Newbie
From the perspective of attempting to get ideas onto paper before they evaporate, SP4 is IMHO much superior to Sibelius, Dorico, Staff Pad or even Kawai Touch Notation because, unlike those others, it successfully gets out of your way and lets you focus on the music rather than the process. That is high praise because it is so difficult to achieve the right balance between ergonomics, flexibility, transparency and power. Thank you for the obvious thought and care you have given to your efficient, consistent, and intuitive approach and implementation.
I would like to see more options for making a selection. Perhaps a persistent selection that can be modified by addition or deletion of subsequent selections. Something like this would not wander far from the current interface paradigm and would ameliorate the rigid limitiations of a rectangular selection region.
The best selection method I have seen is in Kawai Touch Notation, where any object or group of nearby objects can be selected with a freehand lassoo of any shape. This method is flexible, fast, and straightforward, totally intuitive. Quite a different interface paradigm than dragging a rectangle, and maybe too big a stretch away from SP4's current interface, but it sure is great to use. OTOH, pasting such a selection is not as obvious as pasting a rectangular selection - where should I paste it? Will it overwrite stuff? Etc.
I figured out a way to move notes from one voice/layer to another, but it is a cumbersome, tedious process. A one-tap menu command to do this would be awesome.
Eventually something like Filters in Sibelius would be great for quick, complex selections.
SP4 is a terrific app. Thank you.
Comments
@spfan008 – Despite our delayed reply, we wanted to let you know your encouragement went a long way. And your feedback hasn't been the least ignored, having set high expectations for v5 to be more than a significant evolution of the app.
You can in fact look forward to a lasso select tool in the upcoming release. The only caveat being it will specifically be intended for Apple Pencil, given its more consistent reliability than other styluses. Let us know if you don’t own one, however. We might be able to accommodate standard iPads and other styluses with an override setting.
The ability to interchange/swap voices within a given selection region is also to arrive in 5.0, and a way to filter selections is a sure thing, including by such variables like pitch, score expression/dynamic/articulation.
In return for your feedback, by the way, we welcome you to our early access to version 5, and perhaps help test! If you haven’t seen it already, the above link gives a partial idea of upcoming features/improvements, all of which are available in our latest prerelease. Feel free to join anywhere between now and next month by letting us know via team@symphonypro.net. We’d love to open up communication through beta testing if you’re interested.