Etude ~ sheet music on steroids
By Wonder Warp Software SP
View More By This DeveloperOpen iTunes to buy and download apps.
Description
Etude is sheet music on steroids. Whether you're an accomplished musician or someone who couldn't carry a tune given a wheelbarrow, Etude will quickly become an indispensable tool for adding new songs to your repertoire. Choose from hundreds (and soon to be thousands) of songs, hear and see how they should be played, and learn them yourself. From Fur Elise to The Entertainer to The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Etude spans music genres, ages, and difficulty levels to bring a vast assortment of sheet music literally to your fingertips!
HOW IT WORKS
Discover and download sheet music instantly from Etude’s in-app store, where you’ll find hundreds of well known songs (all of which are free right now). Scroll through real sheet music, hear it, and even see where to place your fingers on the keyboard as the notes scroll by at your desired speed. Learning to play new music could not be easier!
INTERFACE
* Displays authentic, beautifully-engraved sheet music reformatted for optimal viewing on your mobile device
* Graphical piano keyboard reveals which keys to press at each point
* Built-in MIDI music synthesizer lets you listen at any speed you'd like
* Customizable settings let you fine-tune how Etude shows and plays back music
IN-APP "STORE"
* Access hundreds of songs of all genres and styles and download them instantly to your personal library to play as often as you like.
* Search or browse by composer, style, staff picks, or most popular
* All music in the store right now is FREE. In the future, we'll be working with publishers to bring you premium tracks from current artists.
INTEGRATION
* Social networking features let you share the music you're learning with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. [iPhone version only]
* View in depth metadata about music, including composer, arranger, year published, and links to further reading on sites like Wikipedia.
* Connects with the iTunes Music Store to point you at professional performances of the piece you're trying to master.
What's New In Version 1.1
Etude now runs on the iPad, with an all-new iPad specific user interface.
If you've bought the iPhone version before, all you need to do is update to be able to run Etude on your iPad as well.
Customer Reviews
Looks good, acts badly, so far...
I'm not just talking about the bugs. I'm talking about the fundamentals. I'm a highly experienced music turner, married to a classical pianist. We turners spend hours turning the page on the sheet music as our pianists approach the end of each page and start shaking their heads violently.
I was hoping, when I saw this app in the Apple commercial, to retire. Not so. These people missed the mark. If it's because they don't have the programming chops to pull it off, they need to hire someone who can. If it's that they lack knowledge of real-world piano playing, they need to hire a content expert. That's because, right now, this app looks good but is just about as primitive as plain old paper sheet music.
What is needed for all pianists is intelligent-scroll, driven by an engine that can "listen" to the notes being played and advance the sheet music accordingly.
The developers, so far, have a sort of metronome as their intelligent feature, a blue oval that mindlessly rides along the music, dictating what notes the pianist should play next without regard to how far behind the pianist has fallen, turning the page many bars even lines before the pianist catches up. The metronome-like function is useful, but it, too, could benefit from the "listening" engine, pausing for the user when he or she drops behind, perhaps even conforming the pace to the best efforts of the rehearsing pianist, regaining full speed as the pianist improves.
I also double as a highly-experienced beginning piano player, having been stuck at that position for decades. This program is currently not going to help me in my playing endeavors, either. As others have pointed out, little music currently supplied is appropriate for beginners. Neither is the requirement that the pianist "keep up" with the sheet music as it scrolls away on its own. Even beginners need intelligent-scroll.
Time for a serious redesign.
Needs work =/
I'd really like to comment the *content* of the app. For example, even songs that should be easy, like "my grandfather's clock" and "greensleeves" and "sur le pnt d'Avignon" are arranged waaay to complex for beginners. For an app that's supposed to help you learn to play, there is not a lot of intro material.
But before even getting to content, there's all the bugs and usability problems: Repeats are ignored - even worse, when a section is supposed end one way the first time, and another way the second time, etude plays both endings in a row, which could never be right! (Developers: this happens in Bach's English Suite II Bourree I). The animation of the "current note" slows down and speeds up for no apparent reason. When you get to the bottom line on the screen, etude should scroll down so you can see the *next* line, but it doesn't, so there's no way to see what's coming next. One of the most useful features in iBooks is the ability to change the screen brightness in the app, which etude doesn't have. Since the songs are so hard for beginners, sometimes 1/4x speed is too fast. It'd be nice to go even slower. And there is no count in! I hit "play," but can't get my hands down to my piano before I'm already behind, and lost =/
I hope this app gets better, and I hope the developers take seriously the needs of players of varieties of abilities. It would be really nice if you could search for pieces by difficulty, and sort them by difficulty.
Horrible. Fix bugs.
It will be amazing once the awful bugs are fixed
- $4.99
- Category: Music
- Updated:Jun 02, 2010
- Current Version:1.1
- 1.1
- 7.7 MB
- Language:English
- Seller:Daniel Grover
- © 2010 Wonder Warp Software LLC
Requirements:Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later.
