolling and I'm playing cello, I'm not really doing anything with my feet. (I'm not this guy!) So if I can essentially page turn with my feet, where the divisions fall is much less important.

True, 20" is perfect for 8.5x11" standard, but may still be small for some large scores. However, we think the problem of large, non-standard sheet music is somewhat of an edge case for now (unless we get a whole bunch of likely first-adopters telling us otherwise). I do recall taking home my piano teacher's huge croatian piano books and photocopying them to 8.5 x 11", and it was always an adventure of finding the right combination of margin-cropping and image-shrinking to get it to fit without being too small. But I made it work for 8.5"x11" paper, and I would be willing to make it work for 8.5x11" digital.

Personally I'd say a significant majority of the music I played was larger than 8 1/2x11, though often times it shrunk/cropped down pretty well.

But then again I haven't really played my cello for several years, sadly enough, so I'm not exactly in your target audience.

(BTW: I don't have a red voice any more, but I'll still say don't double post. Just make one long one. You can also edit an existing post to add stuff to it.)

[yaliceme]

I guess it depends how you have things set up. I was thinking about doing a more gradual transition than just page-at-a-time scrolling. Say go with my "scroll" idea and go up half the page height or something. Then there are no page splits at all.

Perhaps. My own feeling is that moving scroll would be hard to track with your eyes, given that I tend to unconsciously glance around when I play. And having discrete jumps (e.g. half a page height at a time) introduces the issue of the software needing to somehow know where to "cut" the page so you're not splitting a music staff, for instance. But again, we're keeping an open mind on all design questions and will ultimately choose based on what's discovered to be best for the user experience.

Personally I'd say a significant majority of the music I played was larger than 8 1/2x11, though often times it shrunk/cropped down pretty well.

Yes, we're counting on that for now (the fact that large sheets usually crop/shrink to 8.5x11 pretty well). Also, there's a pretty big body of digital sheet music out there, and 8.5x11 seems to be the standard there.

(BTW: I don't have a red voice any more, but I'll still say don't double post. Just make one long one. You can also edit an existing post to add stuff to it.)

I'll do that from now on!

[Endless Mike]

This is a pretty cool idea, and while it's nothing I can use not being a musician, I hope it works out for you!

[yaliceme]

Thank you! The Kickstarter campaign is looking like a long shot, short of a last-minute miracle; we've built support very rapidly and are 40% funded, but we didn't allow ourselves very much time to work with. Still, we'll find some way to deliver; just a matter of when.

[tendays]

Two things:

1. I wrote a program once that would listen to my playing, compare it to a pre-recorded version so that it can turn the page at the right time. It's quite rough so far (command line interface on linux only (it interfaces with any scriptable document viewer)) but works for me (And now I got a full-time job, so not much time left to develop it further). http://pageturner.sf.net if anyone's interested
I find that far more convenient than having to use a special pedal to turn the page as I am used to be ready to use the piano pedals at any time. I'd have to move my foot aside then move it back, which is distracting if the page turn occurs at a difficult place. I might even sometimes miss the page-turning pedal and have to look down to find it if moved away etc (disclaimer, I never actually tried that). OTOH I'm using my laptop screen as display which is not convenient. I have been thinking about getting a kind of tablet so I can put it on my piano music stand.

2. About displaying page turns, a way which sounds good to me, better than sudden page changes, better than scrolling, is to gradually reveal the top of the new page over the top of the old page while the bottom of the old page is still available at the bottom of the display. So if page 1 has rows ABCDE and page 2 has rows FGHIJ you'd transition from the first to the second by displaying FBCDE, FGCDE, FGHDE, etc, probably with a moving horizontal line between the two so it is clear which bits are from page 1 and which bits are from page 2 — that way the player can decide when to start looking at the next page and yet know the previous page is still there if needed, so things stay where they are on the screen until they disappear. (Also, please, no silly and distracting page-turning animations.)

Good luck with your project!

[mosc]

I have some comments. None at your product specifically but at the strengths and weaknesses in the concept.

1) The best use case for this tech is for music groups that use both hands and read from a score. Handbell ensemble, percussion ensemble, and piano music. The score means fewer measures. A key similarity in all these cases is the inability to turn pages with your hands. This means that having a "next page" button on the screen is not a substantial improvement. Better would be a foot triggered device.

2) Annotations in a word doc or PDF file are simply not going to cut it for a good musician. They take too much time to enter and take up too much real estate. I can't imagine a half-way decent system for handling this. Due to this, I would consider marketing the product with a scanner turning the music stand into a "performance" music stand. It's not particularly useful for practice. My personal squiggles are very different and an evolution how how I learned music. They're not going to be in an OTS product.

3) due to points 1 and 2, the touchscreen part is rather useless. A foot activator and a scanner would be better additions than being able to touch the music.

[Dream]

3) due to points 1 and 2, the touchscreen part is rather useless. A foot activator and a scanner would be better additions than being able to touch the music.

So, you've brought your carefully annotated score digitally, having scanned it in your practice studio, and are ready to tap your foot to turn pages. But then! One of your annotations is inaccurate! The transpositions to cover for a missing musician's part are wrong, and you need to change them! Best thing to do is probably print out the score, alter the annotations in pen, then scan it back in. I mean, entering text via a touchscreen, or editing images via a touchscreen, these are things that are at least 20 years in the future. Right now we'd be wise to work with the technology we actually have right?

[mosc]

Considering the stand itself is economically unviable already? Yes. It's probably a capacitive screen, which lacks the accuracy to actually write anything that doesn't take up huge chunks of screen real-estate. Also, scanning in a piece of music with annotations already and then modifying them? That's a lot more complicated on the software than you are making it out to be.

[yaliceme]

Two things:

1. I wrote a program once that would listen to my playing, compare it to a pre-recorded version so that it can turn the page at the right time. It's quite rough so far (command line interface on linux only (it interfaces with any scriptable document viewer)) but works for me (And now I got a full-time job, so not much time left to develop it further). http://pageturner.sf.net if anyone's interested
I find that far more convenient than having to use a special pedal to turn the page as I am used to be ready to use the piano pedals at any time. I'd have to move my foot aside then move it back, which is distracting if the page turn occurs at a difficult place. I might even sometimes miss the page-turning pedal and have to look down to find it if moved away etc (disclaimer, I never actually tried that). OTOH I'm using my laptop screen as display which is not convenient. I have been thinking about getting a kind of tablet so I can put it on my piano music stand.

Thanks for sharing! I looked over your sourceforge page and watched the video; very cool (nice Schubert, btw). An automatic, touchless page-turning feature is something that a lot of people have suggested and that we're considering, though it may or may not be a priority for the first public version. I can see your point about the pedal potentially being distracting for pianists. I've always imagined that I would just use my left foot for the page turn and keep my right foot free for the piano pedals, but more testing is in order to see how comfortable that would be. Also, I realize that some pianists may need both feet for pedals, though I rarely use pedals other than the sustain, myself. Would definitely be an issue for organists, though.

2. About displaying page turns, a way which sounds good to me, better than sudden page changes, better than scrolling, is to gradually reveal the top of the new page over the top of the old page while the bottom of the old page is still available at the bottom of the display. So if page 1 has rows ABCDE and page 2 has rows FGHIJ you'd transition from the first to the second by displaying FBCDE, FGCDE, FGHDE, etc, probably with a moving horizontal line between the two so it is clear which bits are from page 1 and which bits are from page 2 — that way the player can decide when to start looking at the next page and yet know the previous page is still there if needed, so things stay where they are on the screen until they disappear. (Also, please, no silly and distracting page-turning animations.)

Good luck with your project!

I like this; it's a little bit similar to MusicReader's "half page"-at-a-time option for page turning, though that's somewhat of a misnomer. Basically, say you have pages of sheet music A, B, C, D, etc. Normally, in two-page view, you would see A-B, then paging forward would reveal C-D. If you change the setting to "half page," you see A-B, then paging forward reveals C-B, then C-D, E-D, E-F, etc. So you can always still see the most recent page every time you page forward.

Your second suggestion, combined with the first, would actually overcome my main objection to automatic page-turning, which is that I read ahead several bars, and how far ahead is unpredictable -- depends on the music, how long I've been practicing it, and a host of other factors. A sudden automatic page turn like the one in your video would make me nervous because the program couldn't know the *precise* split second I need the page to turn, and in fast music this could be a big problem. With a gradual/half-page transition, though, the precise timing would be less important. However, I would still need to trust that the program really is following along intelligently -- what if I mess up and my playing doesn't exactly match the pre-recorded version? What if I take a repeat that the program isn't expecting, or omit one? Can it handle transpositions, embellishments, and improvisations? These are all things we'd need to consider in deciding whether to pursue this as a feature.

And we'll keep your comment about animations in mind. Thanks again for your suggestions.

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I have some comments. None at your product specifically but at the strengths and weaknesses in the concept.

1) The best use case for this tech is for music groups that use both hands and read from a score. Handbell ensemble, percussion ensemble, and piano music. The score means fewer measures. A key similarity in all these cases is the inability to turn pages with your hands. This means that having a "next page" button on the screen is not a substantial improvement. Better would be a foot triggered device.

Thanks for the comment! We are indeed planning to include a foot pedal option.

2) Annotations in a word doc or PDF file are simply not going to cut it for a good musician. They take too much time to enter and take up too much real estate. I can't imagine a half-way decent system for handling this. Due to this, I would consider marketing the product with a scanner turning the music stand into a "performance" music stand. It's not particularly useful for practice. My personal squiggles are very different and an evolution how how I learned music. They're not going to be in an OTS product.

3) due to points 1 and 2, the touchscreen part is rather useless. A foot activator and a scanner would be better additions than being able to touch the music.

The idea is that the touchscreen would allow you to draw directly on the digital sheet music the way you would on paper. The most recent iteration of development discussions has us leaning toward an IR screen, because it would allow you to use anything as a stylus, or no stylus at all. But again, don't quote me on this.

We're definitely making ease-of-annotation a big development priority; we know that they're extremely important to many musicians and are often quite personal and organic. Thanks again for your comments!

[Sandry]

This is an awesome concept. I'm half thinking I would love to buy one of these, and half thinking, wow, this would be hard to travel with safely. I mean, it'd be brilliant for practicing at home, but I'd ideally like to bring it to gigs (and our band's rehearsals across the city), and I'm wondering how that would work.

The kickstarter page mentions it being portable, but any thoughts on having some sort of protection for the actual screen portion of it?

[mosc]

Resistive displays would give you the stylus option which I agree is probably preferable to a capacitive display and trying to write with your finger. However, I've never seen a 20" resistive color touchscreen with decent resolution and I imagine if it exists, it would be rather expensive. I don't think there's much of a market for a $10,000 music stand with two of those things.

[Endless Mike]

Resistive displays would give you the stylus option which I agree is probably preferable to a capacitive display and trying to write with your finger. However, I've never seen a 20" resistive color touchscreen with decent resolution and I imagine if it exists, it would be rather expensive. I don't think there's much of a market for a $10,000 music stand with two of those things.

Capacitive screen styli exist and work quite well.

[mosc]

I have used them extensively and no, they don't. They are not even close to pixel specific. The pensil equivalent would be like writing your name with a piece of sidewalk chalk instead of a .7mm pensil.