SMC and the tc1100

The institute just flew by with not nearly as much time as I had hoped to report here about all the wonderful stuff I was doing.  The tc1100 got a lot of attention and did a great job keeping up with the demands of the teacher training. 

Suzuki Music Columbus

My first day at the institute was great.  There are about a dozen of us in the combined book 2/3 teacher training, and another dozen taking ECC and book 1.  The students will arrive tomorrow, so it was super chill and quiet today.  Part of me is looking forward to the 400 or so students arriving and filling the campus with violin playing, and part of me really enjoys the quiet. 

I used the TC1100 to take notes and keep the music close at hand.  Taking notes in One Note is great with basically infinite pages.  I just write as much as I want and keep scrolling down, no need to turn the page.  As the resident geek, I’ve been volunteered to run the “CD player” which means logging into the PC and opening iTunes.  During a break I poked around in the back of the media setup and discovered I can steal the audio line from the PC and plug in the tablet directly should we want to use Smart Music.  I have let the instructor know of my set up and that I have all 10 books of accompaniments available should he want.  We did go back to book 1 to talk about where some techniques are first introduced.  He’s really good at connecting the big picture and looking at book 2 material in the larger context of techniques that will be required of the kids as they advance into orchestras, chamber ensembles, and solo music beyond the Suzuki repertoire. 

I may or may not have also used the Droid to entertain myself at certain points.

Speaking of being entertained, the nook did a stellar job of keeping me entertained on the flight.  Nothing like a forever battery and super easy on the eyes eInk screen to read for hours. 

This should be a great week.

Computex, PixelQi, and my ideal Music Pad

 

This year’s Computex show in Taiwan seemed to be all about the tablets.  So many manufacturers are pulling out their iPad killers. Several of the concept devices have potential to create my ideal music pad.

The most intriguing technology being shown off are the displays by PixelQi.  They were also on display at CES some months ago, and are probably still a ways off from a real product on the market, but whatever they do make should be good.  The displays look like a regular LCD when the backlight is on, but they also have a transreflective mode where the backlight is off and the display looks like epaper, but with full color and video capabilities. 

There is some great coverage at Liliputing and Engadget, complete with reviews and great videos.  One of these, with a Wacom digitizer in a 12” slate with an Intel CULV processor would be so awesome.  I wonder how long it will take the industry to actually do something about it. 

A Better Workflow

I have been trying to find a good program for managing my PDF sheet music library.  I need a program with easy scrolling using PgUp and PgDn (for use with a USB foot pedal) and good inking for making notations in the music.  The closer to free the better.  I have tried several programs and finally settled on one that I think will work well for my personal performance and practice library.

 

First, the things that didn’t work:

OneNote

OneNote is great for inking, making clear and smooth notations in the music.  The problem is that it is terrible for scrolling.  It doesn’t seem to see the jog dial on the side at all for smooth scrolling through an imported PDF.  It will see commands from PgUp and PgDn, but it seems to want to move through imaginary text fields to the side of the music and keeps pushing the actual sheet music part of the document off center.  OneNote just leaves too much space around an imported document.  Great for taking notes, but terrible for keeping the music front and center.  OneNote will be spectacular for taking notes on the imported Suzuki books when I’m at the institute, but it will not work for real world playback.

 

Foxit

Foxit is a fabulous lightweight and free PDF reader.  It has a great full screen mode which lets the music fill all the available screen space.  The jog dial can then be used to turn pages forwards and backwards really easily.  It could also be easily controlled by a foot pedal sending PgUp and PgDn. Where Foxit falls short is in the notation department.  It has annotation tools, which is great for a free program.  The problems come in the way it handles smoothing the inked input.  For some reason, it seems to want to cut off the first chunk of any line I draw.  An up bow V turns into more of a check mark.  A tiny 1 for a fingering disappears almost entirely.  There is little customization for the pencil tool also.  I was able to change the color and thickness, but no matter what I tried, it cut off the first part of any stroke.  This rules it out for being a useful tool to track markings for performance.

 

Xournal

My favorite program for Linux on a Tablet, xournal is great for marking up PDFs.  Sadly it is out for the simple fact that PDF rendering in Windows is terrible.  The staff lines are jagged making it harder to read.  If I were running linux on the tablet, it would be my program of choice.  But as it is, the SSD is only big enough for one OS right now, and Windows is needed for some of the hardware functions.

 

 

And the winner is:

Windows Journal

Surprise!  The free program that is included in all the tablet accessories turns out to be ideal.  When you first open it, it offers to install a printer for importing anything you can print into Journal.  It’s the only way to get a PDF in.  I open the PDF in Foxit, choose print, then choose the Journal Printer.  That creates a very nice file in Windows journal that fills the screen while being only the size of the music.  That means navigation is as easy as telling it to fit to width and then using PgUp and PgDn.  The inking is on par with OneNote as this is also a Microsoft product geared towards the active pen input of a tablet.  As a nice bonus, Windows Journal comes with many templates, one of which is staff paper!  Now I can draw out scales or new little exercises for my students without having to remember to bring my own staff paper!  I can’t count how many times I’ve wanted to write out a little exercise or a new scale, but I didn’t have blank staff paper with me. 

The only drawback I found to Windows Journal, is that it doesn’t export to PDF.  I found a neat free Print to PDF program, called doPDF, that just installs itself as a printer and allows you to create a PDF through the print dialogue.  Now I’m wondering if Windows Journal and some good folder organization would be enough to keep my student notes in addition to keeping a music library.

My New Tuner DROOOOOID

 

I found a great free chromatic tuner in the Android Market called gstrings.  It’s accurate, has a really smooth moving needle, and a digital readout of your exact hertz.  There are million other useful looking settings.  This app has tons of potential beyond just telling you what you’re playing.  I’m looking forward to playing with it more and seeing what all it can do. I tested it side by side against my Korg and it consistently gave me the same read-outs through a full scale, with much smoother needle motion than the Korg.  It’s very responsive to changing notes on auto mode.  Just to see what it would do, I pulled it out before a concert today, to see if it could hear me while other musicians were also warming up.  No dice there, but I’m sure if I played around with the mic sensitivity settings, I could have gotten better results.  It works great in a quiet room.

As I was drafting this, during intermission at an afternoon concert, I noticed some of the guys singing into iPhones.  Turns out they were playing with iPhone tuners, so I got some recommendations for things to try on the iPhone platform as well.