# StaffPad and Apple Silicon Macs?



## brandowalk

I have seen some references to StaffPad and the new Silicon Macs and operating system. Has anyone had such success in using StaffPad (in one fashion or another) with the new Macs?


----------



## ism

Blue skying, but imagine if staffpad could interact with logic through something like rewire.


----------



## brandowalk

Digging a bit deeper, I found on the StaffPad site:

_"You can read, open and preview scores on all new Apple Silicon Macs. Due to the lack of touch/Pencil support, writing notation is not possible."_

Curious as to how well this works. Playback? Can anyone out there with a new Mac and StaffPad elaborate?


----------



## foxby

I'm also kepping an eye on this thing. I was wondering, maybe if we use a cintiq tablet, will it work, with pen, touch and audio, as intended? 
This potentially could save some money on having big screens, without paying again for the dedicated libraries on win platform.


----------



## emasters

Wonder if one could run StaffPad from a Silicon Mac, then use SideCar to get the pen input on a connected iPad Pro (similar to what one can do with Photoshop)? SideCar works well with non-Silicon Mac apps. I have no experience with Silicon Macs, so just speculating. Would be interesting if this works....


----------



## ism

emasters said:


> Wonder if one could run StaffPad from a Silicon Mac, then use SideCar to get the pen input on a connected iPad Pro (similar to what one can do with Photoshop)? SideCar works well with non-Silicon Mac apps. I have no experience with Silicon Macs, so just speculating. Would be interesting if this works....


Wondering the same. Although ... at the moment even if it does work, I can't see any actual benefit to doing this over just running natively on your iPad ... never mind the latency issues.

If, however, you cold somehow do this synced to Logic, there some potentially revolutionary workflow innovations there. 


Not holding my breath though.


----------



## emasters

ism said:


> Wondering the same. Although ... at the moment even if it does work, I can't see any actual benefit to doing this over just running natively on your iPad ... never mind the latency issues.
> 
> If, however, you cold somehow do this synced to Logic, there some potentially revolutionary workflow innovations there.
> 
> 
> Not holding my breath though.


Yeah - not sure how practical it is either. If one had a large external screen to view on the Mac, perhaps a (minor) benefit? For me, the screen size of the iPad Pro is fine for staff pad. More a curiosity -- if it would work....


----------



## ism

There is a major workflow innovation here. Staffpad gets the results it get with such astonishingly small resources because it doesn't require realtime playing. And there are some cases these tiny fragments of vastly larger libraries actually sound better because of it.

So imagine some mechanism to sync with Logic, the ability to combine this non-real time, notation-first libraries approach to phrase rendering with the ability to also sit down at improvise on playable instruments. Imagine full scale libraries - not constrained but iPad memory disk space requirements - that are recorded from the beginning not for the ability to respond to real time midi data played into Kontakt, but for idiomatic phrasing representable in notation. 

I've long thought that some manor of "lookahead" functionality in VST/midi/Kontakt would be a major next step in sampling. This inability for Kontakt to adequately know the future of the midi data is clearly a hugely limitation in crafting idiomatic phrasing. 

So maybe ... maybe? ... staffpad is what this looks like?


----------



## jbuhler

ism said:


> I've long thought that some manor of "lookahead" functionality in VST/midi/Kontakt would be a major next step in sampling. This inability for Kontakt to adequately know the future of the midi data is clearly a hugely limitation in crafting idiomatic phrasing.


How would this lookahead functionality differ from the legato scripts requiring significant negative delay or the method employed in Birth of the Trumpet?


----------



## jadi

I can see a future setup with gear like this. With apple pencil and indeed logic aside.
I would be very interested!


----------



## ism

In that those legato scripts are still Kontakt scripts, all they do (so far as I understand the limitations of the vst spec, at a pretty fundamental level) is start playing the sample ahead of the beat. There’s no active lookahead, Kontakt can still only analyse and respond to data in the past, and not the future. 



With full lookahead, like staffpad is capable of doing right now (albeit with samples not recorded with the capability in mind) it would be possible to play different samples, or idiomatic anticipations etc based of the future behaviour of the midi data. Or indeed non-midi data since we’re no longer constrained by a vst/ midi data flow.

It’s not clear just how much of this capacity staffpad presently leverages, but in interviews, this ability is claimed to be a significant part of how it does so much with so little. 


Which invites the question - how much more could be done with full system resources? And with ‘lookahead-native’ sampling at scale - which actively record alternate arcs designed to be chosen by the engine on render with full knowledge of the future of the notes, and whatever idiomatic instructions the notation software cafes to implement.


The easy win in this is of course this delay ‘issue’ that contributes to the realism of CSS, performance samples and their ilk, which becomes a standard feature in how such ‘lookahead-native’ libraries are recorded, at no cost in cognitive overhead to the user that CSS is so often criticised for. Staffpad is already doing something like this (though I’d love to know what exactly).


Intuitively, in that lot of music is about anticipation not just in voice leading, but in performance and expressiveness, it’s fun to speculate how much more realism and emotional expressiveness might be wrung from sample engine playback with this capacity. Though of course it very much remains to be seen.


Still, the success of staffpad strikes me as deeply suggestive.


----------



## jbuhler

Here’s how Birth of the Trumpet describes smart delay: 



> “Smart Delay” feature which analyzes dozens of details about the played phrase and intelligently selects the appropriate samples. Works in tandem with our New Standard sampling method, to eliminate the need for auditioning countless keyswitches just to create a realistic melodic phrase


So it’s similar, though I suppose something that maybe read through the part and made intelligent sample assignments based on context so that you wouldn’t have to go through the process of manually moving your regions would make it generally more useful. (I envision something like freezing a track or bouncing in place except for contextually generated sample assignments. So the process would in effect generate a new track of detailed midi that could be further edited rather than audio.)


----------



## muratkayi

I also think marrying the two world of midi/vst and staffpad's amazing playback engine is in order. Some things will probably still work much better in MIDI. Atm, e.g., I wouldn't want to notate a string solo performance with every nuanced detail and vibrato offset and the like... Otoh I noticed I basically stopped thinking of VSTs when I envision an orchestral piece altogether and directly fire up Staffpad first. 

But I think it would actually be better to be able to incorporate Audio tracks and VSTs with a preloaded Midi track alongside Staffpads notation. That would be my attempt at clairvoyance here. I think something like that is going to happen. I had a singer perform a vocal part I wrote in Staffpad and it would have been awesome to import that audio right back into staffpad for further development of the piece.


----------



## brandowalk

muratkayi said:


> I also think marrying the two world of midi/vst and staffpad's amazing playback engine is in order. Some things will probably still work much better in MIDI. Atm, e.g., I wouldn't want to notate a string solo performance with every nuanced detail and vibrato offset and the like... Otoh I noticed I basically stopped thinking of VSTs when I envision an orchestral piece altogether and directly fire up Staffpad first.
> 
> But I think it would actually be better to be able to incorporate Audio tracks and VSTs with a preloaded Midi track alongside Staffpads notation. That would be my attempt at clairvoyance here. I think something like that is going to happen. I had a singer perform a vocal part I wrote in Staffpad and it would have been awesome to import that audio right back into staffpad for further development of the piece.


That's what I'm thinking as well... being able to do (i.e. string) arrangements in StaffPad around a vocal or solo instrument audio track. Also, being able to have picture lock to what we are writing!  StaffPad is amazing. Extending its functionality this way would be very exciting.

While we are envisioning here... smoother integration with Engraving software programs (i.e. Finale) would save me a lot of time. This kind of goes against their goal of using their paperless reader for iPads, etc... but the reality is that most of the world still uses paper for scores and parts. 

No idea if SP on an Apple Silicon Mac would make any of this more possible or would be even necessary, but it's fun to dream.


----------



## muratkayi

It totally is. 

I mean back in February this year for all I knew I thought Staffpad silently died some time between 2017 and 2019. And then we get this revamped overhauled rocket science machine with unheard of playback. It's inspiring to think that there's exciting things upcoming in 2021 according to the Staffpad website!


----------



## Michael Antrum

OK, I've loaded Staffpad and all my libraries onto a MacBook Pro M1 8GB 512GB SSD.

At first it seems to run really badly, stuttering on the mouse movement, background animations and bringing up menus.

But when you finally get into a score, it seems to run fairly well when playing back.

I'm going to have a go later today with sidecar and a 12.9" iPad Pro 2020.

I'm starting to imagine all sorts of clever things you could do using these together.....


----------



## Michael Antrum

Well, here's an update......

Using a Mac Pro with an iPad Pro via sidecar for Staffpad works. Obviously I'm running Staffpad on the MacBook Pro and screen mirroring the display on the iPad.

There are a couple of niggles however.

Firstly, Sidecar seem to ignore finger touches, so selecting things must be done with the pencil.

Secondly, when the pencil is in contact with the screen you get a mouse arrow n the screen, which isn't really an issue, it's more of an annoyance. Hard pressing for grease also works.

Because my staffpad work files are stored in iCloud, they are synced across both the Mac & the iPad, so all my work is available on both.

What are the advantages of this ? - well the only one I can think of is that the Mac is wired up to a decent sound system - but that's easy enough to do from the iPad.

Where I could see an interesting development would be to imagine if you could have a much higher resolution display on the desktop - say showing a full orchestral score with plenty of screen real estate, and using the iPad to select areas and enter/edit notation.

But yes it works, and far better than I expected....


----------



## jadi

Michael Antrum said:


> Well, here's an update......
> 
> Using a Mac Pro with an iPad Pro via sidecar for Staffpad works. Obviously I'm running Staffpad on the MacBook Pro and screen mirroring the display on the iPad.
> 
> There are a couple of niggles however.
> 
> Firstly, Sidecar seem to ignore finger touches, so selecting things must be done with the pencil.
> 
> Secondly, when the pencil is in contact with the screen you get a mouse arrow n the screen, which isn't really an issue, it's more of an annoyance. Hard pressing for grease also works.
> 
> Because my staffpad work files are stored in iCloud, they are synced across both the Mac & the iPad, so all my work is available on both.
> 
> What are the advantages of this ? - well the only one I can think of is that the Mac is wired up to a decent sound system - but that's easy enough to do from the iPad.
> 
> Where I could see an interesting development would be to imagine if you could have a much higher resolution display on the desktop - say showing a full orchestral score with plenty of screen real estate, and using the iPad to select areas and enter/edit notation.
> 
> But yes it works, and far better than I expected....


Thanks for your sharing this


----------



## Cinebient

I wonder how good it works if you export a Logic notation file and open it in StaffPad f.e. if an M1 machine is the only device you have for StaffPad.


----------



## Michael Antrum

Cinebient said:


> I wonder how good it works if you export a Logic notation file and open it in StaffPad f.e. if an M1 machine is the only device you have for StaffPad.


You can do very little except play back/menus without an iPad attached.


----------



## brandowalk

Michael Antrum said:


> Well, here's an update......
> 
> Using a Mac Pro with an iPad Pro via sidecar for Staffpad works. Obviously I'm running Staffpad on the MacBook Pro and screen mirroring the display on the iPad.
> 
> There are a couple of niggles however.
> 
> Firstly, Sidecar seem to ignore finger touches, so selecting things must be done with the pencil.
> 
> Secondly, when the pencil is in contact with the screen you get a mouse arrow n the screen, which isn't really an issue, it's more of an annoyance. Hard pressing for grease also works.
> 
> Because my staffpad work files are stored in iCloud, they are synced across both the Mac & the iPad, so all my work is available on both.
> 
> What are the advantages of this ? - well the only one I can think of is that the Mac is wired up to a decent sound system - but that's easy enough to do from the iPad.
> 
> Where I could see an interesting development would be to imagine if you could have a much higher resolution display on the desktop - say showing a full orchestral score with plenty of screen real estate, and using the iPad to select areas and enter/edit notation.
> 
> But yes it works, and far better than I expected....


Michael - thanks for investigating. Using my Mac and system for playback and my 34” monitor sounds enticing. Just waiting for the next Mac mini version to exist!


----------



## marius_dm

@Michael Antrum Did you have to buy Staffpad again? I can't find it in my purchased iOS apps in the macOS store, but I do find Staffpad if I search for it (as an iOS app of course).


----------



## Michael Antrum

marius_dm said:


> @Michael Antrum Did you have to buy Staffpad again? I can't find it in my purchased iOS apps in the macOS store, but I do find Staffpad if I search for it (as an iOS app of course).



No, I didn't have to buy it again, but it certainly looked ike it. For a company who boast how elegant their systems are its really a bit of a kludge.

I had to go through the whole rigmarole of actually re-buying it, and on the last screen it said that I already own Staffpad and I wouldn't be charged....


----------



## Vadium

Michael Antrum said:


> Firstly, Sidecar seem to ignore finger touches, so selecting things must be done with the pencil.


Interesting, will it work correctly with a Luna display? https://astropad.com/product/lunadisplay/


----------



## jadi

Michael Antrum said:


> No, I didn't have to buy it again, but it certainly looked ike it. For a company who boast how elegant their systems are its really a bit of a kludge.
> 
> I had to go through the whole rigmarole of actually re-buying it, and on the last screen it said that I already own Staffpad and I wouldn't be charged....


Hello Michael,

I bought a Mac Studio and managed to install the StaffPad app onto the system (without extra cost), but I couldn't download the thirdparty libraries. Although I also there got a message, that I already had bought the library. And also a message that the purchase was confirmed. But no library download started. Do you have any clue?


----------



## Jett Hitt

jadi said:


> Hello Michael,
> 
> I bought a Mac Studio and managed to install the StaffPad app onto the system (without extra cost), but I couldn't download the thirdparty libraries. Although I also there got a message, that I already had bought the library. And also a message that the purchase was confirmed. But no library download started. Do you have any clue?


Just click buy it again. Apple will then recognize that you already own it.


----------



## jadi

Jett Hitt said:


> Just click buy it again. Apple will then recognize that you already own it.


Thanks for the response! I’ll go try again


----------



## jadi

jadi said:


> Thanks for the response! I’ll go try again


So far no luck. For my information, you succeded in downloading the libraries to your macos machine?


----------



## rsg22

In the Facebook group there’s a bunch of reports about the store not functioning properly and libraries not being available. May be related.


----------



## Jett Hitt

jadi said:


> So far no luck. For my information, you succeded in downloading the libraries to your macos machine?


I have all of the libraries on my Mac Studio.


----------



## jadi

Jett Hitt said:


> I have all of the libraries on my Mac Studio.


I hope then, it has to do with the current problems with the store 🥺


----------



## ssnowe

I also have all my libraries showing up on my m1 mac, however they were loaded several months ago so something may have changed.


----------



## brandowalk

I have no problem with the libraries installed on both iPad and my Mac. Be cautious of file sync between the two. I lost a day’s work from a file reverting. StaffPad help looked at the file and there was no corruption. The likely culprit was some weird delay in syncing the two systems. Anyone else have that issue?


----------



## rsg22

brandowalk said:


> I have no problem with the libraries installed on both iPad and my Mac. Be cautious of file sync between the two. I lost a day’s work from a file reverting. StaffPad help looked at the file and there was no corruption. The likely culprit was some weird delay in syncing the two systems. Anyone else have that issue?


If you’re talking about iCloud sync, then yes. Lost work, a couple scores that completely disappeared, one or two that must be corrupt because staffpad now crashes when opening them. It’s been a while but there used to be tons of posts about this on the Facebook group. Some users stopped using iCloud sync altogether and now airdrop or otherwise manually move files around. I know they fixed one or two bugs around iCloud sync (again, a while ago) so I don’t know how common these issues still are.


----------



## Jett Hitt

brandowalk said:


> I have no problem with the libraries installed on both iPad and my Mac. Be cautious of file sync between the two. I lost a day’s work from a file reverting. StaffPad help looked at the file and there was no corruption. The likely culprit was some weird delay in syncing the two systems. Anyone else have that issue?


Yes, I’ve had this problem too. I don’t think there’s a way to force it to update. I wish there were.


----------



## jadi

jadi said:


> I hope then, it has to do with the current problems with the store 🥺


I deleted the app on macos reinstalled and now I can download the libraries! I had contact with the StaffPad team about this. It is not something that is supported.


----------

