A company that launched at TC Disrupt does this: <a href="http://tonara.com/" rel="nofollow">http://tonara.com/</a><p>"Think of it as sheet music for the iPad generation. Tonara is an iPad app that can map your keyboard pounding to the right place on the sheet music, and then magically flip the page at the right point.<p>Married to a store selling sheet music, it’s pretty clear that something interactive like this will do to sheet music what Kindle did to hardback books. TechCrunch’s panel of judges were dubious of the size of the market, but our guess is this company will be quietly have its tip jar filled high as it plays a requiem for sheet music anthologies." - <a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/09/startups-techcrunch-disrupt/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/09/startups-techcrunch-d...</a><p>They also have a nice video showing it in action: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBXJZKTOcpw" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBXJZKTOcpw</a>
The main problem with sheet music is copyright law. Its differences across Europe will make anyone's head hurt. If that weren't enough, the established publishing industry is extremely conservative. In my experience the musicians --that is users-- would be the last and least hurdle.
As an orchestral violinist, my biggest pain point is that I can't mark bowings into one part and have them appear in the parts for everybody else in the section.
I think a killer feature for this (or a competitor...) would be auto-turning pages using the ambient audio.
"While I am playing piano and have no hands I have to deftly change the music, therefore I need another <i>human</i>" is a huge pain point for performing pianists.
Congrats, Dan! What a great write-up. So glad to see how far this has come.<p>Leaving aside the practical matters native to the iPad, I think not having an extensive classical selection is one of the best ways you could be dinged. It speaks the app's value and a desire to use the app more. And it leaves the door open for a followup story.
Interseting how many startups tackling music business. I was quite interested in a similar startup named Tonara, which debuted on Techcrunch Disrupt[1] earlier this week.<p>[1] <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20105113-250/tonara-puts-sheet-music-on-ipad-listens-to-musicians-play/" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20105113-250/tonara-puts-s...</a>
Synthesia does a very similar thing with Guitar Hero-like scrolling but uses MIDI (so, no sound recognition, you need a MIDI keyboard).<p><a href="http://synthesiagame.com/" rel="nofollow">http://synthesiagame.com/</a>
(no affiliation; happy user)
Most of the things people are hoping and wishing for in this thread have already been solved in the excellent app forScore:<p>www.forescoreapp.com<p>I'm a professional classical singer and have used forScore in performance.