Appmuse

This app is actually really good at making music. The two only problems there are is that most of the instruments in here don't even sound like the actual instrument. The other is that there should be more instruments, like drums. There are literally no drums, but I hope the developers will make it sound like it should be and have some more instruments added soon. Show more

Had high hopes for this. Notion is a much better app.

the handwriting isnt bad but the other input method is actually faster for me. I never did figure out how to find where the xml exports are saved but the email XML works fine. sound playback is decent enough for fiddle which is all i use it for but theres lots of composition types built in for many voices at once. Likely sounds fine as wel Show more

The app needs a lot more work. It is very slow responding to the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro in manuscript mode and manual note entry. Previous reviews nailed the issues. The price point at $29 is good if the response was faster and more efficient. Show more

Within 5 minutes of use, exploring the app, got a crash and a freeze. Not ready for prime time. Alpha quality, at best beta quality. I hope this gets fixed asap. Until then I am not going to use. Come on guys, how can you release something with blatant issues like this?? Show more

I bought this app with the understanding that it is a brand new release, so I will give the developer time to address the various issues I've run into before I really "lock in my vote". First, the good - note entry feels extremely smooth and responsive with the Apple Pencil on iPad Pro. The UI is clear and understandable. There are some nice intuitive touches, such as being able to select a note or rest and drag left or right to decrease or increase its duration after entry, or being able to drag staves vertically further apart to allow more workspace for ledger lines. That said - there is a lot that feels incomplete. Input of transposed music (e.g. input at written pitch for transposed insturments) is (currently) badly broken. As stated in another review above, when features flat out produce erroneous results, it feels like beta software and this product is priced as a full blown pro product, so expectations are naturally higher. When pricing of this goes to full retail, this had better work as advertised, and not feel like beta software… There are some other little oversights that I'm hoping are just a matter of the developer needing feedback from users - for instance, there is a feature to halve or double the note values of a selected passage. Nice. However, while MusicJOT will prevent the user from entering too many beats in a bar as you enter notes manually; there is no mechanism to prevent too many beats in the bar being created when invoking "double the note values". Ouch. A warning message to prevent a novice user from creating incorrect notation would go a long way here. Even though the music character shapes themselves are well designed, the Music Spacing is currently overall pretty ugly, and here is why: The clef, key and time signatures are not functionally a static margin as they are in desktop notation programs, rather, they factor into the note spacing of ALL bars. What this means is that as you enter music, there is a very large and unecessary amount of white space before and (especially) after the notes in bars which do not contain a clef, key and time signature at all. Even if the goal of MusicJOT is to ultimately export via MusicXML to a desktop scoring program, the music spacing within the app needs to be addressed so that the note spacing is more "normal"; e.g. for starters, only considering the note objects entered in each bar, rather than a master container approach to spacing where ANYTHING in the measure, including global objects such as clef, key and time signature also apply to bars that don't have these. Along the same lines as above, time signatures in a multi-staff score should line up vertically, and don't currently when the score is transposing (e.g. when there are different key signatures for different staves, the time signatures appear in a jagged line down the score). I have reported several of these issues above and have not received a direct response from the developer to any bug reports, but I will mention that I did receive a very helpful response within half a day to a question I had, which was encouraging. My hope is that more positive reviews will lead to more income for the developer which will encourage them to really put in the time to fix the things which are currently broken and bring the app up to a professional functional level. For now, my review is "it's just ok". But I definitely see potential for this to be a 5 star app depending on how far the developer is able to improve things in the next few months. Show more

Overall, I think this a very excellent app. This is coming from an oboist, harpist, and pianist, and I really enjoy writing music. I really enjoy the diversity of articulations and dynamics you can add to your music, unlike some other apps which don't have tremolos and such. Another good thing is the handwriting. I myself have rather sloppy handwriting, and this app seems to recognize it completely fine. I use the 9.7 inch iPad Pro and my Apple Pencil, and everything runs (almost) smoothly. On the downside, I don't know if I'm using it wrong or something, but it's a bit slow. The interface is also a bit on the "outdated style" type look, and takes awhile to get used to. I would also like more percussion instruments such as timpani and drum set for my orchestral compositions. The playback quality of the instruments could also be better quality, but that isn't too important. This app would be 5 stars if they mostly just added more percussion instruments and cleaned up the interface just a bit! ? Show more

This app just being introduced, has a few bugs to work out but it has lots of potential. The $50. Price I think is a bit high right now but with a few improvements it would be well worth it. The customer service is great and and the company seems to be working hard to make things work. Not having the ability to write layered voices on one staff, is why I rate it only three stars. The customer service guy assured me they will eventually have that feature in which case it would be a five star app and well worth the 50 bucks. I suggest buying if it's on sale. Show more

Was excited to see a 'pro' app finally show up for the iPad Pro. Unfortunately, this is not the app you want. The hand writing recognition isn't terrible, but you have to draw out all your notes, then, tap a button before the app will translate your handwriting to notation. Sounds aren't very good either. For $50, I was expecting a lot more from this app. Save yourself a few bucks and check out Notion. Show more

This app was Very laggy, the hand-writing ability was also subpar. Glad I only wasted $10 instead of $50

Definitely the best full-featured music notation program on the app-store. It fills a spot that has lagged behind for years. Now music notation and composition is just as intuitive as it was meant to be with a whole array of powerful tools to call upon. It's fun, it's powerful and its good looking too. Do yourself a favor and buy this one. Show more

So ... I've been looking forward to this app for well over a year now. Being that the author/creator seems to be an accomplished musician ... it instills faith that this app will be less of a gimmick to use with the Apple Pencil and more of an app for the serious musician. I know there are several options out already for music notation apps with handwriting recognition … but none are very good. The best of the bunch … Staff Pad … is only available on PC tablets and it’s not perfect. But they continue to update it and it is getting better … only problem is it will never come to the iPad because iPads are app based and Staff Pad is a full program that needs an OS. So in my weekly google search that I've been doing for the last year ... today I once again typed in "musicjot" ... and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature link and an app finally released! I can't explain how excited I was. So I downloaded and quickly dove in. It will take several more days before I form a better opinion ... but my initial thoughts are 50/50. I really want this to be great ... and hopefully the author of the app will continually update with improvements. For starters ... I tried contacting them several times to try and get on the beta team to help make this app a solid release ... but I never received any response. Not a positive start. Second thought ... it does show promise that in the help doc it list the things they are planning for future releases ... such as guitar tab and chords. I'm obviously a guitar player (I run a site and utube channel called GuitarBreakdown) ... I do a ton of transcribing and notating. Most of it is jazz/rock/fusion … ala Scott Henderson, Michael Landau and many others as well as transcribing saxophone lines for guitar. We do this in a very meticulous way … so that we notate as much nuance as we can. The reason I mention this is so there is a little background as to what I’m hoping for in this app. The plan is to do as much quick notation as possible on the iPad with the apple pencil (understanding any limitations) and then export it to the full featured Sibelius for any finessing and for things that this app may not do. So hopefully when the guitar tab options become available … in the least … bends and slides will notate properly as well as micro tonal bends (slight quarter step bends). Third thought … my initial feeling about the apple pencil handwriting recognition … it’s very nice. For the things that it recognizes … it recognizes quickly and easily. Unfortunately from what i can tell in my limited time spent with it … it only really recognizes quarter note and 16th notes or anything longer (whole, half, quarter). When writing 32nd or 64th notes … some miss translation begins to occur. This was something I have been seriously concerned about since any of the preview/demo videos (not many out there) never show complex notation occurring. I was also nervous about it’s recognition of anything more complex then a quarter note triplet because again … none of the videos (not many out there) show this occurring. Unfortunately i’m not having an easy time getting it to recognize 32nd note or 64th note triplets. Now i did see a way to fix some of the triplets or groups of 5’s or 7’s … but it’s a manual fix. What I was hoping for was to simply write five 16th notes then write a quick bracket with the number 5 to make a group of 5 16th notes. But this did not work. Groupings of 5’s or 7’s or even triplets only work on 8th notes or quarter notes. This is seriously disappointing. And therefore forget about any complex rhythmic notation … for example (and this isn’t even that complex) 6 tuplet (a group made up of six 16th notes) made up of two 16th notes then a 16th note triplet then two more 16th notes. This is a very standard notation for … but somehow a bit complex for this app at the moment. Now … I am referring to the handwriting recognition … I’m not sure if the manual notation can handle this … but I think for most people we are looking at this app for it’s handwriting capabilities … being that it is only for the iPad and apple pencil platform. Final thought … I’m hoping this app becomes all that it can be. The iPad and apple pencil are amazing tools. I’m also someone who likes to draw a lot and using procreate on the apple iPad with the apple pencil is by far the best portable tablet experience available (i have a cintiq and i’ve tried the surface pro). So being able to use the amazing apple pencil and iPad experience with handwriting music notation will be awesome … when the app is perfected. I’m also hoping the musicJot web page as well as it’s uTube channel starts to have more instructional demo videos. There is very little in the documentation currently on “how to’s” … especially for any complex notation. Also there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to contact with questions or opinions or suggestions. Here’s to hoping someone at musicJot reads this and starts to interact with it’s user so we can help make this the best music app on the market. The potential is there for sure … with the hardware/platform of the iPad … to make this an amazing music notation experience with the awesome apple pencil. If musicJot reads this feel free to contact me a guitarBreakdown … website of utube. Show more