# StaffPad for Windows tabets... VERY impressive!



## TravB (Mar 31, 2015)

Anyone seen this yet? There's a demo video on FaceBook, apparently created by David William Hearn, that is simply amazing, but I don't see it on the product's site. Worth a look...

http://www.staffpad.net/#about


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## Jdiggity1 (Mar 31, 2015)

Awesome. The Surface Pro has just gone up a few spots on my wish list.


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## Farkle (Mar 31, 2015)

Triple Agreed. I've gone to a full Windows setup in the last 2 years, and I've been saving/waiting to update my tablet from an Android to a Windows 8 Pro tablet (either Surface Pro, or a Dell Venue Pro i5). I want my tablet to be my "mobile pro laptop", which includes office tech, Box, Spotify, Studio One (with some samples), and a solid notation program that lets me work in "tablet/writing mode" on my tablet.

This is a total game changer for me. I was thinking I'd have to load Sibelius on it, and muddle through it. Now... well... now... 

Mike


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## Mahlon (Mar 31, 2015)

Now that is extremely cool. And I like the dedicated to Windows platform. Finally people are making good use of the Windows tablet arena. Very much looking forward to how this comes out, and I like the philosophy behind the program.

Did you guys see the picture on the Wacom 27QHD? Yowsuh....

Mahlon


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Mar 31, 2015)

I really hope Finale offers something like this in its new version. Not only for tablets but also since so many laptops have touchscreens.


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## chimuelo (Mar 31, 2015)

Awesome, time for Surface Pro 3.
You can literally see through my charts I erase them so much.
Have done things on paper since College, enjoy writing.
Always wanted something I could erase on like those old red squared plastic shake 'em up games we had as kids, where we drew something, and if it sucked, you shook it up and started over.
I hate wasting paper but my mates deserve better charts and larger fonts.
This can customize manuscripts in so many ways.

Thanks SO Much.


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## samphony (Mar 31, 2015)

Thanks for sharing,

I've never considered windows until now.


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## Tatu (Apr 1, 2015)

Looks great and if it really is that good and intuitive to use, I might seriously consider switching my 1st gen iPad / Notion to a win tablet (never thought I'd even consider it  )


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## jcs88 (Apr 1, 2015)

This is great, what I hoped would come out of the iPad when I first saw it released.

There's rumours of a 'iPad Pro' which supposedly should have proper stylus support, which would be great.

This sort of technology is what really interests me - imagine writing with the stylus directly in Logic/DAW's score editor? Hear it played with samples right away.

Great stuff and a great app.


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## Ryan (Apr 1, 2015)

I have a Surface Pro 2. I'm def gonna check this out! looks like a great tool.

Ryan


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## d.healey (Apr 1, 2015)

Reminds me of the NotateMe android app, but I like the addition of adding CC data


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## PMortise (Apr 1, 2015)




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## EastWest Lurker (Apr 1, 2015)

Boy I hope that eventually there will be an iPad version.


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## jamwerks (Apr 1, 2015)

WOW!


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## wcreed51 (Apr 1, 2015)

If you haven't read the full blog, here's the link:

http://www.sibeliusblog.com/news/staffp ... iting-app/

And...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcxy1ORAzKg&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcxy1OR ... e=youtu.be)


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## jamwerks (Apr 1, 2015)

For those like me constantly moving between acoutic piano & Workstation, and Cubase & Sibelius, this seems like a logical answer. Which makes me wonder if Sibelius, Finale & the new Steiny app will get these features. It would be nice not to have to constantly transfer midi files between this and Sibelius.


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## Nathan Allen Pinard (Apr 8, 2015)

I'm getting one. I'd use this to write all parts, then "perform" them using my EWI part by part. Would be much better writing for me looking at sheet music and not the piano roll.

Is anyone running this on a normal Surface 3? (not the Pro) would like to know how that runs or if I should get a Pro.


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## rgames (Apr 8, 2015)

Well it certainly looks impressive in the video...! Finally a good reason to use a tablet for music making.

I've been looking at the Surface 3, anyway, because it can run full Windows apps. So you can run the full version of Cubase (and Finale) on it. Could make a great mobile composing setup. The problem with Finale, of course, is that it has basically zero touchscreen integration (and the updates are so glacially paced that I doubt we'll see it added any time soon).

However, my manuscript is so bad that it might not work for me...

rgames


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## Blakus (Apr 12, 2015)

This really is impressive. I've been using it over the last week and am loving it. I have used NotateMe on iPad in the past, but that doesn't even compare - this is a totally different league


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## Mahlon (Apr 13, 2015)

Blakus @ Sun Apr 12 said:


> This really is impressive. I've been using it over the last week and am loving it. I have used NotateMe on iPad in the past, but that doesn't even compare - this is a totally different league



Aye, that's good to hear.

Mahlon


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## AlexandreSafi (Aug 1, 2015)

Blakus said:


> This really is impressive. I've been using it over the last week and am loving it. I have used NotateMe on iPad in the past, but that doesn't even compare - this is a totally different league


Hello Blakus! Thank you very much for sharing your experience with it! I've been really interested in such a thing for a long time, i hear StaffPad is "orchestral-instruments-based", do you (or anyone else...) have a further conclusion by now on its usefulness and on what it can and can't do (vs. Sibelius, etc.. / Time Signatures / Articulations / renaming orchestral track to a Synth instrument eg./ nb. of tracks possible--"complex" music compatibility, etc...)?
I'm hoping it could be a useful portable tool for transcribing orchestral scores digitally, up to notating any idea for any instrument (sample playback not necessary for me, hence hopefully renaming tracks is possible...)
Thanks!
-A.s-


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## EvilDragon (Aug 1, 2015)

EastWest Lurker said:


> Boy I hope that eventually there will be an iPad version.



Sure, when (or if) Apple adds proper inking/stylus support and palm rejection to their hardware and accompanying software APIs.


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## thov72 (Aug 25, 2015)

StaffPad - has anyone used a cheaper tablet to work wit it??? DOES it work on cheaper tablets ?


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## InLight-Tone (Aug 25, 2015)

thov72 said:


> StaffPad - has anyone used a cheaper tablet to work wit it??? DOES it work on cheaper tablets ?



It's made for the Surface I'm afraid, it makes use of palm rejection and the pen support is a huge component.

There are some cheaper Surface out now, the regular Surface 3 isn't too expensive. They are great tablets, and the ability to run normal Windows apps like Cubase makes them a must have for a portable sketching environment. 

(I love mine).


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## mpalenik (Sep 4, 2015)

InLight-Tone said:


> It's made for the Surface I'm afraid, it makes use of palm rejection and the pen support is a huge component.
> 
> There are some cheaper Surface out now, the regular Surface 3 isn't too expensive. They are great tablets, and the ability to run normal Windows apps like Cubase makes them a must have for a portable sketching environment.
> 
> (I love mine).



The surface isn't the only device with an active pen touchscreen. There are plenty of tablets that have Wacom active stylus screens, or something similar. I actually had a spreadsheet open that I found online containing all of the Windows 8 devices with active stylus touchscreens. Some of them are much cheaper than the Surface and some of them are much more expensive.

There are a few devices with 8-10 inch screens that can be gotten used or refurbished for $100-$200, but they have atom processors, which it sounds like aren't powerful enough for this program. That's a shame, because I think it must be largely (entirely?) due to the fact that Staffpad has moderately sophisticated playback. There are apps that do something similar for handwriting that don't require nearly as powerful of a processor. I don't really care too much about playback. A pencil and paper doesn't even let you hear what notes you're writing. I would just like to have my writing automatically translated into a nice, readable, transferable format. Any playback is a bonus--just hearing which notes are sounding would be enough.

I had read a forum post from someone who said he was an iOS developer, who had apparently developed some Windows tablet apps in the past. He said that Microsoft had offered him deals, including promoting his application, if he agreed to make it exclusively for Windows (he didn't). Based on the way Staffpad is being promoted on the Microsoft site, he said he suspected they had entered into a similar deal. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why they're pushing the Surface on the Staffpad site as hard as they are, too.


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## Kardon (Sep 4, 2015)

If they aren't exclusive to Microsoft by contract, then it wouldn't surprise me to see an iOS Staffpad demonstrated on stage at next week's Apple event where they are expected to introduce the iPad Pro with pressure sensitive stylus. But, maybe not given how Microsoft hyped it for themselves so much already. Apple might be too proud to do that. None the less I would expect Staffpad to be eager to bring out an iPad version on the coming iPad Pro.


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## bcarwell (Sep 4, 2015)

Blakus, exactly what is the hardware spec of the Surface you are using ? I don't understand whether the 64GB Surface ($500) would do or whether you need the Pro or 128 GB ($700). And as to the poster mentioning the Atom processor in other tablets might be insufficient for Staffpad, I thought the regular Surface (which I've heard people use just fine with Staffpad) indeed was just an Atom processor, and only the Surface Pro (which might be overkill for Staffpad) was an i7.

I'm inclined to wait until the smoke clears and maybe a few more point releases or a next version to fix the bugs I am seeing in Youtube videos. BUT.... I am certainly LUSTING for it, after having just finished a project trying to clean up a mess in Finale imported from Cubase.

Comments, anyone ?

Bob


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## tack (Sep 5, 2015)

There are Android tablets with true stylus support. I wonder in what ways was those are deficient compared to Surface.

It's not so much the money as ... Microsoft. On my desktop I feel dirty enough even using Windows for music and gaming. (But not so dirty that I would switch to a Mac.)


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## mpalenik (Sep 5, 2015)

bcarwell said:


> Blakus, exactly what is the hardware spec of the Surface you are using ? I don't understand whether the 64GB Surface ($500) would do or whether you need the Pro or 128 GB ($700). And as to the poster mentioning the Atom processor in other tablets might be insufficient for Staffpad, I thought the regular Surface (which I've heard people use just fine with Staffpad) indeed was just an Atom processor, and only the Surface Pro (which might be overkill for Staffpad) was an i7.
> 
> I'm inclined to wait until the smoke clears and maybe a few more point releases or a next version to fix the bugs I am seeing in Youtube videos. BUT.... I am certainly LUSTING for it, after having just finished a project trying to clean up a mess in Finale imported from Cubase.



That's a good point about the regular Surface 3 having an atom processor. There are, of course, different generations of atom processors, so it's hard to know what is sufficient. Also, while the Surface 3 (not pro) does have pen support, the older non-pro versions of Surface and Surface 2 don't.

My guess is that maybe Staffpa doesn't require quite as much processing power as the developers claim. After all, I was running Kontakt 3 on a dual core machine for years and I find that an i5 is sufficient for pretty large templates with the likes of Sable (of course, I usually run pro tools on a separate machine). However, I don't want to be the one to test this theory out.

I'm in the same position as you, I think. I've been drooling over the video on the website, but my brain says I'm not going to do anything else at all with a surface except use this program. I think waiting until people figure out exactly what devices its compatible with is a smart thing to do.

I do want to mention that if anyone is interested in testing the waters, here's a spreadsheet I found with all (most?) of the Windows 8 devices with active touchscreens. As I said before, some of these can be found used/refurbished for $100-$200: https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=A3E71B4BBE25C114!107&app=Excel&authkey=!AAO1lowxloMJjhM


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## prodigalson (Sep 5, 2015)

the website clearly includes the Surface 3 as well as Pro in their system requirements so it seems like the cheaper Surface 3 would be sufficient.


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## mpalenik (Sep 5, 2015)

prodigalson said:


> the website clearly includes the Surface 3 as well as Pro in their system requirements so it seems like the cheaper Surface 3 would be sufficient.


Yes, it would be. The question is which other atom processors would be sufficient on other devices.


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## bcarwell (Sep 5, 2015)

And I guess I'd like to know from <actual users> exactly what difference there is in performance etc. in using Staffpad with Surface 3 rather than the more expensive Surface Pro before I spring for one. And I'd like to know this specifically for operation of the Staffpad itself, not the benefits of the Pro for other things.

Bob


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## AlexRuger (Sep 6, 2015)

chimuelo said:


> Awesome, time for Surface Pro 3.
> You can literally see through my charts I erase them so much.
> Have done things on paper since College, enjoy writing.
> Always wanted something I could erase on like those old red squared plastic shake 'em up games we had as kids, where we drew something, and if it sucked, you shook it up and started over.
> ...


I'm sorry, off topic, but chimuelo does your signature say that you use _Solaris?_ Like...the OS? For _music?_


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## Maestro1972 (Oct 19, 2015)

Thought I would chime in. I recently purchased the surface pro 3 with i7 256g with 8 gb ram. Of course I couldn't wait to try Staffpad. Here's my experience. The program was just as the videos show. For the most part I was off and running. Within 2 days I had become fairly decent in using the program (watch the instructional videos). I wanted to see what it could do so I grabbed my Star Wars score and proceeded to 'write' in all the parts. I pushed it to the max by expanding the sections into individual parts: for example with the horns instead of writing 2 horn parts on one stave I wrote 1 horn part on separate staves. 

The more I wrote, the harder it became to write. 50 measures in, what was a somewhat fun program turned into a frustrating, time consuming headache. Some of the issues I encountered were as follows:

-The pen was slow to react. I would start writing and it would lag behind often causing me to have to erase what was written because it was nothing like what I wrote.
-Going back and forth from the eraser to the pen (pressing a button on the pen) would cause a delay in erasing/writing
-writing tuplets was hardly recognized and had to be done using a pop up window that you had to scroll through
-the program would "freeze" (kind of like how cubase will freeze when it is saving) and then kick you out to the desktop. Once I returned to the program (it would still be open) the last measure I was working on would be empty
-I exported the midi file (what I completed) and imported it into Cubase. Only one of the tracks was labeled with it's instrument name and they were out of order as to how I input them.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not bashing the program. I am simply passing on my experience and please remember that these issues were NOT happening in the early stages of the project. (except the tuplets). My experience with StaffPad has left me with the conclusion that for smaller projects it is great but for larger full orchestrations it still has a way to go. With the new Surface Pro 4 being released, the Staffpad designers/programmers have been working to get Staffpad ready for Windows 10 ( I believe they just announced it is ready for W10). It may be possible that the new platforms will allow the processing required to do larger projects.

In the end, I think StaffPad will be the music notation program that will revolutionize the way music notation is written. Final note: StaffPad's customer support and updates have been wonderful.


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## kdm (Oct 19, 2015)

Maestro1972 said:


> My experience with StaffPad has left me with the conclusion that for smaller projects it is great but for larger full orchestrations it still has a way to go. With the new Surface Pro 4 being released, the Staffpad designers/programmers have been working to get Staffpad ready for Windows 10 ( I believe they just announced it is ready for W10). It may be possible that the new platforms will allow the processing required to do larger projects.



I am running Staffpad on a Surface Pro 3, i5 with 4G, Window 10 (upgraded from 8.1 a few weeks ago), and not seeing the issues you are, so far at least. I have used it with moderate sized scores, but not a 10+ minute score so there could be a limit you have found that I haven't as of yet. It could depend on the number of parts and how much we edit/draw in one session, since you pushed it pretty hard. It is worth investigating though before anyone decides to rely on it for a lengthy project. For sketching at least, it's great.

It does work on Win10 already.


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