If you’ve been thinking of getting an AirTurn page turner, now is the perfect opportunity to do so. For Black Friday, AirTurn is offering $10 off any purchase of $100 or more, and free USPS shipping with the “BLACKFRIDAY” coupon code. For international shoppers, get $15 off any purchase of $100 or more using the “BLACKFRIDAY2” coupon code.
These coupon codes are valid from now until Monday, November 28th, and they can be used with our own ongoing promotion, giving you a free copy of forScore with a qualifying purchase of the BT-105. Find out more on our promo page, and happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks to AirTurn for letting us know about a recent performance by violinist Giora Schmidt using the BT-105 and forScore! There’s a video interview with him on AirTurn’s website, and there’s an article on Ariama for those who are interested.
What he describes as “the most difficult work in the violin repertoire that I’ve ever played,” Schmidt premiered Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor (transcribed for solo violin) for the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. It’s a piece that was written for ten fingers, and played by four, so there were technical challenges that called for an unconventional approach to reading music. For Giora, that approach was to use an iPad, forScore, and the BT-105. Here’s a particularly salient quote from the Ariama.com interview:
“What was brought on by necessity – either walk onstage with a page turner or use ten music stands to tape the 35 pages of sheet music across – has now completely changed how I read, annotate and perform with music.”
It’s really an incredible performance, as you can see below, and we’re honored to have helped make it possible. He’s a fantastic musician, a real advocate for this kind of technology, and we hope to be seeing a lot more from him very soon!
It’s something we’ve been waiting a long time for, and now we’re finally ready: forScore is packing its swimsuit and sunblock (or galoshes and umbrella, depending on where you live) and heading your way. Or, in less colorful terminology, we’re localizing our app and translating it for all of our patient customers who speak languages other than English.
To accomplish this monumental task, we need your help! If you speak English and a second language fluently, and you’d be willing to volunteer a little bit of your time, get in touch with us so we can give you the details. You can do as much or as little as you like, and we’ll be cross-referencing your results with a few other translators whenever possible, so there’s no pressure. As for the rest of you, well, we’ll be sure to send you a postcard!
Today we’re happy to announce the release of our newest iPhone and iPod Touch app, Beat Keeper, which brings forScore’s incredible metronome to the small screen.
It features the same gorgeous design and intuitive controls, an all-new visualizer, and the ability to create presets for your most common settings. It even works in silent mode, putting an end to noisy interruptions.
While most of forScore’s features are interdependent, some of them really shine on their own: they don’t need a large screen, and they’re great for musicians who only own an iPhone or iPod Touch. They also fund their own development, rather than diverting resources that would otherwise be used for fixing bugs and ensuring stability. We think you’ll love the results. [iTunes]
With the release of iOS 5 right around the corner, many of you are likely wondering if it’s safe to update or if you should hold off for a little while. We’re happy to report that as of today, with version 3.1.3, we’re ready. We’ve done a lot of work to prepare for this release, and although there’s no way we can know for certain that we’ve caught every change, we don’t anticipate any major problems. If you rely on forScore—or any app for that matter—you’ll need to decide when the time is right to upgrade, but we think it’s going to be a seamless transition.
There is one important difference with the latest version, however, that results from policy changes on Apple’s behalf: we’ve had to remove our automatic backup feature entirely. It’s an unfortunate change, since we firmly believe that this feature does nothing but benefit our customers (even if it breaks a few rules in the process.) In the end, however, we have no choice but to adapt and move on. We work hard to make forScore the best it can be, and we’re looking forward to the future and all of the great iOS updates we’ll get to yell, sweat, and eventually cheer through. We hope you like it.
San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, a non-profit organization that “aims to make chamber music a vital part of the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area,” will be hosting their fourth annual Chamber Music Day—a free day of live music in San Francisco. We’re excited to be sponsoring the event, and encourage our readers in the area to check it out. Chamber Music Day is October 16th, at de Young Museum from 10AM until 5:30PM. [SFFCM]
Last week we released forScore version 3.1, featuring a completely rewritten metronome and an all-new pitch pipe. The response has been tremendous, and today we’re excited to announce the launch of our newest app, “Pitch, Please!” for iPhone and iPod Touch. As promised, we’ve brought our newest forScore utility to the small screen for everyone to enjoy and use.
We’ve worked hard to make ours the best pitch pipe around: it looks great and it’s a breeze to use. It features two high-quality sound sets and a smooth tone generator for even greater precision. It has a three-octave span and supports C-C and F-F ranges. Best of all, it’s just 99 cents, so now there’s no excuse to be caught without a pitch pipe ever again! [iTunes]
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of forScore 3.1 which fixes an issue with annotation responsiveness and makes two big changes:
The first is the addition of a pitch pipe—something that people have been asking for since we first released forScore last year. We’ve always understood the value of integration, since switching back and forth between apps on the iPad can be a pain, but we also didn’t want to just add a “me too” feature. We wanted to make something really special, and we think that with the extra time it took we’ve done that. In fact, we love our pitch pipe so much that we’re going to be releasing it as a standalone iPhone app in the coming weeks.
Our metronome, on the other hand, was included right from the start but has always been better in theory than in practice. Although the interface has stayed the same for the most part, we’ve rewritten the code a number of times to try and find some way of making it more accurate—with limited success. We know that a metronome isn’t something you can do halfway, though, so we kept at it even with all of the dead-ends.
With 3.1, that has all changed. We’ve rewritten the interface from the ground up so that it’s easier to use (no more trying to let go of that slider without moving your finger), we’ve added time signature support, and you can tap the screen to set the tempo by ear. Most importantly, though, it’s incredibly accurate and won’t slow down even when you’re using large files. It’s a whole new generation of one of the most important features of forScore, and we think you’re going to love it.
Accompanying today’s release of our newest app, forScore: Darkroom, is another minor forScore update—version 3.0.5. We’ve been working hard on a string of maintenance updates over the past several weeks that have focused on refining the big changes we made with 3.0 and fixing bugs, and 3.0.5 is no exception.
It’s packed full of improvements and even incorporates some of the ideas we implemented in forScore: Darkroom, like the option to export files in grayscale as well as full color. And, with iOS 5 right around the corner, we’re continuing to make minor adjustments that’ll ensure a smooth transition for all of our customers. As always, forScore 3.0.5 is a free update for existing users, or just $4.99 USD.
[Update: Some of the changes that we made in 3.0.5 to improve two-finger tap detection inadvertently affected annotation performance. We sincerely apologize for this oversight, and have already submitted a fix to Apple for approval. Please do not install this update if you rely on annotation.]
[Update 2: Version 3.1 has now been released, fixing this issue.]
