Feature Requests (Updated Thread)

spfan008

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, as those apps demonstrate,  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.

Enhancements:

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.

Maddcow

Is it possible to introduce a handwritten jazz font that can be swapped for the regular font?  Notion for iOS has this and it's nice to have the option on iOS after getting accustomed to this in the desktop versions of Finale/Sibelius etc.  

guiteach

Really love the app but as a guitar teacher just wish it was possible to notate using the standard way of tablature with notation above but the tablature with no rhythm's. The tablature with rests and ties can be a bit messy for pupils to read and any professional books they buy doesn't have the tablature with rhythm. The main thing is when a note is tied in the notation in a bar most Grade books and also books by a big publisher such as Hal Leonard will not tie the note with tablature therefore a lot of pupils will get confused as it's not the standard way. It would be great to have a choice to have this as an option alongside your current tablature with rhythms. I prefer this app over Notion but have had to use Notion currently because of this reason.

guiteach

Sorry forgot mention it's symphonypro for iPad I'm using.

Support

@guiteach

On the issue of hiding rhythm notation, the following toggle option may be helpful, which you can locate by:
- Opening the Measure Dialog context window on the first tablature bar of the score. A quick way to do this is by a two finger tap within the tab measure
- Choose the "Tab" sub-heading at the bottom
- Then turn off the Rhythm Notation switch as highlighted:

The main thing is when a note is tied in the notation in a bar most Grade books and also books by a big publisher such as Hal Leonard will not tie the note with tablature

Do you mean that ties are entirely omitted in your mentioned material? Regardless, we'll provide an option to customize them accordingly.

guiteach

Hi, that's great thanks! 
Ties are generally read in the notation and omitted in the tablature, apart from when a technique such as a slide or hammer is added to the tied note or when a tie is between bars and then it's represented with brackets around the note not a tie line in the tablature.

http://pho.to/Ai2kx

PianoMan23

I REALLY hope you added the ability to layer multiple voices on a piano score (like having sixteenth notes and quarter notes in the same measure and in the same staff) on the iPhone version. That was the one feature that, without it, renders the iPhone version utterly useless for me. PLEASE TELL ME YOU ADDED IT!!

Support

@PianoMan23

You should see a voice function (labeled V1) at the lower right, but make sure you're in landscape mode. Portrait doesn't yet support this function.
You can then press to toggle through the two available layers for the iPhone app, with the first voice being assigned by default as having the upward stems. 

anajuoh

At some point in the future I'd like to be able to import custom notation files. I play a Korean instrument that has many notations that don't exist in the western selection and so I end up printing the file then writing on top of that to add in additional notation. 

jem0714

There may be a way to do this, but I cannot determine such.

I see that there is a way to designate a pick-up measure, but I would like to be able to have that measure NOT COUNT toward the measures per line tally.

So for example, if I would like 4 measures per line (for a blues with a pickup measure, say), then the first measures of lines 2, 3, 4, etc. would be numbered 5, 9, 13, etc.

Does this make sense? Would really help for a bass player who plays a lot of blues and jazz.

PCDS

For the lever harp scores - it would be nice to be able to put in lever changes.
A diamond note could be used. This would not be played or counted.
( the diamond note method)
   
Can ornaments be used yet?

Support

anajuoh Thank you for the input. For one, custom/importable glyphs are under consideration, as well as free annotation, and we hope they'll be appropriate and intuitive for what you hope to accomplish, and in the near future.

jem0714 Great suggestion. For the time being, however, one thing to try is setting this value to 5 bars in your case, by opening the Measure Dialog on the first bar. After pressing done, the edit will apply only to the current line and  below. So the value of this property can be overridden for any following line, by returning to the Bars Per Line submenu on the first bar of the second line, and so on.

@PCDS We'll consider it, thank you. For the time being, you can find the diamond note-head by expanding the grace note icon (3rd from right of the Notes Toolbar). See here for adjusting stems. This may also necessitate two layers to work reliably, and given these non-specific configurations combined, proper notation may easily get too cumbersome.

beppepicaro

Hello, I think that an easy way to edit the grand staff voicing would be great, so that notes can be assigned to the left or right hand easily. One way could be to click a note and use an arrow to assign it to the upper or lower staff, another could be that of drawing a "dividing line" with the pen or finger so that whatever is up goes on the upper staff and viceversa.
Thank you.

Support

@beppepicaro
This is certainly in the works for immediate plans!

Redston_1

Ability to combine voices into one staff easily

Hypilein

Currently the Import feature to import musicXML is quite tedious as syncing only seems to be possible via itunes. Enabling the import from other sources (Cloud Services, the now iOS integrated file system) would be a massive help for people using this app only as a part of their full workflow.

Support

@Hypilein @Redston_1
 These are in the works for Spring – great suggestions.

williamg

Ability to globally hide note stems, and hide time signatures 

camsman

Set starting measure number. Is it possible to set the starting measure number to something other than “1”? I’m using symphony pro to rehease a chorale piece, and I’ld luke the symphony pro score, manually entered, to have synced measure numbers. 

Support

@camsman @williamg
Both of your suggestions will be kept in consideration.

@williamg
Apologies for having missed your earlier comment, however. Since the help guide still has to reflect new features like those in your inquiry, time signatures in particular can now be hidden by:
-- Opening the Measure Dialog on the first bar, which is most conveniently opened on a single measure via two finger  tap gesture
-- Choose Time/Key at the bottom of this menu
-- Under Configure Meter, switches will be available to set either a meter-less bar, or simply to not display the underlying property

stan

Any way to change “sound fonts” or equivalent?  The flute is awful.  The high notes go dry and some of the low notes sound like a speaker with a torn cone, while the midrange notes run together.  A pattern of 3 notes with normal articulations followed by a single staccato note makes it sound as if the flutist tripped on something.  SP5 on iPad Pro.

I also use MuseScore, on a Windows machine, and it handles these things very well.  It also provides alternative sampled instrument sounds if you go through some work. MuseScore has only a player app for the iPad, which is the only reason I am trying SP.

Kpc

I would be happy to pay licensing fees for sample plugins. 

pawelkonik

Is it possible to put all dynamics over solo instrument/voice staff?

If not please work on that.

Support

@stan @kpc
You can expect further improvements in audio sooner rather than later.

@pawelkonik

Is it possible to put all dynamics over solo instrument/voice staff?

An illustration of the result of this editing task would be appreciated over email.

mirkoferremi

Hi, I’m a Notion user, I’m considering switching to Symphony Pro because of the MIDI Out feature, basically I would like to compose music sitting at the piano and sending MIDI to my Mac with Ableton Live and all my analog synthesizers.

BUT.

As I see, MIDI Out is restricted to one track a time only.

So I’m asking why that?

Do you plan to add MIDI Out for all tracks in the future release of the software?

Thanks

Support

@mirkoferremi
Please reach out to us for an install link to the early access, which features relevant capabilities that are still under testing, and details on what to ultimately expect next in terms of MIDI Out.

mirkoferremi

Hi, thanks for answering, I’ve sent the email as you asked... anyway in order to accomplish my goal, another very important feature is missing: MIDI IN Sync (Clock/Start Stop).

Sadly I gave it for granted, but as I did a test of such a setup, I noticed that nowadays MIDI IN seems to be just MIDI Keyboard note input. 

I think potentially your software could be great for my idea: sitting at the piano with iPad on the piano music stand, composing at piano with apple pencil, in the “good old way”... but at the same time making all the studio play live, analogue synths, Kontakt Orchestral instruments and so on.. a dream!

Oh, there’s another little big feature I suggest you could add: left handed guitar fretboard. It shouldn’t be a hard work for developers... just a “flip” og the GUI. But it helps a lot left handed players like me. 

(I play the guitar too, other than the piano).

Thanks a lot.

Support

@mirkoferremi

MIDI IN Sync (Clock/Start Stop).

Synchronization and improved MIDI-out are in the works, thank you for the suggestions. However, support for AudioBus will be arriving before other Inter-App Audio platforms.

left handed guitar fretboard. It shouldn’t be a hard work for developers... just a “flip” og the GUI. But it helps a lot left handed players like me. 

The Left handed fretboard is an available feature. This preference is located as follows, provided you've added a tablature staff to the score:
- Open the Instruments Menu, then choose a tablature instrument.
- The menu should look like the following illustration.
- The highlighted switch (Left-Handed Fretboard) will appear near the bottom of the Properties menu. If enabled, the fretboard will be flipped whenever the corresponding staff is chosen via the Input Cursor.

talkenhorn

When can we expect Ukulele tab template?

gleemon

A couple of quick requests:

1. Move the toolbar and scroll bar to the top.  Using an apple pencil, I keep activating the scroll bar and jumping forward/backward 40 bars, then I have to figure out where I was again.  Move that to the top of the page so I don't keep hitting it accidentally.
2. Multibar rests and part formatting.  When I turn on Multibar rests, but set the page layout to display 4 bars per line, a multi-bar rest (8 measures) is the only thing that displays on a line.  I have to export to Sibelius just to fix layout issues for parts.

Otherwise, I'm still learning, but really liking the handwriting entry!  Bars are pretty narrow in in 2/4...  Maybe a way to make all bars wider?

Thanks!