Symphony Pro 3.0

Dthpham

Features & Improvements:

• Compatibility fixes for iPad 3 and iOS 6, and beautiful retina images
  
• Completely redesigned and simplified menus
  
• Create and edit tablature notation
• Interactive guitar and bass guitar for creating tabs, editing the standard staff, or recording in realtime
  
• New and improved interactive keyboard
• Edit & view your score using horizontal scroll
• Adjust the scale of your entire score
• Redesigned document management system
  
• Create scores from a default template, or create your own templates from existing scores
  
• Unlimited number of staves and tracks
• Less realtime recording latency 
• Easier connection and use of external MIDI devices
• A much more responsive interface and score interaction
• Improved sound quality
• Audio mixer
• Select which tracks are visible
• Expanded crescendos/decrescendos will have an effect on playback
• Improved tuplet entry
• Built in quickstart guide, and other helpful reminders
• Coda, Segno, D.S. (Dal Segno), D.C. (Da Capo)
• 64th notes
• Continuous scrolling on playback
• File locking to prevent unwanted changes

Last edited October 18, 2012

Mikey

Please, some work on the lyrics (spacing, hyphenation, and word extensions) and SATB available as templates and individual voices.

Thanks!

Support

Hi Mikey,

SATB will definitely be added. It is an essential feature.

jazzman1

any chance of font choices? (ie. jazz font and other selectable fonts) ?

thanks!

Support

Hi jazzman,

Sorry we haven't been up to date with your feature request. There's a good chance I will get started on it in our next version (set to be released beginning of July). Otherwise it will be version 3.1.

Best,

Krammi

A few weeks ago there was a German translation planned.
What about this Feature?
Krammi.

Dthpham

@Krammi

Translaions are indeed planned for 3.0. It's listed in the first post.

Meee

Will there be any enhancements in the voices section? It would be very handy if notes in one voice could be selected and changed to another voice and right from the score page too! E.g. If I input some chords and decide to change some of the inner voices to have some movement at different note length values, there is currently no way to select a note or two in the chord and change the voice and make such adjustments. Would be EXTREMELY helpful!

Also an update to entering chords on the app keyboard would help. It's tricky entering chords by having to press all the notes at the same time. It would be nice if there was a chord mode where the notes pressed (one by one) make up the notes for a chord. A bit like chord mode in the scoring program Notion for iPad.

Thanks

paddlefish

You should focus on fixing the crashes in your existing version before adding any new features.  You have a cool and promising application, but in the half hour I spent trying it out it crashed in at least three different ways.  It also is glitchy: for example after importing a Beethoven quartet from the music21 archives: I hit play and there is a significant pause with no indication what is going on; then during playback it flashes between the current measure and one about 15 bars ahead. While in "playback" mode (e.g. when paused but no stopped) the control for navigating to other measures doesn't work (confusing).  There is significant lag when trying to export; after clicking on one of the export options it was a loooong time before anything happened -- I ended up leaving the app and clicking on it's tile again to come back -- at which point it crashed on launch (crash on launch was common for me).  Once export to email finally finished (which took a long time), it crashed while the email composer window was up.

I was using an iPad2, with the latest iOS.

If you want to add me to your prerelease user list, I'd be happy to repeat this stuff with a TestFlight build so you can get some debug crash logs. (I'm a developer, too.)

Mrbadmood

Just bought this app. I'm on the iPad 2 with the latest iOS. Can't compose on the acoustic bass past the first measure without it freezing and crashing! Resetting the cache makes no difference. Not too happy with my purchase.

Bring on those updates!

Dthpham

@Mrbadmood

Can you please send us the file that's crashing to [email protected] so we can figure out what's wrong and fix it? We really want to help.

Rajeshk

In the two days that i have been using Symphony Pro, I have faced several crash situations. To send out a mail for every crash situation is Impractical. Probably, you can consider an emergency fix where i can simply hit a button to send a crash report automatically to you, and basis the contents of the crash report, you could figure out what actually happened?

I tend to agree with paddlefish, adding more and more features without making the core robust will probably not be the best way forward, i have about 10 crashes so far in 2'days of use.

But the software is good. Please dont get me wrong. You guys have a unique space on the ipad today. Keep it up!

Rajesh

Mikey

Might it be possible, at some future point, to add the ability to hide selected rests? This would be convenient when using voices, and a secondary voice enters on something other then the first beat. I'm sure that there are other situations where it would be helpful, but that one comes to mind immediately.

Jbrady

I was very happy with the version that had manual save and avoided the update. Finally I caved after being enticed by the new features. Now I'm bummed because it has more problems than before. I use this App all the time and have had all my students who have an IPad use it too. The chord input is particularly buggy as the section keeps hiding below the keyboard as I'm putting in chords. Also, there's no way to go back unless you select the chord icon again. Otherwise I love this app! Hope you will update soon OR make the original version available for those of us who liked it better and want to do the saving ourselves.

Thanks

Oh, yes... And please make a file system! I've got tons of songs now.

Ross

Hi Jbrady. Version 3.0 will have several features to chord symbols and lyrics that aren't specifically mentioned above. These include:

• Better autoscrolling behavior when adding chord symbols or lyrics
• All chord symbol and lyric changes can be undone
• Chord symbol and lyric changes can be deleted
  

In addition, draggable objects such articulations and dynamics can also be deleted and undone in the same way.

Please let me know if you find any issues with the way that chord symbols are recognized or formatted, because that is one area that hasn't been changed.

To address your frustration with saving, we will most likely have a Duplicate button within the new document chooser. Another option is allowing files to be opened in Read-Only mode. Would you prefer these features over manual saving?

Mikey

I would be happiest with a simple Save and/or Save As...

You can keep the autosave In place, but the extra option to manually save would be nice.

Elio

Hi, I'd like to emphasize the importance of a fingering tool for pianists.

It's simple and would make Spro a lot more useful.

As it is, it has a good solution for treble cleff (chord tool) and a bad (or not at all, so unpractical it is) one for bass cleff.

For reference, MScore has a good one.

Thanks.

Elio.

Ross

Hi Elio. I agree a fingering tool is needed. I'll add this to our todo list, but it probably won't make it into the next release because of how much we already have to get done.

By the way, the text tool ('T' icon) supports multiple lines of text. So you can use this to add fingerings for now. However, these fingerings won't attach to chords, and the font won't be bold. You can change the text size inside the settings menu.

Annother

I would appreciate it if you were able to reduce the file sizes of the PDFs that symphony pro creates. If I create a single lead sheet it is coming out at between 400-600 kb (as opposed to 40-60 if i do it on cubase in dreaded plugged in computer). I create loads of sheets all the time and these large files will soon become a problem for me if the file size is not soon changed..........please help with this. I much prefer sitting in the garden with my iPad to being stuck inside.....
Many thanks.

catrecek

I know D.S., D.C., Segno and Coda are in the works, but what are the plans for voltas? I would love to have the convenience of using different endings and a coda instead of having to re-enter all of my music a second or third time.

However, as a new user of the app I must say I am in love with it!

catrecek

Oops! Nevermind! I just found it...

Jbrady

I just put in an hours worth of work... The app crashed and I lost it all. Auto save let me down! Also, the only issue I have with the chords (which is incredibly annoying) is it scrolls back to the top after I enter each chord.
I really don't want to give up on this app! Please fix soon.

Thanks,

Ross

The scrolling behavior has been fixed for when you're entering chord symbols or lyrics. So that will be in the next version.

I'm really sorry about autosave failing. Let us know if you can think of any circumstances that may have triggered the issue. For example, did the title of the composition have the exact same title as another composition? Were there any special characters in the title?

lmkendall

One can manually save right now. Tap the files menu, and select the title you are working on. If SP doesn't crash, and it usually does not on a save, then your work to that point will be saved. If you then change the title a little, say as #01, #02, #03, then what ever happens next will not corrupt what you have already done.

Alternatively, after saving as above, EMail the present file to yourself. It is easy enough to delete excess and un-needed EMails. The file will still open right into SP, just as it was when EMailed.

lmk

Dthpham

I would appreciate it if you were able to reduce the file sizes of the PDFs that symphony pro creates. If I create a single lead sheet it is coming out at between 400-600 kb (as opposed to 40-60 if i do it on cubase in dreaded plugged in computer). I create loads of sheets all the time and these large files will soon become a problem for me if the file size is not soon changed..........please help with this. I much prefer sitting in the garden with my iPad to being stuck inside.....
Many thanks.

Sure. We'll make it an option.

Dthpham

For the curious: Autosave runs about every 30 seconds, when you open a new file, create a new file, close a file, or put the app in the background, Symphony Pro will attempt ro run a save operation. It will not save during playback, or recording, or if you shutdown the app via the multitask bar. So, as you can see it saves often.

Not sure how one can lose more than a minute worth of work with Autosave in place. If you do, it's probably do to file corruption. File corruption usually stems from crashes that occur while the file/project on the disk is being modified. I have some ideas on how to address this issue and will attempt to improve it in the next update.

We believe Autosave is a better than manual so chances are unlikely we'll add it back any time soon.  However, we do see the need for a way to lock a file from changes and having copies/versions of a file so we'll address these issues with a lock file option and a duplicate file button. If you need a way to duplicate a file right now, follow @lmkendall's tip on how to do it two posts up. It's the same method we recommend to everybody who asks on the forums and by email.

Jbrady

Can't finish my piece after measure 21. Entering quarter note 3rds in treble. The stems and measures get I'll glitchy and then it crashes after redo. Frustrating.

Jbrady

Fixed the problem by deleting empty measure and inserting only 4 at a time. Phew... Looking forward to the next version.

ChuckHeery

I just bought this app this morning and can't wait to dive into it when I get home from work. I'm excited to see you are adding tablature in the next release, but a question: how much freedom will there be in setting up the tab - ie number if strings and tunings? Will this, for example, allow for a 5-string banjo break to be tabbed out?

thanks

Sportscar

I don't suppose it makes the processing of a PDF file work !!!!! It crashes allll the time! Blank screen then chucks us out of the app.! £10.99 fraudulently paid for something that doesnt do what you state it does!!!
What use is it!?
Also you stated that symphony pro would be able to play music from photos of sheet music.....when ?????
I needed it to use as backing to learn my singing with argh !!!!!

Mikey

Where do you see anything about opening a PDF? You can import XML, MXL, ABC, Sympnony, and MIDI files.

As far as "playing music from photos of sheet music," don't hold your breath. You can scan sheet music into Finale or Sibelius, with bad results, although Smartscore Pro is supposed to be better (and expensive.)

You would be better off learning to enter simple melodies into SymphonyPro, and learning your music that way.