Appmuse

I have been using this app for one semester now, it is fine and I like the idea of good edition music becomes electronically. Also appreciate different fingerings from several wonderful violinists, there are some great suggestions sometimes. The first thing can be improved is the sections when adding written notations in the app. By that I mean a white area would appear when using the apple pencil, and the upper and lower part besides that are gray. It seems like the creator was trying to organize it in different layers, and the problem is that when the pen or eraser tool is used in another layer, it is not working, therefore cannot erase what is not in this layer. I am not seeing the reason why such hassle is needed, just create several layers for the entire page would be better I think. The other thing that has been bothering me is the sensitivity of the app. It seems like there is a hard time for it to identify whether it is the palm or the tip of apple pencil was touching it. I am not sure if it is my iPad's problem, but it occurs pretty often and reached a point where I was frustrated by that and want to delete the app. Not sure how you can fix it but it would be really helpful if there is a way to change that. Show more

Will start by saying in a sea of music publishers, Henle stands out. Their printed editions are coveted by musicians worldwide. Their attention to the smallest visual details creates an elevated experience when reading their scores. Their design-forward, musician-centered approach creates premium products that are a joy to use. Musicians like me get genuinely excited when they see a Henle score. Like most musicians these days, most of my music collection is digitized. So when I saw they had a digital app, my immediate response was "Take my money, please!" So why 4 stars? The scores themselves are stellar, and live up to expectations. The process of purchasing them is not. Instead of a 1:1 transaction (you purchase the score for a set price), you purchase a bank of 200, 500, or 1000 credits. There is no 1:1 relationship between credits and score prices. For example, the complete Hadyn string quartets costs 1980 credits. Which means I would have to make two 1000 credit transactions and leave 20 credits on the table. This process is clunky and unnecessarily complicated. Show more

I’ve been using this app for about a year now, and the app has never bothered me enough to not give it 5 stars, but there’s some VERY obvious issues that could be fixed to greatly enhance user experience. No. 1 - In the annotation tool when you disable touch to only use the Apple Pencil, you can still put dots on the score with your hands by accident, but not lines. No. 2 - It seems completely random, but sometimes when you switch between annotation tools it will jump back to the start of the page when you’re zoomed in, which has wasted me a lot of time and is frequently annoying. No. 3 - Sometimes when you try to erase an annotation when zoomed in, you’ll have to tap super far to the left or right or up or down for it to delete. Pretty much everywhere EXCEPT the annotation. It makes deleting things super annoying. No. 4 - If you don’t hold the Apple Pencil or your finger down long enough while making an annotation, a dot will appear at the end which is really annoying when using the highlighter, and deleting, or moving annotations. No. 5 - WHY CAN’T YOU MOVE BACK OR FORWARD WHEN LISTENING TO YOUR RECORDINGS?? I recorded myself playing the Ballade No. 1 in G minor op. 23, and I have to listen through the whole thing just to hear the coda. I’m sure if you downloaded the recording THEN you could move back and forth, but for something as quick and convenient as the recording library, I’d expect it to be done there. No. 6 - Please allow us to view the difficulty rating of the piece BEFORE we buy it in the app. It’s not too big of an issue because you can just go on the website and view the difficulty, but seeing it from the app would be nice. Last but not least, No. 7 - If I ever lose my account, all of my music is gone. I also can’t share the music with others unless they have an IPad too, which many don’t. The answer to those problems is obviously PHYSICAL sheet music. I think when you purchase a piece on the app, you should receive a 1 time use discount code for like 30%-50% off of the paper bound version. I also think you should receive a 1 time use download for the app if you buy the paper edition. I’d love to own a copy of the digital version for convenience, and own a copy of the physical version for the long term. I know you can print it from the app, but I want an actual bound version with that classic Henle blue. Those are my issues with the app. If they were fixed, my review would be far beyond 5 stars. For all that the app is and all that it’s not, I still recommend downloading it. Show more

Pretty good but inconsistent. Some scores include fingering while others do not. The customization feature is nice but the score doesn’t scale correctly when in landscape orientation. Being able to jump straight to a bar or movement is great but what I really want is the ability to show just a few select bars as I learn a piece. If I’m concentrating on bars 25-38 I just want to see those bars. Annotations are a nice feature, but the highlight brush is too thin; I want to highlight entire measures. Placing fingering annotations is frustration as it requires multiple annotations, even for standard fingerings. All in all this app is ok but I probably won’t use it much due to the above. Show more

I mostly use the Henle library app to buy sheet music because they allow exporting / printing. With the latest update the quality of exports is perfect for a large iPad Pro so I highly recommend this app. Show more

The concept is fantastic. The implementation is only halfway there. Just started using it and already finding little annoyances that pile up with the result that it tend to get in my way as I play. The score annotation, for example: whenever I make a small highlight of a single note (sometimes to identify the melody so I know to sound those notes a bit louder) the app draws an additional highlight dot as I lift the pen or my finger from the screen. This obscures the note far too much and is just otherwise ugly. Another necessary improvement is the ability to have multiple copies of the same score for different annotations (practice vs performance) OR to allow multiple layers of annotation to display at once and then assign layer groups to quickly select which layers are displayed. I really want this app to be improved, as it is such a fantastic concept that musicians really need. It’s such a shame that something like this doesn’t enhance my playing but rather gets in the way because of little oversights in design. Show more

I wanted to be able to add my own annotation layers so I could enter editorial marks from print editions that I own. I said that here in a review and I got a prompt response showing me how to do it. I am upgrading my rating to five stars. Show more

Would be very happy to pay for official Henle ForScore files. However, this app isn’t great, especially when everyone uses ForScore already, and it’s so much better. The one cool thing about the app is that you can see a bunch of different fingerings. Henle should stick to what they do best— engraving— and leave the software development stuff to ForScore. Perhaps the two of you could work out some DRM thing (even though I hate DRM generally)so Henle can be sure they’re paid. Show more

for context: i have a free subscription provided by my university and i use an ipad pro i’m using this in 2020 and so far, the user experience has been ok. the interface is kind of clunky, but i can import scores to another app which i appreciate. henle downgrades the score quality to make you want to buy the print edition, which is capitalism at its finest. i get that. what makes no sense is the fact that big books are separated by piece (aka the well tempered klavier is not in 2 volumes, it’s by each individual prelude and fugue) and the search engine isn’t very good at finding exactly what you’re looking for. i’m glad that my university paid for this because i wouldn’t spend my own hard owned money on this until the developers make some changes to make this more intuitive. please consider having the option of downloading books by full volumes (like the beethoven sonatas) and by single pieces. Show more

Takes a long time to start (more than 40 seconds). Sometimes displays a blank page when changing pages. Poorly organized - should be organized by book. No support. I wish I had bought the actual books instead of the digital versions. Show more

I recently downloaded this app with great anticipation at being able to use outstanding scores on my iPad Pro. I started downloading several hundreds of dollars worth of scores when the app froze and wouldn’t reopen. I sent an email to app support and have received no response. I am deeply disappointed and wouldn’t recommend this app or the Henle Library at this point. I hope this company can get its act together and provide a functional app and proper support to match the quality of its scores. We deserve better from Henle. Show more

Best music in the world sitting in one of the worst apps ever. So lacking intuitive use. And I get WTC I & II and instead of getting two “books”, I got NINETY-SIX SEPARATE FILES!! Good god! Show more

I love a lot about this app, but i cant use it when it keeps losing all my annotations. Whether I'm on wifi or not, within a week all my annotations are gone. This has happened several times, and it’s infuriating. Devs — this completely destroys the app’s usefulness to me — in fact, it makes it worse than useless because my work is lost. Please fix this — before you get overwhelmed by reviews from angry musicians! Your app is gorgeous but destructive. Maybe rename it Cleopatra. [UPDATE: Developers promptly responded and were able to restore my annotations. Thank you!] Show more

I updated the app, and lost a few days’ worth of annotations. I have used this app for about a year and a half now. This app has always had so many problems with the annotations such as fingerings shrinking to 30% size in the upper ledger lines, the annotations sometimes being completely unerasable or erasing everything you don’t want to erase first, the score skipping randomly to another page (happened mid-performance), and of course, the annotations disappearing which has happened on more than one occasion. There are way too many minor and major problems. Update of August 1, 2020: I lost a few days’ annotations AGAIN, and I was connected to Wi-Fi the entire time. Seriously, I will have to stop using this app and ask for a refund on the credits I bought. Update of August 2, 2020: It turns out I lost around a week and a half of work, not only a few days as I had previously thought. The export to PDF function makes the sheets’ colors extremely different with small transparent boxes around each fingering number. Henle has no intention of improving this as I see in their response to another app store review. 10/10 experience. Show more

The user experience of this app is quite poor, particularly when compared to forScore. This would be okay if Henle didn’t downgrade the resolution of the music when you export it as a pdf to forScore. They tout a feature to export via pdf, but neglect to mention the resulting pdf quality is low resolution and fuzzy. No doubt this is a deliberate decision to keep users locked into using their app. This is unfortunate because it is preventing me from re-buying a significant volume of digital sheet music. The Henle sheet music itself is amazing and well worth the cost! Oh well; that is why we have scanners and IMSLP to get sheet music for our iPads. Show more

I have been using the henle app for years and have bought scores worth of hundreds of dollars. Great and high-quality scores and all that, but the absence of an “undo” function is hugely disappointing for people who want to write on them. The eraser tool works only when you tap on each stroke and sometimes it accidentally deletes things like fingerings and there’s no way to bring them back unless you remember them. Please add an undo function!!!!!!!!!! Show more

App doesnt load when I start it up

Will just continue using imslp

This App is the entire reason I purchased my iPad 12.9. I love Henle Editions and have duplicated everything I have in paper scores and added much more. I couldn’t be more pleased! Show more

The app does not allow to erase things by resuming to the previous action, but only allow to erase by the eraser feature. So stupid!