Yc Music Notation Program - In Development

Seeing as Finale and Sibelius have (at least compared to you) massive amounts of international support and finances behind them, as well as decades of experience and development, not to mention full time professional development and support staffs, I find it hard to believe that working alone YOU of all people are able to make anything close to a superior product, or even an inferior product with features not included in these professional level programs. Couple that with the fact that these programs have browser plugins that you should easily be able to integrate into the website, I fail to see the point of this and I am very skeptical of the possibilities here.

I predict it to be one more failure in your distinguished career of failures.

And for the love of God, you still have that god awful tacky donkey banner at the top of the website. You are the kitsch king, Michael.

Simply put, instead of spending years developing a new tool which obviously will be far inferior to what is already available, why not spend that time developing ways to utilize the multitude of tools already out there?

I don't know why I try to talk to you though, as Tokke mentioned, you've never seemed to give a ratsass about any sensible commentary people try to send your way.

Update for 10/14/2015:

• Full copy, paste and delete functionality.
  • Shift click, or create a rectangle to highlight notes to copy or delete
• Static formatting of a score (x measures, y systems per page, or globally)
• Dynamic formatting, to automatically format measures as enduser enters a note
• Automatic arpeggio application, autosized by clicking on a chord.
• Easy clef application

The major items left to accomplish before beta testing:

• Static formatting continued testing, including (x measures per system within a page).  For example, user clicks on a system, and designates 3 measures on system 1, but maybe he/she wants 6 measures on system 2.
• Slurs, automatic formatting of slurs, octavas and various other dynamic markings
• Adding text to score
• Saving, opening a score
• Choosing instruments per track, choosing a soundcard or midi driver and soundfont support

What I will leave out until integration with website occurs:

• Unlimited undo action, and history of score.  Mainly because I envision a wiki style score notation program, made possible only with a database to encourage collaboration.  I can't apply that functionality until integration with usernames.
• Playback options, such as repeats.
• Lyrics?  Depends on demand.  If no one seems to want this functionality, I will leave out for now.  I think the majority of the people on this site are instrumental composers.
• Lilypond integration.

What you will notice with this product, is that it is the easiest product to use out of all compeititon on the market.  It is fast and intuitive.  Adding notes and switching between tuples and non tuples is seamless, copying and pasting is not a chore, and no need to switch to another icon to delete notes while adding them.  And the best part?  I can implement a wiki style integration in which multiple composers can edit music just like Wikipedia.  Of course, only if you allow your piece to be edited.  And if you don't like an edit?  You can simply roll your score back!

I am working hard to finish the first iteration of this product.  Once the first iteration is ready to be disclosed, I will take a month or so to fix the website (Invision Board will host the uploads, but I have to create the Invision Board Application for that).  Then, I will disclose the name of YC's music notation program and release it for beta testing, while I work on the integration of the product with usernames.

Stay tuned for more updates!

That sounds really exciting! Can't wait to try this.

Excellent! I like this a lot! I like using Finale. And for the time being, I will use it still. When this software comes, I shall be using both. hehehe.

I have a question, though: Have you thought of incorpating VST sounds and a mixer?

Excellent! I like this a lot! I like using Finale. And for the time being, I will use it still. When this software comes, I shall be using both. hehehe.

 

I have a question, though: Have you thought of incorpating VST sounds and a mixer?

To be honest, I haven't done any research on VST, so at this point I don't know.

What I can support are soundfonts and integration with 3rd party standalone applications, such as Kontakt to get the full benefit of a nice playback.

Please add lyrics. That is all

Update for 1/6/2016:

Accomplished since last update:

• Fully implemented and tested static formatting
• Smart slurs resizing as score layout updates.  Slurs can now cross multiple systems easily.
• Auto octava, cres, dim, accel, rit (crosses multiple systems)
• Multi voice support: hide or color voices.
• Record most keystrokes, which lays out framework for wiki, and undo/redo action
• Tempo markings

To do:

• Undo/redo action
• Repeats
• Staff attributes (instruments, brackets, braces)
• Lyrics

It's been about a year since initial development, and I am hoping in the next few months I can get to the point of releasing this product to a few trusted individuals for testing.

I am eager to start addressing the issues with this website which is next on the agenda, and to better integrate the uploading system with this forum (via Invision Board).  Then the goal is to integrate the notation product with the website for a much better user experience.  I am hoping with these changes, this community will be more active, especially if we can start adopting the product for music creation and music sharing.

Sometime soon I can post a video demo of the product so far.

Wow! It sounds fantastic, good luck!

Update for 4/6/2016:

Finalized

• Lyrics
• Repeats
• Coda, Del Segno, Da Capo
• Multi Endings
• Brace & Bracket groupings
• 80% finished with Undo and Redo events.

To do

• Instruments, soundfonts and realistic playback
• Beta testing

Next Phase

• Comments and reviews

Currently, our upload system is custom coded.  To make things worse, the upload system is powered by another framework called Yii, which makes upkeep twice as hard since we have an integration bridge.  This is bad since I won't have the time to make updates to this system any longer (my energy is now being focused on the software product).  Thus, we are going to be using the following module to power our downloads:

https://invisionpower.com/files/

With some tweaking, I think I can get the player to play mp3s and display pdfs, with a much more comprehensive reviewing system.  But switching to a supported module will save me a lot of time in terms of upkeep, and updating both the forum and the uploads management system can be manageable at the small expense of losing our directory.

Either way, my plan is to keep our review system tied to the software product, which I hope I can release to a few people soon, for initial beta testing.

This is our Music Notation Preview

Sounds Exciting, Michael! =)

Update for 6/1/2016:

Probably the hardest part of this project, unlimited undo/redo actions finally completed!  Actions include:

• Single addition/deletion of notes, symbols and text
• Groups of copied notes/symbols/text (partial or full measure)
• Mass and partial deletion of notes/symbols/text
• Detect a symbol and text edit from point a to point b to point c, etc
• Text updates/changes
• Measure addition and removal detection
• Single and mass note pitch changes

Actions don't include:

• Staff addition/removal
• Clefs
• Certain symbols, such as slurs, trills, arpeggios, crescendos
• Lyrics
• Measure width and staff height

Special care was taken into speed and accuracy of operations.

Update for 7/14/2016

If you missed it, please view the DEMO. The demo doesn't demonstrate the awesome unlimited undo/redo action!

Accomplished since last update:

• Unlimited undo action now includes lyrics and special symbols, such as slurs, trills, arpeggios and crescendos
• Added a mixer to include volume control, panning, solo and mute

What's left?

• Finalize the mixer, add instrument and channel control and implementation of soundfonts
• Music scrubbing (the ability to drag a music bar to listen to playback)
• Realistic human playback, so that it sounds like the piece has been sequenced
• And finally, integration with our forum

Estimated time to finish the above could possibly be until the end of this year.  In actuality, I just need a few dedicated weeks of 8 hour work days to finish, but the reality is I don't have that time with a full time job.  This is however the final steps at this moment, and I don't see any apparent need for extra enhancements.  I think I've captured most of what is needed for a fully functional notation software.  If this endeavor works out, I would then work on this as my full time job, and dedicate extra resources to solidify a better product.  But I am testing the waters to see where we can go from here.

As far as cost, I can't provide anything just yet.  I will recruit beta testers to help me test drive the product, and this group of people will help me shape the product and assist with pricing.  I may also take a survey on what you would "pay for this" after I create a better DEMO of the product's full capabilities.  But I do think that if many people on this site adopt this product, it can provide a great resource for lessons, competitions and forum posting.  We can definitely get creative here and I'm excited about the potential.

Awesome! I am impressed with the amount of work you have put into this project and I hope that is aids in reviving the participation in this site. I had noticed one day that the old brown site with the young composer dude at the top was back and that is what has kept me here for the past month or so. I hope to see a lively community in the future. 

WOW, I also think it's impressive. I'm eager to try it. Although I'm a Finale user, I WANT to try this software. Congrats!

On July 4, 2015 at 3:45 AM, U238 said:

Simply put, instead of spending years developing a new tool which obviously will be far inferior to what is already available, why not spend that time developing ways to utilize the multitude of tools already out there?

 

I don't know why I try to talk to you though, as Tokke mentioned, you've never seemed to give a ratsass about any sensible commentary people try to send your way.

 

It is his site. It is his money and his time. He thinks it is a beneficial venture. Let it be. It might be a thing to listen to some people who use the site, but ultimately why should he have to listen to you and do whatever you say? Who are you? He owns the place. 

Update for 10/27/2016:

I would just like to inform everyone that further development of new features for Music Jotter has been finalized before the first initial release.  The rest of the development of this product before release will focus on finalizing Soundfonts, bug fixes, partial integration with the web, and interface fixes if necessary.  Here are the final features that have been added:

• Music Scrubbing (click the mouse and drag to playback portions of a score)
• Realistic Playback using up to 4 metrics (tempo, velocity, attack and duration)
  • There will be a value from 0 through 20.  0 indicates no realistic playback, 1 indicates a low randomness and 20 indicates the highest randomness of the 4 metrics.
• Mixer finalized (mute, solo, instrument change, channel change, volume control per channel, master volume, master tempo)
• The program doesn't support antialiasing on the screen, however, it supports exporting to an antialiased PDF.
• Soundfont integration 95% complete.  Currently fixing a few issues, but will have ability to export a WAV file.

The comments from Tokkemon and U238 put a big smile on my face. 

Update for 1/4/2017 (website integration update)

• Compositions can be made private/public
• Public files can be commented on and/or edited.
  • This allows for collaboration.
• Each time a file is saved, it will create a new version.  Thus, if you wish to revert back to a specific date, you may do so.
• View compositions by latest comments
• View new compositions by other members
• Website integration (view "works that need reviews", "top posts" and "top topics" in a dashboard)

This puts Music Jotter in a complete phase, and in the next few days, a few select individuals will help me begin to beta test this product.

Just as an FYI, Music Jotter is for sale, and I am selling limited copies for $49.99 as Beta Pre-Release.  Since this is a pre release version, the price will not stay at $49.99.  But for those of you who do purchase the first few copies, you will receive all updates and fixes.

There is also a demo available as well so you can test out the product to see if it is right for you.

Music Jotter Store

If you have any questions about the product, you can use the Support tab to submit any inquiries.