More than anything, a tablet resembles a piece of paper. Apple’s iPad rests easily on a music stand, and – while in this generation, it’s a bit small and low-resolution – is at least the beginning of an ideal score reader.

We took a look at Avid’s Scorch, a leading contender for your iPad score-reading needs, when it came out, and followed up with questions for Avid (like how you turn pages on a tablet – hint, it’s easier than on paper):

Not Quite Sibelius for iPad, but Avid Scorch Could Become an iTunes of Notation (“Not Quite” because, while powered by Sibelius’ notation engine, you can read but not create scores)

Tablet Scores: Avid Answers Our Scorch Questions; Bluetooth Page Turners for iPad, Android

Now, there are further developments. Most importantly, in its evolution toward what I predicted would be an iTunes of music, there’s now a huge store of notation – Hal Leonard’s Sheet Music Direct is now available, powered by the Avid Scorch platform. That’s relevant to, erm, about half of our readers, because it’s only available in the USA (or if you have a US iTunes account). But I imagine we’ll see other countries soon, as Sheet Music Direct is an international service.

If you are in the USA, you can grab the app for free and get 15 songs free of charge to get started:
Sheet Music Direct @iTunes

Daniel Spreadbury, a gifted notation and education advocate I’ve had the pleasure to know for some time, details what’s in the new release.

New Sheet Music Direct app for iPad powered by Scorch technology [Sibelius Blog]

The highlights: what differentiates this from, say, a chunk of bleached tree, are features like:

• Metronome
• Tuner
• Set lists
• Sharing
• Lighter than a tree
• Turn pages with a foot. (*Possible with paper, provided you have a human page turner and you kick them.)
• On-demand purchasing

In the favor of the flattened wood pulp with ink marks on it: higher resolution, bigger, easier to see, easier to mark up, the battery never runs out, does not cost US$499. (Not at first, anyway.) Oh, and you don’t have to wait for it to come out on the iTunes store in your country.

But that puts some significant promise on the iPad side of things.

There are also 90 improvements in Scorch 1.1, including better page turning features and page turning, but one of those 90 features to me jumps out: you get PDF support.

With PDF support, wherever you are, and whatever notation program you use to generate scores, you can now easily share your work with someone else with an iPad. Scorch itself has a separate link from the Sheet Music Direct app:

Scorch @ iTunes

I really want to hear from someone actually using these apps to read scores. What’s the experience like? Are you using it on a regular basis, or did you revert to paper scores?

Music notation software has long been seen as a two-horse race, a Pepsi versus Coke stand-off between Finale and Sibelius. But not only are there other alternatives, too, here’s one tool that’s making free and open source notation viable. I’ve spoken previously about engraving tool Lilypond, but it’s not entirely graphical, even with GUI front ends. MuseScore will look more familiar to users of something like Sibelius, and just as the latter released a major upgrade, it also had a big 1.1 release with major new enhancements.

MuseScore has a robust notation engine, capable feature set, and it’s even catching on in a number of academic institutions around the world. There’s an iPad-based score reader, which in turn is a revenue source (no reason open source software can’t generate income). You can enter music with keyboard, mouse, or MIDI, use the usual complement of symbols and layout features, and import and export both MusicXML and Standard MIDI files. You won’t find a big orchestral sample library as in Sibelius 7 and Finale’s Garritan-based sounds, but there’s still support for soft synth playback, and you can run for free on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s been translated into some 43 languages and counts more than 2500 downloads daily.

Given the coincidence of Sibelius and MuseScore getting their upgrades at the same time, I asked the MuseScore developers directly how they thought they compared. Let’s bring on the fighting words – after all, a little friendly competition drives better tools. (Ask the engineers on contests like Robot Wars.)

Improved interoperability also means you don’t have to choose sides. With MusicXML import/export in MuseScore and recently expanded in Sibelius 7, you can exchange files between the two tools – as you should. (After all, the whole point of notation is the ability for anyone to read it — for the exchange of ideas.)

First, here’s what’s new in MuseScore 1.1, with improvements like jazz and lead sheet functionality:

• Lead sheet enhancements, including MuseJazz jazz font, chord symbols on bars without notes, keyboard shortcuts for moving between bars, more chord symbols, and slash notation (via a plug-in) … see the beginner and advanced tutorials, and separate blog post.
• Connect is a Web-baed social feature for sharing scores, checking out tutorials, and following Twitter MuseScore discussion, all within the program. (Actually, I’m surprised more music software doesn’t do something like this.)
• Improved stability and reliability, including 60 bug fixes. To be honest, that’s probably what has held me back from spending much time with MuseScore, so I’m intrigued. This isn’t a review, but I’ll have to do some scoring work so I can try it out.

MuseScore isn’t as fully-functional as tools like Sibelius and Finale. For may purposes, it will do the job; it just lacks some of their maturity and extensive feature set, which means you should research its current features if you have particular notational needs. But that’s changing. On the roadmap for a more significant version 2.0 are critical notation features like tablature, and linked parts so you can edit music simultaneously in extracted parts and full score.

Sibelius versus MuseScore?

I asked MuseScore developer Thomas Bonte to follow up on how MuseScore relates to Sibelius with news of the two coinciding:

Well first off all, we have to be honest about it, Sibelius is a superb product. Many of my friends use it and I dropped the ambition to convert them to MuseScore However I learned that every year there is a new group of aspiring musicians following music education. The way we see it, is that MuseScore is growing up together with them.

MuseScore strongest selling proposition against Sibelius and others is it’s price: $0. While that seems an unbeatable price, MuseScore faces very steep competition from pirated versions of Sibelius or Finale. When I go around in music conservatories and I ask who has a legal version, only the teacher raises a hand. So MuseScore needs to do better than just the price and that’s where the Open Source kicks in.

If you look at it economically, it’s all about reducing production costs. Translations, documentation, import & export filters, plugins, … The only thing we (the core team) need to take care off is that the contributor community can work together. To facilitate this collaboration, we invested a tremendous amount of time in building a full featured community website on musescore.org using Drupal CMS. It is the main reason why the contributor community around MuseScore has doubled every release, up to 150 people for 1.0. You may have an open source project, but without people, that means nothing. And that’s how we really compete. With our community of contributors and users. The former improves the product, the latter does the promotion.

It’s just a matter of time before MuseScore can handle professional typesetting work. Via initiatives such as the Open Goldberg project, we want to show that MuseScore is getting ready for more demanding work.
Open Goldberg @ Kickstarter

One more thingy related to Sibelius: finally, Sibelius 7 has MusicXML export on board! A huge amount of users were asking us how they could convert their Sibelius files to MuseScore. (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/caleb.foreman/posts/10150374776437678 ) The Dolet plugin was obviously way overpriced to be a democratic solution. This is a huge relief now for e.g. educators, who have lots of material in Sibelius and wanted to convert it for their students who are using MuseScore.

Some of Sibelius 7′s features do have comparable features in MuseScore – and in some instances, MuseScore was first. Thomas observes:

MuseScore had a tabbed document interface (like a web browser) since the start of the project
MuseScore is of course native 64 bit (if compiled on a 64 bit machine)
PDF export has also been there from the beginning
Multi core playback is not available in MuseScore but the synthesizer runs in a second thread (so at least dual core)
MuseScore had import of SVG images since many years now
Upcoming MuseScore 2.0 has full screen support

Version 2.0 is likely to be the big release, in my mind; we’ll be watching. Thomas says they’re also working on improved branding and visual appearance in preparation for that release, and all of this is boosted, he says, by revenue from the iPad score reader. That makes an interesting new model for free and open source software.

A side note, as my biggest criticism of the free engraving tool Lilypond at the moment is its lack of two-way MusicXML file interchange. Thomas notes:

MuseScore has been able read and write MusicXML for several years now.

MuseScore exports Lilypond. It used to have Lilypond import as well, but that was dropped in 0.9.6 because it was better to spend out limited resources on improving MusicXML import. We expected to see MusicXML export in Lilypond anyway, but apparently that’s far from trivial since it still didn’t happen.

And what about compatibility for ABCjs, a JavaScript-powered, text-based notation format so simple it’s been implemented on mobile phones and Web browsers?

Yes there is. And the way this works is a very nice example of how hackable MuseScore is. It’s written out nicely in this post here but basically what happens is: a plugin in MuseScore let’s you browse for the ABC file, it then sends the ABC file to a web service at http://abc2xml.appspot.com which is made by one of the MuseScore developers, and finally that web service sends MusicXML back. Et voilà. (Note: as stated on the announcement: The webservice uses ABC4J. ABC4J supports ABC 1.6 only)

And for more comparison:

We made a comparison table between Sibelius and MuseScore:
Google Spreadsheets Comparison

This may help you to get an idea where MuseScore is and where version 2.0 is heading.

One note: MusicXML export is not available in Sibelius Student or First. Only in Sibelius 7. Bummer.

I think it should be plainly obvious: there’s room for more than one notation tool. There’s room for more than two notation tools. Competition between tools can drive capabilities forward, and better motivate tools to match what users need. Free and proprietary tools can both learn from one another, and even exchange files – there isn’t a gulf between free and open source and proprietary as some may have found in the past. The availability of better tools means the expanded ability of musicians to express themselves.

And MuseScore is becoming a viable option for notation. That can only be a good thing. If you use it in your work – or you have anything you’d like to share about how you create digital … scores – we’d love to hear from you.

http://musescore.org/

Avid released Sibelius 7 yesterday. Highlights in the new version:

A new UI. The most apparent change is a new user interface with dockable, tabbed panels. The design borrows heavily from Microsoft’s Office Ribbon, though a more subdued appearance makes it look just as comfortable on the Mac. My guess is that power users may just hide the whole thing and stick to keyboard shortcuts, but it should do wonders for discoverability for new users or more casual users not comfortable with that.

There’s also a nice new inspector, which looks a lot more usable and less-clumsy than the previous version.

The best UI feature: real full-screen mode, including on the Mac. The mixer has also been redesigned.

Better sharing for text, graphics, and more: Direct PDF and EPS export is now built in, with new “publisher-quality typography and graphics import/export.” It’s the feature least likely to be immediately noticed, but it could well be the best reason to upgrade. There’s also the ability to “sync or import” notation with Pro Tools, and of course you can publish to the iPad notation tool we’ve covered previously. (Links below.)

MusicXML interchange. Speaking of sharing, full, built-in MusicXML interchange support makes it possible to share notation with other tools, including Finale. (Side note: I hope this puts some pressure on the free tool Lilypond to support MusicXML export; it’s really frustrating that that’s missing. The proprietary tools are now more compatible than the free tool.)

64-bit support. Sibelius is indeed the first major native 64-bit notation software (at least, other than open source options which can be compiled for 64-bit). I’m not sure what the real-world implications of performance would be in notation itself – Sibelius was always plenty fast – but I’ll try to find out. It’s still a no-brainer. As for anyone using samples, this should provide 64-bit sample hosting, which is a very important feature for larger sample libraries / memory usage.

More sounds. Sibelius has long included licensed samples, but now following the Avid acquisition, the Avid virtual instruments folks have added their own symphony, rock, pop, organ, and (via Sample Logic) even band and drum and bugle sounds. We’ll have to hear how they sound and how well-integrated they are with the notation tools.

What about notation? The one thing I sense may be missing from this version is improvements to notation capabilities themselves. Because of the breadth of scoring possibilities, there’s almost always room for enhancement, and this update, while it appears a worthy investment for many users, seems from the information I have now not to address the core scoring functionality. That said, hidden in the feature set is better support for fonts which could have the greatest impact on how your scores actually appear: improved OpenType support adds compatibility with “the latest OpenType fonts, including advanced features like ligatures, and employ them in text frames with full DTP-level capabilities.” The ability to do that is very important to engraving and layout.

I hope to learn more about what the implications are for Sibelius scoring in Pro Tools, and how this version has changed.

By the way, Sibelius has also improved their academic pricing. US$295 is the student/teacher price, but what’s best about this is that they’re including four years of free upgrades for students. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that (usually precisely the opposite, excluding academic customers from upgrades), and it’s a nice touch.

Previously, our coverage of Avid’s notation tool for iPad:
Not Quite Sibelius for iPad, but Avid Scorch Could Become an iTunes of Notation

Tablet Scores: Avid Answers Our Scorch Questions; Bluetooth Page Turners for iPad, Android

Digital notation took a big step forward last week with the release of Avid Scorch, the first take on mobile notation from developer Sibelius. (It’s the first mobile app, period, from industry titan Avid, so it’s interesting to watch them go first with notation – especially as even Apple skipped scores with their first release of GarageBand.)

Anything new is liable to generate a lot of questions. So we’ve taken those questions straight to the source, to the Sibelius team at Avid. One of the things I always enjoyed about the folks at Sibelius is that they’re an exceptionally bright, articulate, and musically-minded bunch of people, so I’ve found even if we don’t see eye to eye on an issue, I’ll get an intelligent answer. (The same is true, incidentally, of the people at their chief rival, Finale developer MakeMusic.)

Here’s what they had to say about page turns, annotation (hint: it’s missing for now), sharing and distribution, rendering and page format, and what this is all about.

Meanwhile, the most significant answer comes not from Sibelius and Avid but from vendors of Bluetooth foot pedals, the essential ingredient in making digital scores work. We talk to one of those vendors below, as well, about hardware relevant not only to Scorch and iPad, but other notation tools and devices, as well.

Q+A: Avid Scorch

Tom Clarke, Senior Product Manager for both Avid Scorch and Sibelius, answers a few of our questions. (Thanks to reader comments for suggesting many of these!)

CDM: How might a user turn pages with Scorch in a performance/rehearsal?

Tom: To turn pages in Scorch, you simply swipe – or, in Music Stand mode, tap on either side of the screen to go forwards and back. Scorch also works with any Bluetooth device that can send left- and right-arrow commands, including Bluetooth footswitches, to allow hands-free page turning. We’ve tested with a couple of devices in particular: PageFlip and AirTurn.

There’s not presently a way to annotate scores, I take it? With a paper score, of course, you can quickly make a note with a pencil, etc.

That’s correct – currently Scorch allows you to interact with and transform the music, but not to annotate it. We’ve already had a number of users request this, so it’s on the list of possible improvements to include in future updates. It’s actually quite a tricky problem to solve though, if the music underneath can be changed and reformatted: any annotations would have to be able to move around relative to the musical element(s) they’re describing, so it’s not a straightforward request.

Let’s say a composer wants to quickly push out a bunch of revised parts to an ensemble. How does one do this? And otherwise, you would distribute music for sale on the Scorch store as previously, correct?

Currently, the best way to distribute revised parts in Scorch would be to email the completed score (or extracted parts, if you prefer) to the musicians you want to share it with – or to use, say, a public Dropbox folder that everyone can access. Then each musician opens the score on their iPad and views their part independently, making any changes they want to their own copy of it.

As for self-publishing, using the SibeliusMusic.com site, composers and arrangers can sell their scores – or make them freely available – very easily. Sign up for an account, upload your music and set a price to sell it on SibeliusMusic.com (you get to keep half of the proceeds of any sale through the site); the Scorch Store, meanwhile, maps this price onto one of Apple’s in-app purchase price points and makes it available to buy on the iPad – if that price is higher you get to keep any extra margin.

How much of the Sibelius rendering engine is reproduced in Scorch? Is there anything you can see in a Sibelius score that won’t then appear for Scorch? Any special preparation?

The entire Sibelius rendering engine is reproduced in Scorch so that positioning, styles, formatting and everything else on the page should be no different to Sibelius on the desktop. There are some things that aren’t visible in Scorch, though, such as hidden objects, saved versions, ideas and layout marks. These items only really make sense in an editing environment like Sibelius. The iPad does have some limitations on things like the text fonts included in iOS, but we’ve included the same intelligent font substitution that Sibelius uses in order to try and render scores so that they resemble as closely as possible the original fonts used.

Normally, you format scores for different paper sizes (A4, Letter…) How would you format for tablets? Does the idea of a page size still remain? Would you make a score, say, 4:3 for iPad?

Currently Scorch respects the page settings and layout choices of the score’s author, so yes, page sizes still remain. We recommend using a Letter page size to make best use of the display in Music Stand mode. Look out for some House Style templates on the SibeliusBlog, which you can use to reformat your existing scores easily and make the best use of the iPad’s display and treat the device bevel as the margin.

How do you see the big picture for this offering?

We see Scorch as Avid’s first foray into the world of dedicated mobile apps: there’s a clear use for existing Sibelius customers, solving the obvious problems of portability – but without sacrificing musical intelligence, flexibility and the clarity afforded by the world’s most beautiful music notation. But there’s also an exciting opportunity here for people who wouldn’t normally be interested in notation, at least in the sense of creating it. For those people, Scorch is a great way to learn to play music and to expand their repertoire, tailoring the music that they enjoy to suit their instrument or voice. And because the world’s leading music publishers use Sibelius, we can take their extensive libraries of scores and make them truly interactive in a way that a piece of paper simply can’t match.

The Must-Have Accessory for Digital Scores

Swiping a tablet while you’re trying to play has about as much appeal as … well, turning pages with paper. One clear advantage digital scores have over the printed variety is the promise of hands-free page turns. To do that, you need a Bluetooth pedal. Thanks to the standardization of Bluetooth, these should work not only with Apple’s iPad, but tablets from other makers, as well. (You wouldn’t want music notation to be a platform exclusive, after all.)

Expect to see various offerings out there, but Hugh Sung, co-founder of AirTurn, was first to pipe in when readers pondered how page turns would work with Scorch. Hugh sends over some extensive details on how their system works.

The BT-105 works as an external Bluetooth keyboard, but with some nifty extra features, like a built-in debounce filter to prevent multiple page turns per foot switch press, multiple keyboard profiles for different applications, and one really cool feature exclusive to the BT-105, the ability to toggle on the iPad’s virtual keyboard for text entry (all other external page turners/keyboards hide the iPad’s virtual keyboard by default).

The BT-105 features the latest 2.1 + EDR Bluetooth capabilities, which means that pairing is automatic – no need to enter any passkey codes. Also, the pairing automatically shows the BT-105′s unique serial number, making it easy for multiple users to quickly locate their respective AirTurn units.

The BT-105 comes with 2 ATFS-2 silent foot switches – as i mentioned in the comment, these are the quietest foot switches in the consumer market, thanks to some nifty proprietary technology that features no mechanical moving parts aside from the hinge. That means, no clicks, no squeaks when operating the foot switch. We’re using a nedymium magnet and a rhodium reed switch embedded in the high strength plastic body of the foot switch. As a professional classical pianist, making sure our AirTurn page turning device was perfectly silent was my top priority.

You can find some photos of the BT-105 and our new ATFS-2 silent foot switch in our press release here:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/6/prweb8504375.htm

You can also get more information directly from our website at http://airturn.com.

There’s no reason this will be limited to iPad; Hugh tells us that we can expect an Android version of the Musicnotes.com music notation marketplace soon, projected by the end of summer. (That should time nicely with a whole crop of Honeycomb-powered tablets over the summer; I now have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 machine I’m carrying for development and everyday use, and it compares nicely to my iPad that’s CDM’s testbed for music apps.)

There’s also no reason the use has to be limited to page turns. Foot switches could be boons in applications like punch in / punch out recording, too; developers just need to add support – and it’s simple to implement.

We’ll keep an eye out for other pedals. And if you’re considering using digital notation when gigging, we’d love to hear from you – and maybe talk about doing a proper review.

Let’s get this out of the way first: if you’re looking for a tool for composing and editing scores on your iPad, Avid Scorch isn’t it — not yet, at least. But as a score reader, Scorch could be a glimpse of a future in which tablets create a new marketplace and exchange for notated music.

Scorch is, first and foremost, a score reader. It shares the mature notational display engine of Sibelius, and makes use of Sibelius’ (and now Pro Tools’) scores. That includes Sibelius’ broad library of musical symbols, guitar tab features, and handwritten fonts, among other features. (It even includes the somewhat silly, but potentially-comforting, textures that have long been a feature of the desktop product.)

The role of tablets in digital music is still evolving. But it’s not hard to make a case for the form factor here: unlike a MacBook Pro or a PC tower, you can put a tablet on a music stand. As such, a tiny device can have dynamic access to a near-limitless collection of music. We’ve already seen impressive takes on the classic jazz fake book on the iPad, and they handily beat the older form when it comes to weight or bulk.

That leaves the question of what reading a score on what remains essentially a computer, in place of on paper, actually means. Scorch shows off some advantages here. For instance, you can transpose scores – say, for a singer, or a different reed instrument – in realtime. (That grumbling noise you hear is people complaining about the loss of musicianship and the ability to sight-transpose. I agree, to a point – but I’ve also known some musicians who could do that who also used the transposition button on a digital piano.)

Other features could broaden the appeal of notation in general. With one tap, you can convert a line to guitar tab, dynamically, as seen in the image below. You can change fonts, or pull out a single part, in order to improve readability. These are things that would normally require a copyist to go back to the drawing board and make new parts, even in the computer age. The very notion of what a score is is changing: that score becomes dynamic, electronic, and live, open to instantaneous shared revisions.

I’m following up with Avid’s developers and testing the application myself, as some questions remain. Turning pages electronically could theoretically be easier … or not. There’s an interactive “Music Stand” mode, but that’ll require an actual test. (Stay tuned for results of that shortly.) Depending on your instrument, you may not have a hand free, and on the iPad, there’s no way to tape multiple pages together to increase the size of the paper. My bet is that we’ll badly need a footswitch. (See this week’s discussion of augmenting tablets with foot pedals.)

While I investigate that, though, it’s just as interesting to ponder that Scorch is not just an application, but a marketplace. Using Apple’s in-app payments (the rules for which this week were loosened), you can purchase scores or download free scores. The display even looks like e-reader apps from Apple, Amazon, and others. With brick-and-mortar music stores few and far between, and the record store long gone, this is huge news. Demand for notation has been on the uptick, as popular music, reality TV, and shows like Glee continue to feed on – and feed – appetite for musical expression. (I need to pull some solid numbers on that, but I do know there are some positive signs; that’s probably a topic for another story.)

Scorch could be the start of something big – and with electronics makers around the world, not just Apple, betting on the tablet, it could be a sign of other tools to come.

I still imagine many people want to use tablets to make scores, not just consume them, and I expect that to be a growth area, too. But Scorch is notable as the first big-league entry into what could be a transformative arena. And it could be transformative in ways that are more profound than even digital distribution of music. Notation has evolved the way it has on a paper medium, designed to be fixed, still influenced by the conventions of the pen and engraving. The next question: will scores, from creation to display, need to change, too?

Avid Scorch

Get used to saying “Avid Pro Tools.”

Avid is retiring the “Digidesign” moniker this month as it works to unify its product lines in music production, music notation, and video production. I spoke on the phone yesterday with Mark Williams and Adam Castillo of Avid’s Communications team to talk about their plans. Today, they released an open letter intended to sooth the nerves of customers. It seems that, judging by forum chatter, some Pro Tools users were concerned that the new branding meant the pro audio segment was being de-emphasized at Avid.

The branding change itself is not all that earth-shaking. Pinnacle, Sibelius, and M-Audio will all remain, because they’re names of product lines as much as brands in themselves. Digidesign will not, because “Pro Tools” is the brand everyone knows anyway. (I’d say the Pro Tools name has higher recognizability in the general public than anything else in the industry – video or audio.)

What I took away from the conversation, though, was that Avid really is endeavoring to pull together their different products and make some changes. Key points:

“Agility” was a word that came up a lot. Translation: Avid wants to be more responsive to change, and release, literally “more products.”

The unification of the brands is an attempt to get out of Avid’s silos. Avid today is a confluence of different acquired companies, all of them supposed to work together. But with the acquisition of Sibelius, of M-Audio, and of Pinnacle, we haven’t always seen those components function as a whole. Branding is the public face, but behind the scenes, there is an effort to change that by getting teams working with one another and developing products that complement and interoperate.

Going after the Preditor is another goal. The … wha? “Producer plus editor” — audio plus video. To that, I asked, what makes that important now? Hasn’t Avid been in the business for some time, and haven’t the enabling technologies been available for ages? Yes, responds Avid, but there is an uptick in customer demand, as old barriers break down. People are now doing audio post and music instead of just one or the other. Video people are doing more audio. Audio people are doing more video. And it’s clear that economic pressures and the rise of independent production are accelerating the trend.

“Open” was another word that came up. Now, obviously, Avid wants its own products to interoperate more effectively – but what about competitors products, I asked? Would Avid really deliver on this “open” promise? Avid says yes, and points to, for instance, recent media asset management that works with video rival Final Cut Pro. “It’s a cultural thing that we’re an open company,” says Castillo. “We recognize that, to win, you can’t just build bigger walls.”

Most importantly, says Avid, they want to start thinking about the future, ten years down the road instead of only the immediate future.

That means, rather than turning their back on audio or pro audio, they’re going to need more out of it than ever. It seems to me Avid will also need to make both its consumer and “pro” sides work, too, in order to survive and flourish. So I’m not surprised they want to be running on all cylinders.

Of course, branding is one thing: most of you, I suspect, who compose in Sibelius or edit in Pro Tools, care most about the actual material proof. I know one particular concern has been support options going forward. Avid did confirm that the support tiers they introduced in 2009, with different levels of support tailored to different interests and products, and more dedicated options for an additional fee, are the plan going forward. If you have specific questions, I can pass them along.

But don’t think I’m just taking Avid at their word – I know you won’t. We’ll keep the communication lines open and continue to keep you posted with what they’re doing.

In the meantime, here’s their letter:

The future of Digidesign: An open letter to customers

As you might know, one year ago we decided to combine all the Avid companies—including Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius—into a new, unified Avid. Since then, we’ve taken steps toward transitioning Digidesign to the Avid name. We understand that you might have questions about the future of Digidesign and the product lines you’ve invested in. With that in mind, we’d like to share some information, answer some questions, and explain how these changes will affect you.

New website launching April 12th

Many of you told us that we needed to improve the navigation, organization, and the overall user experience of digidesign.com. In order to make these improvements, a major overhaul was necessary. On April 12th, we’re going to launch a brand new avid.com website that will include all of the digidesign.com pages—plus a number of enhancements to make navigation faster and easier. At first, the website will be US-only, but over the next few months, we’ll work on moving the international Digidesign websites as well. To help you get acclimated, we’ll be posting an interim page at digidesign.com offering links straight to the pages that are most important to you.

Why move the website to Avid.com?

Not surprisingly, many of you own products from multiple Avid companies—including Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius—so we thought it would be more convenient to offer one centralized, unified website for all Avid products. We’re working toward providing you benefits like a simplified product registration process, single login ID, and a one-stop source for all product information, support, downloads, and news.

What will the new site be like?

The people behind the look and feel of Digidesign and M-Audio are now creating a new look and feel for all Avid—so don’t expect the new site to look like we sell IT products! It will feature completely new navigation and organization, making it easier and faster to find what you want. Overall, it’s a big improvement over the current Digidesign website. Our web team incorporated feedback from customers into the new site—we think you’re really going to like it.

Is the Digidesign name going away?

Yes, we are in the process of retiring the Digidesign name—but the products will live on. After talking with many of you, we discovered that most people identify more with the product names—such as Pro Tools, VENUE, ICON—instead of the company name (actually, there are some people who thought the name of the company was Pro Tools, so go figure…).

What is happening to the Digidesign team?

Rest assured, the same core Digidesign team of audio fanatics is still here, with offices in Daly City, CA. We just have a different logo on our letterhead. And since the transition, we’ve been playing key roles in creating the new Avid. Over the coming months, you’ll start to see our influence on packaging, videos, customer communications (like this one), and the overall look and feel of Avid.
Why is the Digidesign name being retired?

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, it no longer makes sense to maintain many separate brands. It’s also impractical to have multiple marketing teams, websites, newsletters, and separate methods for communicating with customers. Our new brand strategy is to combine everything under the Avid name. This will help us streamline operations and become a healthier company—which frees up more resources for product development. We figured that you’d rather see us put more money towards designing innovative new gear than maintaining five separate brands.

What does this mean for the Digidesign product lines?

You’ve seen a taste of what can be accomplished when we work together—products like Pro Tools M-Powered, Video Satellite between Media Composer and Pro Tools, the DSM monitors, and Sibelius integration into Pro Tools. Moving forward, audio and video are going to be equally important for Avid. We’re totally committed to Pro Tools, VENUE, ICON, and all the other product lines that used to be branded under Digidesign. Combining forces with the other Avid companies means more resources for our R&D department to work with, enabling us to release more great products than ever. We’re also committed to expanding our product lines further—in fact, we have some incredible new audio products in store for 2010 and beyond…
What about the M-Audio brand name?

We’ve begun the process of transitioning the M-Audio name to a product brand instead of a company name. You’ll continue seeing product names like the M-Audio Oxygen 25, and the M-Audio BX5a Deluxe.

What does this mean for the M-Audio and Sibelius websites?

Eventually, the M-Audio and Sibelius websites will be moved to the new Avid.com as well. But for now, those sites will continue to operate independently just as usual.

We truly appreciate your loyalty and continued support, and hope you take some time to explore the new website on April 12th. If you have any questions or comments, please join the conversation here.

Sincerely,

The Digidesign (aka Avid) team

It’ll be interesting to see what they’re cooking up in the audio department, and I intend to hold them to this “open” idea, as well. Stay tuned.

I expect readers have passionate feelings both ways, so let it out – and have a great weekend.

Creating digital music is about more than audio. Notation remains an essential way to communicate among musicians. Notation is deep and complex, so there’s plenty to talk about. As a long-time Sibelius user, though I want to discuss some core techniques that I find open up a lot of other possibilities, techniques to which I continually return. I happen to be sharing this at a discussion at the City University of New York Graduate Center today, so the timing seems right.

Teachers and experimental, avant-garde composers have something in common: you often need to convince notation software to behave in a way that’s contrary to the expected norm.

To save you time, notation software generally assumes that all music has bars, and that those bars go from left to right with everything visible. This is especially true in Sibelius, which is able to perform as quickly as it does because everything you see on a score is relative to a position in a bar, rather than being set up arbitrarily as you would in a page layout program.

That works much of the time, but what if you have music that isn’t in a time signature? What if you’re transcribing early music or world music that doesn’t operate in 4/4? What if you’re making a quiz in which you don’t need bars, or want to have a blank space for students to fill in answers?

Updated: Just days after this feature, Sibelius announces Sibelius 6. Relevant to this story, this means at least some of the manual hacks for things like beaming across bars and feathered beams will now be automatic! Neat! I’ll have to do new tips for Sibelius 6 when it arrives.

Technique 1: Staves and Instrument Types

Oddly enough, the answer to all of these questions is basically the same: change the way the staff is displayed. You’ll still need to account for bars behind the scenes, but once you learn how to handle Sibelius’ staff options, this isn’t so difficult. This step is a bit confusing for those of us (hand raised) who have been using Sibelius since 1.0, as Sibelius 5 changed the name of this option from Staff Type Change to Instrument Change. (The latter makes more sense in conventional music, even though the former will make more sense for this tip.) But the technique is basically the same.

To insert a new instrument type, right-click (or ctrl-click on Mac, or choose Create) and select Other > Instrument Change.

Select Choose from > All Instruments and Family > Others (for the most generic type).

You’ll see some useful options already. In addition to choosing different numbers of lines, there’s an option that entirely hides a staff — “No instrument(hidden)” – and options that show just barlines or just bar rests.

Try selecting the “No instrument (bar rests shown)” option, then click in the score where you want the change to happen. You’ll see a blue rectangle around the barline at which the change is inserted. Clicking this barline in the center will allow you to select the change itself. Once selected, you can drag it left and right to change the point at which the change occurs, or press Delete to remove it. (That’s important for hiding portions of staves, as you’ll need to be able to select them even when hidden!)

You can imagine lots of possibilities for using this simple technique. For quizzes, for instance, you might simply hide the portion in which you want a student to fill in an answer. Or you can use those hidden bars to help space out a quiz. Or you can use some hidden bars to provide space for a graphical notation in a contemporary / experimental score.

For all of those applications, though, you may need some different variations.

To create your own instrument type, choose House Style > Edit Instruments.

Choose Ensembles > All Instruments, then Families in ensemble > Others to get the generic types.

Let’s try creating a staff type that looks like a normal treble staff, but hides the barlines. Select “Unnamed (treble staff)” and choose New Instrument… to create a new instrument that will be based on that existing instrument. Sibelius will ask if you’re sure. (It can smell uncertainty. You’re sure.)

Under “Name in dialogs,” choose a useful name, like “Treble staff (barlines hidden).”

There are actually lots of powerful options here, but skip straight to “Edit Staff Type.”

Under General, you can choose the number of staff lines and what objects are shown.

Uncheck Initial barline and Barlines, and you’ll have a staff with hidden barlines.

Also make sure to uncheck “Used as default staff.”

Bar rests won’t make much sense if you don’t have bars, so click the Notes and Rests tab, and uncheck “Bar rests.” You’ll want to leave the Rhythms options, because you probably do want rhythms in this case, just not the barlines and bar rests. (Unchecking Rhythms could be useful, though, for things like plainchant.)

Again, to insert, you’ll right click, choose Other > Instrument Change, and use the blue arrow to click where you want the change to go. Here’s our result:

And yes, this can be handy for printing out blank notation paper if you’ve run out / forgot your manuscript notebook. (Been there.)

One last note: you may have noticed that you still have bar numbers. Check House Style > Engraving Rules > Bar Numbers. Other global score settings are found here, so you should get in the habit of a trip to the Engraving Rules any time you’re creating a new score or developing a new template.

Technique 2: Noteheads

Just about anything you can’t do with staff types, you can do with noteheads.

The most useful notehead, of course, is a dead notehead.

Okay, that sounded like some sort of anti-notehead bitterness. But seriously, by hiding noteheads, again, you can create all sorts of alternative notations, and because stems are still visible, musicians can more easily see where beats are. You’ll also need noteheads for percussion notations and the like.

To change notehead types, make sure the floating Properties window is visible (Window > Properties). This is useful for changing other settings, too, so it’s well worth exploring. In the dropdown, you’ll see headless noteheads (position 7).

You can also edit your own Notehead types, just as with instruments and staff types, by selecting House Style > Edit Noteheads.

One other neat trick using the Notes panel is that you can turn on and off tuplet brackets. That allows a little hack that gives you feathered beams. You’ll find instructions under Feathered beams in the manual (p. 79 in my edition).

Technique 3: Locking Layout

The problem with just hiding barlines and such is that you still have bars underneath, and they’ll continue to automatically flow as Sibelius adjusts the layout. With most scores, that’s a good thing, but with ametrical scores or quizzes or short example snippets you want to export, that’s obviously a bad thing.

The solution? It’s time to learn the keyboard shortcuts for locking your layout in place.

System breaks: Click a barline and hit the enter key. You can insert forced system breaks just like carriage returns (line breaks) in a word processor. You’ll see an icon above the score both in the line with the break, and the line immediately following.

Page breaks: Ctrl-Return / Cmd-Return breaks the page.

Special breaks: You’ll find other options in Properties > Bars, including a Special Page Break that inserts a blank page. Click a barline first, then choose from the drop-down menu in Bars.

Indentation: You can move a line left or right by clicking the left-hand side of a stave, then moving it right with the left and right arrow keys. Hold down ctrl (PC) or cmd (Mac) to move by larger increments.

Expand or contract bars: Invariably, you’ll find some of the automatic spacing doesn’t look quite right – especially in these special cases. Click a bar, then press shift-alt (shift-opt) and the left and right arrow keys to make a bar wider or narrower.

If you ever get lost with any of these steps, Layout > Reset Position restores the default.

Technique 4: Exporting Score Snippets

At a certain point, as a composer or a teacher, you don’t always want to do all of your page layout in Sibelius. Likewise, I’m surprised that people don’t more often use little snippets of scores to communicate ideas, whether it’s highlighting a specific comment on a bigger score, or using notation software to quickly communicate short bits of music. Obviously, this is useful for musical examples in essays and the like, too.

When you’re ready to export parts of a score, you have several methods in Sibelius:

The graphics-copying way. Choose Edit > Select > Select Graphic (Alt-G), and Sibelius gives you a bounding box that allows you to select a portion of your score. (If you select your bars before choosing this option, it will attempt to snap to the right area, from which you can adjust it further if you like.)

Once you have the area selected the way you like, use the standard copy shortcut (ctrl-C / cmd-C), then choose your word processing or layout app and paste. To cancel out of this mode, hit Esc.

Most of the time, this is really all you need to do, unless you’re concerned about higher-quality output. In that case…

The export way. If you need to fine-tune output options and DPI, you should instead use File > Export > Export Graphics. Here, you can select the format you like. OpenOffice isn’t listed, but choosing the Sun StarOffice(TIFF) method is your best bet. For Word, choose the explicit Word EPS setting for the highest-quality output.

The PDF way. If you’re on a Mac or have Adobe Acrobat Professional (or another PDF generator) installed, there’s an additional way, which is to export to PDF. I find that inserting PDFs is the best way to go for inserting later to software like InDesign. The default PDF creator on Mac is pretty good, but a full version of Acrobat is often preferable to other options.

Screencast: Sibelius has a screencast of these techniques, which you’ll find from the opening screen.

Technique 5: Making Teaching Materials

The other techniques all work for teachers and composers alike, but when you do need to teach…

Does all of this seem like a lot of work? Still not sure how you combine the layout techniques above to make something look like a quiz, flash cards, or the like? Need to teach something and running short on time?

A recent feature in Sibelius is a comprehensive, shared set of teaching materials. (If you want to share and share alike, you can also publish your own materials to the site and spread the love.)

You’ll find the site itself at:

http://www.sibeliuseducation.com/

When you open the program or choose File > Worksheet Creator, you can tap into these resources.

Choose Template, and you’ll find a number of blank templates set up by activity (manuscript paper, worksheets and handouts, matching different materials, and flashcards).

If you want still additional help, ideas, and starters, choose Type of Material > Teaching and learning materials. You’ll want to limit your search, or loading the possibilities will take a long time. But from there, you can find all kinds of additional examples. Many of these come from the UK, so be prepared for English terminology and even UK-specific projects, but they’re still quite useful even if you’re American and tend not to call things “breves.”

Pick a category, and you’ll find other layouts that can be the basis of your own work, as well as some relatively generic materials that are useful to everyone.

Here’s what you’ll see as you dig into worksheets:

Pull up an example, and you’ll find something that you may be able to use as-is, or at least a template that could be useful for adapting to your own coursework.

There’s even a Circle of Fifths ready to go. (The only change you might need to make, depending on the part of the world in which you live, is to call it the Circle of Fourths!)

Other ideas?

This is a bit of a departure for CDM, but I know lots of you out there are producing notation for various reasons. I hope this was helpful, and if anyone wants to do a similar story for Finale or another tool, I’m happy to have it. Let us know what other tips you like or if you have additional questions.

Addendum

Having just done this workshop, it’s worth noting a couple of things I discovered.

First, Sibelius I see now has an option in Preferences to account for laptops that don’t have numeric keypads, making entry much easier (though I still prefer the numeric keypad layout):

Next, I was reminded that a lot of tricks use the Beam line type, which you’ll find in the Line dialog. Any old line will do, but this will look like your other beams. This way, you can manually draw in notations that the software itself may not recognize.

And it’s worth noting that a lot of beaming tricks can be accessed in one of two places:

1. Beam display in the Staff Type House Style (there’s a checkbox buried in there for forcing “horizontal beams,” alongside the options for hiding rests and such above)

2. Beam groups and beaming rules (including the ability to beam across rests) in the Time Signature dialog.

For Finale users, most of these basic strategies will translate to your notation tool of choice. Generally, Sibelius lets you select objects directly, whereas Finale uses specialized tools, selected by toolbar icons, for each job. That also means that when you’re using Finale, you may need to select the tool before you’re presented with variables related to that type of object, whereas Sibelius consolidates those settings under House Styles.

For instance, Finale edits the staff types via an item, accessed from its staff tool, called Define Staff Types. That dialog is very similar to the Staff Type and Instrument dialog above.

Ultimately, in fact, both Sibelius and Finale have a lot of the same strengths and shortcomings once you learn them, because fundamentally they do treat scores according to regular bars and barlines. Interestingly, Finale has the abilty to have independent time signatures on different staves, but it’s almost useless, because it still puts the barlines in the same place. (That is, both tools are limited in this respect.)

Avid, the parent company of music product makers Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, has decided to assert the brand of its mothership more aggressively. As near as I can tell, that means you won’t see the M-Audio, Digidesign, or Sibelius brand names any more – along with video maker Pinnacle. You’ll see, presumably, Avid Pro Tools? (Right now, you see the Digi site with an Avid banner across the top that says “Digidesign is Avid.” But that was true before, so I don’t really know what this exactly means.)

Avid has also unveiled a new logo made, cleverly, to look like transport buttons on video and audio equipment.

I have to say, I have extremely mixed feelings about this, for a number of reasons. And by mixed, I mean mixed – this could be really positive, or really … not. The good news is, having one brand and one brand strategy probably does make a whole lot of sense. The (potential) downside:

• Avid may be the weaker of the brands here. It’s known among video people, but not necessarily even beloved there. Digidesign and M-Audio, meanwhile, touch wider user bases, and have real resonance with musicians.
• Will combining video and audio products actually work? Will a single brand really help? Sony has tried to do just this, with less-than-stellar results – perhaps because the video, audio, pro music, and “consumer” music markets (and their many factions within those umbrellas) are so particular. Sony has much bigger brand recognition than Avid (understatement), but even that hasn’t really made products like Acid or Sound Forge or (for video) Vegas substantially more popular. It works for Apple, but that’s because people associate Apple’s products with the computers they buy – and, well, they’re Apple and normal rules don’t seem to apply.
• You can’t read the new logo. Sure, the triangles are clever, but you can’t actually read the letters. Also, aren’t old-school hardware transport buttons a bit dated in this day and age? I’m going to assume all of that gets sorted out in practice, so I’m not actually worried about this, but I did have to point it out.

On the other hand, Avid’s combination of Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, plus the Avid/Pinnacle stuff on the video side really is a whole heck of a lot of what the music and video production world is about, and that hasn’t been clear. So despite the caveats and dangers, there is potential here. It’s all in the details.

And more important than branding is how Avid relates to its customers, and how the company operates. If that goes right, the brand will respond.

The press release promises not just a new identity, but a “new strategy” and “a new operating model.” But it isn’t clear, yet, what that actually means in the real world, particularly on the audio end.

http://www.avid.com/us/pressroom/brand-identity.aspx

The press release isn’t terribly encouraging, though, as it immediately shifts to Avid-centric, ultra-high-end / pro video solutions. Those products are extremely important. It’s tough to know just how anyone could find a way to relate that to a person buying a $100 plastic MIDI controller at the other end of the market, so I don’t envy the job of the business folks at Avid. At the same time, I do believe it’s possible to run a business that covers that gamut.

I’m going to talk to the Avid folks about this next week to get a better understanding. But because I expect many pro audio folks will react similarly on first brush, I decided in the interest of bloggy disclosure to go ahead and publish my initial reaction.

Let us know your questions or thoughts, and I’ll pass them along to Digidesign/M-Audio Avid next week.

I know some people were wondering about this – it’s now official. Digidesign reports Pro Tools 8 is actually shipping now, with the integrated MIDI edit window, score notation editor (via recently-acquired Sibelius) right in the DAW, bundled instruments and synths, some amp simulation, “Elastic Pitch,” and additional insert slots.

None of this is huge news to users of competitive products, with the notable exception of Sibelius notation integration. I’m very keen to hear how people actually use that, because the score facilities in tools like Logic aren’t competitive with favored tools like Sibelius and Finale, in my experience. On the other hand, many people are perfectly happy keeping their scoring and audio editing workflows separate from one another – particularly if you’re using Pro Tools for audio editing and Sibelius to write that new string quartet. So as this ships, do let us know how you’re using it, or if it’s a non-starter.

So, what does it cost to upgrade?

Pro Tools HD 8 Upgrade: $249 US
Pro Tools LE/M-Powered Upgrade: $149 US
Pro Tools M-Powered Full Version: $299 US (for use with M-Audio audio interfaces)

If you bought Pro Tools systems or upgrades since October 3, the new release is (rightfully) free.

Of course, that still means you might still be tempted to just go buy one of the cheaper Mbox products with Pro Tools LE included. There are also upgrades for the Music and DV bundles.

Note compatibility: Vista SP1 (32-bit only, still no 64-bit) is supported, as is Mac OS X 10.5.5. 10.5.6 isn’t ready yet, and Vista requires Business or Ultimate, which as I said in the past I still find pretty odd given that Home Premium is basically identical from a support standpoint. (Digi’s choosing to be a bit literal with that.) On the other hand, only Leopard support is available, whereas on Windows XP Home and Professional remain supported with XP SP3.

Once this arrives, I’ll be curious to hear about you. I’m happy doing my work in SONAR and Live at the moment, so I don’t think I’d be a fair judge, but someone who uses Pro Tools daily would be. Be in touch.

Pro Tools 8 Shipping [News @ Digidesign.com]

Pro Tools 8 is up on Digidesign’s website. Rather than copy and paste their features, I’ll let you read. This may not shake you from your music making tool of choice, but it looks like it could be, at long last, the substantial refresh for Pro Tools users of that platform have been waiting for. I can quickly sum up the strategy (“strategies” and “tactics” being on the American political mind lately):

• Get all the instruments and effects in the box: Apple’s Logic Studio set the bar for this by first bundling lots of soundmakers,then cutting the price. Digidesign has been busy with their talented AIR group designing some very nice stuff, so this is a no-brainer. Updated: as readers note, you still don’t get a sampler as with EXS24 in Logic and now Dimension Pro in SONAR. Then again, you could add on your on own; is that really a deal breaker for folks?
• Fix the UI (conservatively): Without rocking the boat, obviously Pro Tools was long overdue for a fresh coat of paint and some enhancement.
• Beef up MIDI: This was long Pro Tools’ weak spot, perhaps because of its lineage as an originally audio-only product (the opposite of most of its rivals); MIDI seems to be better integrated with existing paradigms for editing
• Edit pitch more fluidly: AutoTune and the magical note-editing Melodyne are probably safe, but more fluid editing of audio pitches is making its way into audio software in general
• Integrate scoring: The fruits of Digi’s Sibelius acquisition, real, modern music notation is finally in a major DAW (not the dated, clunky implementations elsewhere). My only concern: I hope Sibelius continues to make progress as a dedicated notation tool, because having myself spent long hours over scores, a lot of composition happens outside software like Pro Tools for other reasons.

The notation feature, to me, is probably the biggest story. As a long-time Sibelius user and with some interesting composer contacts, I expect to look at how this works in some depth. Congratulations to Sibelius and Digidesign for pulling this off; I’ll be in touch.

Actually, let’s do better. I’m through really reviewing DAWs. You know why? If I used every DAW, I’d never get any music made. And, oddly, the process of even trying to review something as broad as a tool like Pro Tools just about short circuits any music logic anyway. So I’d rather build a network of gurus in each, and talk about actual music production rather than feature lists – the latter is the developer’s job, anyway. If you’re game and consider yourself an advanced user, get in touch. I’ll have more on organizing this soon.

In the meantime, Digi has posted some videos; free registration on their site required.

Pro Tools 8 Announcement + Demo Videos

Update: keep the comments coming. To me, the challenge all these tools face is that people are (naturally) entrenched in what they’re using. So, yes, it’s possible to say Pro Tools is playing “catch up,” but to play devil’s advocate, you could easily say the same about its competition. My preference remains for “native” hosts with their more flexible hardware and software support, and because personally I’m more creative in an Ableton Live or SONAR (or tracker!); that’s me. Digidesign sent out an open letter about promising interoperability. I’ll be interested to see what they mean, as I don’t immediately see that addressed in any way here. But certainly, I respect the utility of each of these tools to someone. The loyalty of those user bases is part of why progress tends to be incremental, not revolutionary. You have to serve their needs first.