About SingAccord
SingAccord helps congregations participate in musical worship, by using a patented music notation which does not require formal training for non-musicians. Merely by watching it in use in just 2 songs, 85%-90% of people can learn to read SingAccord to their level of musical skill.
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Currently, SingAccord is available as a proof-of-concept Mac App, which exports videos of the notation composited over background artwork to be dropped into your favorite presentation software.
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About Ben Spratling IV, PH.D.
His church-organist / choir-director grandmother began teaching him how to play piano at age 4. It didn’t take, but by age 10 he decided to play trombone in the school band - his father’s trombone - and became first chair trombone, attended many honor bands, including 2 trips to Europe, and eventually became drum major. He became interested in music theory, and began composing music in late high school, composing 3 annual albums.
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After bringing the house down with his impersonation of Elvis as “Pharaoh” in a high school production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, in college he sang harmony in a praise band, joined choirs for special musicals including solos and special character roles for Christmas musicals. But most of his volunteer time was as the video director for the college sunday school, editing 2-5 minute music videos every few weeks for several years, eventually building a team of half a dozen script writers, special effects artists, editors and videographers.
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While double-majoring in Physics and Architecture at Auburn University, Ben was academically trained in visual communication. Though he dropped the architecture major after a few years to focus on Physics, his architectural designs won awards from professors and in a local magazine. He became interested in User eXperience, and app design, and taught himself how to program computers so he could make his own app designs.
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After architecture, Ben became intrigued with “systems engineering”, which lead him into an internship at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and to managing the science team of a student-designed satellite team funded by Space Grant, and subsequently managed a team of students at Auburn to design their student-designed satellite. To round out his technical education to support a career in system engineering, in grad school Ben decided to head towards Aerospace Engineering, and was personally tutored by the Viking 1 Mars lander project manager (and retired Auburn alum), Dick Cook.
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While a graduate student at Texas A&M University, a satellite Ben helped design was deployed from Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2009. And his dissertation research was to make a fundamental performance improvement in algorithms for “star identification”. He turned his Mac-app writing hobby into an iPhone-app writing hobby, and when the iPhone App Store opened with 500 apps, 3 of them were written by Ben.
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With the aerospace engineering industry in recession when he graduated with his Ph.D. in 2011, and his unusual experience in software, Ben turned his hobby of writing iPhone apps into a full-time career, working at giant companies like Wolfram Research and DOMO and too many tiny startups to mention.
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By day, Ben leads a team of iOS developers making the app at a very important startup, though which one exactly is undisclosed. The best app, really. You've heard of it; it's in the news. Well, depending on which news you listen to.
By night, he passionately revolutionizes worship music leadership.
By night, he passionately revolutionizes worship music leadership.
His roots
Ben does not have merely a passing interest in music, technology, entrepreneurship and visual design. His family has been deeply involved in these fields going back several generations. The skills necessary to actually improve leadership in music notation are "in his genes".
Music:
Ben’s grandmother was a church organist and choir director at a Methodist church (as was her mother) after studying voice and music in college, and was in the master’s program at Syracuse when she dropped out because of the war. And almost all blood relatives at his parents’ and grandparents’ generation were musicians, playing flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, trombone, guitar, and a few piano/organist players. His choir-directing-great-grandmother’s Steinway-baby-grand piano is still in the family. Technology:
His father, Ben Spratling, conceived and implemented the use of computers to alphabetize the students’ photographs for the the Glomerata (Auburn University’s yearbook, of which he became the editor) back in the ’60’s when computers filled rooms and used punch cards. Both grandfathers were fighter pilots in WWII, and both became flight instructors. His great-grandfather, Ben Spratling, was a founder and president of the Dixie Electric Cooperative, bringing electrical power to rural areas of Alabama in the 1930’s. |
Design:
Two of Ben’s cousins on his father’s side were college professors in the visual arts. One, William Spratling, who taught architecture at Auburn and later Tulane, designed the Auburn University seal. William also restarted the silver industry in Taxco, Mexico after centuries of non-production. Ben’s aunt on his mother’s side was an accomplished photographer and became the first female president of the national press photographer’s association, and traveled to China to teach page layout techniques to independent newspapers. She taught Ben basic photographic composition techniques. Ben’s mother was a professional writer / editor who managed her own page layout. Watching over her shoulder, Ben learned how to use graphic techniques like “whitespace”, line weight, and alignment to naturally direct a reader’s attention, a key skill in modern User eXperience. One aunt on his father’s side is a renown floral artist and event coordinator, whose credits include decades of debutante and society balls, private home decorations, and an Alabama’s Governors inaugural ball. His other paternal aunt, who inherited her mother’s Steinway grand piano, is a retired anesthesiologist, and has her hobby paintings published in a magazine. (If you're counting, that's both grandmothers with Steinway grand pianos.) |
Entrepreneurship:
His ancestors have owned and/or managed a coal mine, a produce wholesale network, a silversmith shop with hundreds of artisans, an electric company, a floral decoration/event-coordinating troupe, and presided over the National Soybean Farmers’ Association, the National Press Photographer’s Association, the National Genealogical Society, and secretary & treasurer of the national honor society Phi Eta Sigma.
His ancestors have owned and/or managed a coal mine, a produce wholesale network, a silversmith shop with hundreds of artisans, an electric company, a floral decoration/event-coordinating troupe, and presided over the National Soybean Farmers’ Association, the National Press Photographer’s Association, the National Genealogical Society, and secretary & treasurer of the national honor society Phi Eta Sigma.
In the last 3 hundred years, many hundreds of attempts have been made to improve or replace traditional music notation, but few have had a convergence of all the skills necessary to do it.