New Staffpad functionality - Piano Capture

When I saw the demonstration video under presumably ideal conditions, and with a presumably unlimited number of takes available, I was not impressed, especially since the music chosen to record and transcribe was generally very simple square 4/4. Frankly I did not get my hopes up. I hope it will become better over time. But I really wish they would concentrate on fixing long-standing bugs, and ensuring program overall stability.

I expect they will get a lot of new buyers based on that video…..those buyers will be very dissapointed - it’s beautiful for StaffPad owners - there is no opportunity for a “trial”, so you pay your money… and that’s it !!

My lack of success with the Piano Capture function can’t be “user error”… my setup is identical to the video…. iPad sitting on the music stand of a grand piano…. Press Record and then play the piano…..and as I mentioned above - even the simplest scale does not get captured accurately.

I’ve not had much luck either. I also tried importing some piano audio out of Logic and, even after normalising and cleaning everything up in step sequencer, a simple melodic phrase still had missed several notes, putting rests in where notes should be. I’m glad they also included midi input, otherwise I’d have been pretty disappointed.

Watch the video…. You never see the piano being played and the notes being captured in the same shot….. it would be very easy to make this video by playing a MIDI keyboard and then some careful editing…. Has ANYONE got acceptable results ??

milford59 said:

Watch the video…. You never see the piano being played and the notes being captured in the same shot….. it would be very easy to make this video by playing a MIDI keyboard and then some careful editing…. Has ANYONE got acceptable results ??

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I was suspicious of this when I saw it. I haven't even tried the feature. I have been too busy trying to salvage the three years of work that was wrecked by the update. God I wish I could go back in time and counsel my updating self. I can't believe they did this. Were we suppodsed to be so wowed by the video feature that we didn't notice?

The sad part is that I can still use everything as I did before, and it is perfectly functional as a composer's tool, but it just lost its magic. That cohesion that gave it that something extra special is gone. Now, it's not really any better than Noteperformer.

FWIW, I have a friend who creates scores using Finale, and produces WAV audio files of them with Noteperformer sample libraries.
The sound of the piano and the cello together are the best I've heard in terms of computer-generated realizations.
I think he would be livid if an update to software interfered with the workflow and results.

I make my living in the software world, have for many years.

This update to the Staffpad libraries really has the feel of a junior intern being assigned to make changes to the sound libraries.

DWH had a feel for library sound that made Staffpad really nice to work with. Whoever made these sound library changes, not so much.

I ordered from a five star restaurant, got what the microwave dumped out at McDonalds.

I have dabbled with the feature— iPad on the music stand of an upright piano— and had fairly decent results, especially if programming monophonic lines. The biggest issue seems to be that StaffPad doesn’t handle the quick decay of the piano’s sound well and often inserts rests when the note is of a long duration. Easy enough fix with the “pull to increase note duration” feature in StaffPad, but one that I would hope could be remedied with some settings tunings on the developer’s end.

I tried using a synth pad with no decay and wasn’t able to get it working terribly well, but I only tried very briefly.

As someone who doesn’t struggle with StaffPad’s handwriting recognition, the “record a piano to notation” doesn’t quite work for me but I could see using it if I had a hard time with that and were writing mostly monophonic lines (eg string parts).

Has anyone had the chance to transcribe in retrospect? Does that work better?
I actually think that that might be my main use case. Just play something, import, transcribe. But as I am working on a piece right now, I don't feel like dropping everything and testing it