Content I accidentally deleted from a page, and I'm not sure where I want to put it.
From easily selecting which verses of a song you'll be singing this week without accidentally missing a beat during playback, to making sure the next thing that's going to be sung is ALWAYS on screen, Sing as One was designed to be used by the people who actually use it: from the untrained non-musicians in your congregation who wish they could sing along, to the pro bono junior-high-aged volunteers tapping the "space bar" on your church's budget computer. Sing as One is designed so that common abilities, like following rhythm, are emphasized, and information supporting less-common skills, like perfect pitch, are downplayed. The features were designed to be automatic. So you never need to worry about re-laying-out words or word wrapping on a slide.
"How does my band keep in sync with the notation?" The app adds a metronome sound to the exported video.
WHY A VOICE-SPECIFIC NOTATION, AND NOT ONE FOR ALL INSTRUMENTS?The human voice is a fundamentally different kind of instrument from all others, because of the human ear & human brain. Other instruments, when you press the button for an "Eb", you get an "Eb". No so with humans. #1 there is no button for an Eb. #2, Most people couldn't hit an Eb if you asked for one and they tried. The few that do are said to have "perfect pitch". Most humans have relative pitch. Now, you might think that the instruments are better at music than the humans. Again, not so. The humans can automatically re-sing the tune in a different key with a mere lead in. Think regular instruments are that smart? Head over to a high school band and have their trumpets secretly modulate up a step and see if your trombone section follows along automatically while using all the same slide positions.
So I didn't set out to design a voice-only notation. But I did design a notation for singing. And when I realized that I had to use relative pitch, and not perfect pitch, I realized I had just made the notation more difficult for perfect-pitched instruments. I tried to reconcile it, but alas, again, that was not my goal.ONCE THE PATENT HAS BEEN COMPLETED, I'LL SHARE THE SOLUTION HERE,
WHY NO SUPPORT FOR IMAGE SLIDES, OR TEXT OUTLINES, OR BIBLE QUOTES?Businesses have this idea of a "minimum viable product". It's the product you release on day 1 which is so paired down, so minimal, and yet so distinct that it stands on its own, with nothing besides a single core feature. I was academically trained, so I first imagined that I would release all my big wild ideas on day 1. And that's why it's taken me over 4 years... Finally someone said, "if you keep trying to release the final big product on day 1, you'll never release". So here we are. I actually do have really cool ideas in the space of eliminating slides from showing text, and I even have working demos, which no one else has seen. But that's not a minimum viable product. We have a long way to go in adding features for the music before I can start doing stuff like text & image slides. Remember I have actually re-built my app from scratch for 4 different platforms... (Gosh, I wish I hadn't wasted my time doing that...)WHY NO DYNAMICS SUPPORT?Philosophical answer:
What is music? What techniques do musicians use to create art through music? If I ranked the aspects of worship music from most to least important, and I successfully added a feature until my congregation couldn't effectively use more information, what would I have? Lyrics, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, ... Yes, dynamics is actually #4 in my list. My original design included dynamic markings. But when I considered that pitch was more important, and that it is a very difficult concept; I realized that's where I would start to lose people, no matter what. Dynamics is less of what music is, and more of a technique used to make music beautiful, by those who have mastery of it. Modern audio productions, like movies, and talk radio use a filter called a "compressor" to eliminate large-scale dynamic variations, because they impede communication more than they help. I had to draw the line somewhere, the dynamics was just a little beyond the line.
Practical answer:
My survey results indicated that people would be so happy to finally know the rhythms & pitches, that they would "sing at the top of their lungs", a joke answer I added, hoping people would click "significantly" instead. But, no, more people clicked "at the top of my lungs" than any other answer. Congregational singing isn't a movie score with carefully planned volume changes to emphasize the direness of the moment, or duck under dialogue. It's a bar-hall free-for-all where dynamics don't really make much sense. Loudness and softness in humans are far more easily lead with emotional context than writing "mpf". If you want them quiet, use darker desaturated cooler colors in your artwork, fewer and more-higher-pitched instruments, and have your lead vocalist lead softly. That'll quiet them down far more effectively than scattering these symbols throughout your music: ◔◑◕ (Yes, those symbols are from an actual documented proposal for improving dynamics in music notation. It was actually the best one I read. Yikes.)
Joke answer:
I think Victor Borge was the first person I heard make fun of TMN's dynamics notations. "sfz", he said, sounding it out, and the audience laughed. "Oh, I guess it is kind of ridiculous, if you don't know what it means." Well, most folks in churches these days don't know what it means...
From easily selecting which verses of a song you'll be singing this week without accidentally missing a beat during playback, to making sure the next thing that's going to be sung is ALWAYS on screen, Sing as One was designed to be used by the people who actually use it: from the untrained non-musicians in your congregation who wish they could sing along, to the pro bono junior-high-aged volunteers tapping the "space bar" on your church's budget computer. Sing as One is designed so that common abilities, like following rhythm, are emphasized, and information supporting less-common skills, like perfect pitch, are downplayed. The features were designed to be automatic. So you never need to worry about re-laying-out words or word wrapping on a slide.
"How does my band keep in sync with the notation?" The app adds a metronome sound to the exported video.
WHY A VOICE-SPECIFIC NOTATION, AND NOT ONE FOR ALL INSTRUMENTS?The human voice is a fundamentally different kind of instrument from all others, because of the human ear & human brain. Other instruments, when you press the button for an "Eb", you get an "Eb". No so with humans. #1 there is no button for an Eb. #2, Most people couldn't hit an Eb if you asked for one and they tried. The few that do are said to have "perfect pitch". Most humans have relative pitch. Now, you might think that the instruments are better at music than the humans. Again, not so. The humans can automatically re-sing the tune in a different key with a mere lead in. Think regular instruments are that smart? Head over to a high school band and have their trumpets secretly modulate up a step and see if your trombone section follows along automatically while using all the same slide positions.
So I didn't set out to design a voice-only notation. But I did design a notation for singing. And when I realized that I had to use relative pitch, and not perfect pitch, I realized I had just made the notation more difficult for perfect-pitched instruments. I tried to reconcile it, but alas, again, that was not my goal.ONCE THE PATENT HAS BEEN COMPLETED, I'LL SHARE THE SOLUTION HERE,
WHY NO SUPPORT FOR IMAGE SLIDES, OR TEXT OUTLINES, OR BIBLE QUOTES?Businesses have this idea of a "minimum viable product". It's the product you release on day 1 which is so paired down, so minimal, and yet so distinct that it stands on its own, with nothing besides a single core feature. I was academically trained, so I first imagined that I would release all my big wild ideas on day 1. And that's why it's taken me over 4 years... Finally someone said, "if you keep trying to release the final big product on day 1, you'll never release". So here we are. I actually do have really cool ideas in the space of eliminating slides from showing text, and I even have working demos, which no one else has seen. But that's not a minimum viable product. We have a long way to go in adding features for the music before I can start doing stuff like text & image slides. Remember I have actually re-built my app from scratch for 4 different platforms... (Gosh, I wish I hadn't wasted my time doing that...)WHY NO DYNAMICS SUPPORT?Philosophical answer:
What is music? What techniques do musicians use to create art through music? If I ranked the aspects of worship music from most to least important, and I successfully added a feature until my congregation couldn't effectively use more information, what would I have? Lyrics, rhythm, pitch, dynamics, ... Yes, dynamics is actually #4 in my list. My original design included dynamic markings. But when I considered that pitch was more important, and that it is a very difficult concept; I realized that's where I would start to lose people, no matter what. Dynamics is less of what music is, and more of a technique used to make music beautiful, by those who have mastery of it. Modern audio productions, like movies, and talk radio use a filter called a "compressor" to eliminate large-scale dynamic variations, because they impede communication more than they help. I had to draw the line somewhere, the dynamics was just a little beyond the line.
Practical answer:
My survey results indicated that people would be so happy to finally know the rhythms & pitches, that they would "sing at the top of their lungs", a joke answer I added, hoping people would click "significantly" instead. But, no, more people clicked "at the top of my lungs" than any other answer. Congregational singing isn't a movie score with carefully planned volume changes to emphasize the direness of the moment, or duck under dialogue. It's a bar-hall free-for-all where dynamics don't really make much sense. Loudness and softness in humans are far more easily lead with emotional context than writing "mpf". If you want them quiet, use darker desaturated cooler colors in your artwork, fewer and more-higher-pitched instruments, and have your lead vocalist lead softly. That'll quiet them down far more effectively than scattering these symbols throughout your music: ◔◑◕ (Yes, those symbols are from an actual documented proposal for improving dynamics in music notation. It was actually the best one I read. Yikes.)
Joke answer:
I think Victor Borge was the first person I heard make fun of TMN's dynamics notations. "sfz", he said, sounding it out, and the audience laughed. "Oh, I guess it is kind of ridiculous, if you don't know what it means." Well, most folks in churches these days don't know what it means...
MUSIC XML IMPORT IS A WIPCAN SING AS ONE IMPORT MULTIPLE PARTS?
MusicXML is an extremely complicated format, so for now, we're importing simple MusicXML files. We'll support a single voice in a single staff in a single part. Don't count on pick up beats, multiple lyric lines, or swing beats. This is still a Work In Progress, we hope to begin improving our importing quality soon, and support many other formats. We'll recognize regular tempos, but accelerandos and ritardandos will be ignored, as will cue & grace notes, trills, fermata's...While the .singsong format was designed to support multiple parts, and we hope to release a version of the app with support for that, we can't currently show multiple parts, so we don't import them. In general even MusicXML files with multiple parts only include lyrics on one part, and we'll find that part and import it. The same goes for multiple staves or multiple voices in a part. We'll pick the one voice with the most lyrics. Chords are where we really trip up. Sing as One will only import the first note in a chord, which is normally the lower note, so if your Soprano and Alto parts aren't parts, and aren't voices, but are two notes in a chord.... then we'll only get the alto line, and you won' recognize the song. Use a free MusicXML editor to delete the non-melody notes.FORMS & SECTIONSWHERE WILL SING AS ONE INFER SECTION BREAKS?
Sing as One's file format, ".singsong", understands that songs have sections, and that sections get rearranged into "forms", but the song still has the same essence. For instance, maybe today you want to sing verses 1, 2 and 4, but not 3. MusicXML (and most formats), on the other hand, records only one form of a song, and editing them is (frankly) a nightmare. In Sing as One, creating or editing the sequence of sections of a form is simple drag & drop. Each song can keep any number of forms in the database, ready to be used again.We'll break at explicit rehearsal markers, and use the text as the section name. In Finale, these are called "Rehearsal mark expressions". In MusicXML lingo, these are <rehearsal> tags in <direction><direction-type> elements. In MuseScore, these are called "rehearsal marks". We'll also look for lyric names and infer sections, such as are set by Finale's "Lyric Window" in the popup menu which has options for "Verse" "Chorus" and "Section". We then look for explicit non-linear directions, like repeats, segnos, codas, D.C.'s, and discontinued endings. We'll assign names based on easily recognized common musical forms, like "Intro" and "Bridge".CAN SING AS ONE IMPORT PICK UP BEATS?CAN SING AS ONE FIND IMPLICIT REPEATS?
Sorry, no. The .singsong format was designed with pick-up beats in mind, but for our first release, inferring pick up beats from MusicXML is still too difficult. We hope to release a version of the app in the near future which supports importing pick-up beats, since most music that people enjoy uses pick up beats. For now, edit your file to make all measures full measures. While we're talking about first beats, many hymnals actually type in the number of the verse in the lyric text... which is annoying. Please delete that with a MusicXML editor before import.Most hymnals neglect repeat signs, and even when they include them, the MusicXML file often has the incorrect # of repeats set. This means the repeating is "implied". Currently, we only import "explicit" repeats. Edit your MusicXML file to make repeats explicit, and correctly set the number of repeats before importing. While you're there, make sure MuseScore understands the "number" of the verse, so lyrics are imported into the correct verse.DOES SING AS ONE SUPPORT LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH?... COMPOUND TIME?
We have great plans to support many languages, but right now, we only support English.Nope sorry, compound time is not going to work out like you'd hope. Ironically, tuplets worked fine with no additional work from me. Also, avoid 'swing' notation, where the rhythm of sub-beat units is implied through a metronome expression.HELP EVERYONE FIND BETTER CONTENT
MusicXML is an extremely complicated format, so for now, we're importing simple MusicXML files. We'll support a single voice in a single staff in a single part. Don't count on pick up beats, multiple lyric lines, or swing beats. This is still a Work In Progress, we hope to begin improving our importing quality soon, and support many other formats. We'll recognize regular tempos, but accelerandos and ritardandos will be ignored, as will cue & grace notes, trills, fermata's...While the .singsong format was designed to support multiple parts, and we hope to release a version of the app with support for that, we can't currently show multiple parts, so we don't import them. In general even MusicXML files with multiple parts only include lyrics on one part, and we'll find that part and import it. The same goes for multiple staves or multiple voices in a part. We'll pick the one voice with the most lyrics. Chords are where we really trip up. Sing as One will only import the first note in a chord, which is normally the lower note, so if your Soprano and Alto parts aren't parts, and aren't voices, but are two notes in a chord.... then we'll only get the alto line, and you won' recognize the song. Use a free MusicXML editor to delete the non-melody notes.FORMS & SECTIONSWHERE WILL SING AS ONE INFER SECTION BREAKS?
Sing as One's file format, ".singsong", understands that songs have sections, and that sections get rearranged into "forms", but the song still has the same essence. For instance, maybe today you want to sing verses 1, 2 and 4, but not 3. MusicXML (and most formats), on the other hand, records only one form of a song, and editing them is (frankly) a nightmare. In Sing as One, creating or editing the sequence of sections of a form is simple drag & drop. Each song can keep any number of forms in the database, ready to be used again.We'll break at explicit rehearsal markers, and use the text as the section name. In Finale, these are called "Rehearsal mark expressions". In MusicXML lingo, these are <rehearsal> tags in <direction><direction-type> elements. In MuseScore, these are called "rehearsal marks". We'll also look for lyric names and infer sections, such as are set by Finale's "Lyric Window" in the popup menu which has options for "Verse" "Chorus" and "Section". We then look for explicit non-linear directions, like repeats, segnos, codas, D.C.'s, and discontinued endings. We'll assign names based on easily recognized common musical forms, like "Intro" and "Bridge".CAN SING AS ONE IMPORT PICK UP BEATS?CAN SING AS ONE FIND IMPLICIT REPEATS?
Sorry, no. The .singsong format was designed with pick-up beats in mind, but for our first release, inferring pick up beats from MusicXML is still too difficult. We hope to release a version of the app in the near future which supports importing pick-up beats, since most music that people enjoy uses pick up beats. For now, edit your file to make all measures full measures. While we're talking about first beats, many hymnals actually type in the number of the verse in the lyric text... which is annoying. Please delete that with a MusicXML editor before import.Most hymnals neglect repeat signs, and even when they include them, the MusicXML file often has the incorrect # of repeats set. This means the repeating is "implied". Currently, we only import "explicit" repeats. Edit your MusicXML file to make repeats explicit, and correctly set the number of repeats before importing. While you're there, make sure MuseScore understands the "number" of the verse, so lyrics are imported into the correct verse.DOES SING AS ONE SUPPORT LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH?... COMPOUND TIME?
We have great plans to support many languages, but right now, we only support English.Nope sorry, compound time is not going to work out like you'd hope. Ironically, tuplets worked fine with no additional work from me. Also, avoid 'swing' notation, where the rhythm of sub-beat units is implied through a metronome expression.HELP EVERYONE FIND BETTER CONTENT
- If there's a specific file format you want us to import, let me know. Some file formats we're considering are .midi/.kar, .nwctxt, LilyPond, so "Contact" us and let us know what you want most. (There are already expensive programs from Finale & Sibelius which attempt to convert .pdf's or photos into music notation, so those are out-of-scope for this app.)
- If you can help get the attention of CCLI or NoteFlight so we can integrate their "API" into our app (so users can search for and download their songs directly into the app), please contact us. MuseScore already gave us permission, so we hope to have that in a future release.
- Also, if you know of a great source of high-quality MusicXML files, let us know.