Show HN: Flat – Music notation software: Web-based and Real-time collaboration

Great to see the evolution to web. Struggle a bit with triples, specifically quarter note. The editor always wants to insert sixteenth note triplets.

Playing another popular score[1] I get constant notifications of other people entering the score, which seems to slow down the animation a bit behind the audio. The slow scroll of the staves when the song moves to the next line also makes the animation a bit sluggish until it gets to the top and is smooth again (but starts scrolling about 1.5 measures later anyway).

It seems like a neat project but the playback usability leaves some to be desired.

[0] https://flat.io/score/56cbc1e390851c1618bae44a

[1] https://flat.io/score/56cf72ecebcadbb864b63c11-hello-adele

1) The need for instruction others have cited I think is a bit over-stated - I was able to get in and start writing immediately without any introduction.

2) Using social media for login eliminates the barrier to entry for me personally. I was fine signing in. Sure it might be fun to allow an ephemeral experience if people just want to check it out but I wouldn't put that at the top of your backlog.

3) Placing notes. IMO placing a notes should be a toggle not a draw function. I don't want to select a note and delete it - I want to double click it and have it disappear as you would in pencil mode in a daw. At the same time, I don't want to click a note and then click on the length of the note to change it - I want to drag the selected note's length.

3) If I want to change a notes length, I'm forced to change a group of notes existing at the same time. I'm assuming this is a limitation of the modelling - eg that for each fragment of time, a group of notes exist together. This inherently limits me from producing music. If I want to write a quarter note A and two eigth notes C and then D I have to draw a twice and then tie it - this is a lot of work IMO. Again maybe it's because I'm used to the piano roll in a daw and I haven't worked in notation software as much but I fell like it should behave somewhat similarly - that notes are more of a toggle.

Using ties doesn't seem intuitive - although it lets me span the length of a single note, maybe you could have a tool that treats notes like a grid and lets me click a noted and drag it in the grid - vertically for pitch and horizontally for length.

Just some ideas based on things that I found where a bit difficult for me to get done having a quick trip through.

It's cool though - thanks for making this. I'd consider laying ideas out here on the go.

As someone who's become used to composing with guitar tablature (a la Guitar Pro) instead of musical notation, it'd be great to see this mode supported as well. The fact that this has MIDI export built in is another great feature and a requirement to prevent lock-in. Good job.

Some thoughts: the typography is rudimentary (lots of spacing issues and collisions), the number of notational features in lacking (can't seem to find how to add a turn or Italian tempo markings, for starters). Note entry is inconvenient (although I didn't try using MIDI), not so happy about the TOS as far as rights to your own work is concerned. I also had a number of failed attempts at xml importing, not sure what eventually led to a sucess. The interface is also pretty simple and intuitive to use, especially compared to native apps.

I've used Finale in its various versions for over 6 years now, and it's still widely considered in academia as the best notation software, not because of its ease-of-use but because of the depth to which one can add weird/special notation to the score.

In my experience, either composers are using Finale, or a combination of Sibelius and Adobe InDesign. This being said, most of the (albeit mostly American, or Americans in Europe) composers I have met/worked with often use notation software as the last step in the composition process.

The collaborative aspect of Flat.io is really nice, but until the depth of notation catches up to the desktop clients like Finale/Sibelius, I have a hard time seeing (at least) concert/academic composers make the switch.

Side note: is it possible to rebind the note values to different keys? I've gotten so used to Finale's 4=eighth, 5=quarter, command+(NUM) for duplets/triplets, etc.

Some issues:

- Vertical page scrolling is not as intuitive. Could the pages be moved into place from the right? (horizontal scrolling).

- Scrolling is not at all smooth and just far too slow throughout (regardless of the mode used).

- No support for multiple systems per page. In other words, if the page could fit more measures, the next measures should be wrapped.

Feature requests:

- Consider allowing a no scroll mode - just skip to the next page.

- Also, allow configuring of page turns X beats ahead of the playback location. For example, I prefer folks to manually turn my pages 1-2 measures before the end of the page as I will have memorized the remaining measures.

- Could you provide an option for the score to resize to use the maximum available vertical space?

- Landscape page mode?

- Hide entire instruments (therefore reducing the system height).

- Support multiple systems per page (line wrapping of measures).

So many sites do this:

> Cool Title!

> Sign up here.

> Some Web 2.0-looking boxes with a few words about how cool the thing is.

> Sign up here.

With no obvious way to something that isn't either a sign-up box or a few more meaningless words.

And then way down at the bottom in tiny font I see "Music Score Editor." Ah-ha! I think, and click. No... that just scrolls me back up to those meaningless words.

Next to that is "Guitar Tabs." Now that one DOES lead to an example. There is a real example! With no way of guiding me to this link, in tiny font at the bottom, and under the previous meaningless link.

And finally I realize that there's a link to the top, "Popular", which is not a helpful word and is, again, next to a meaningless link ("Education", which leads you to more words).

At this stage, it's too early for this to be useful in my personal teaching practice. You undoubtedly have a feature comparison matrix. Hats off for what you've already accomplished.

AND I can see almost immediate use for your app at the stage it is in, with a slightly different angle!

My solfege colleagues would kill for a simple way to integrate music notation and text. Or a quick and easy way to build rich solfege exercises.

I suspect that that may be much easier both to pull off and monetise than yet another (and for now rather feature poor) music notation app.