Noteflight: start-up that lets you compose music within your browser
noteflight.com
noteflight.com
But too hard to start using. It took me 10-15mins to discover how to enter a note: you have to click where the cursor is. And not just where the cursor is, but slightly to the right... I had to read the help, and it wasn't even the first thing!
Entering a note is the very first thing a user wants to do. For user adoption (which is the what you need when starting), you have to make that first thing incredibly easy: click somewhere, get a note. All the additional sophistication should be additional to that. (IMO)
I think they are aiming at existing users of existing tools. But I think that's too hard - they can't beat desktop applications on their own turf. There's a lot of sophistication in the tool - so it's like they are aiming at what the professional applications do. These tools have competed and evolved to meet the needs of professional composers. However, I think a web tool is really in a different market, with a different proposition. They should first focus on where they strong. It's Writely vs. Word.
Music layout is hard, and their's gets messy when it's more complex (looking at Moonlight Sonata).
The fact that you can't publish to the web, or share (except with people who are already members) makes it harder to get started. Maybe not allow the whole score to be viewed without an account, but a tempter, to entice get people to sign up for the rest. As it is, there's little evidence that it's worth signing up. But maybe focusing on dedicated users (not casual) will work? As I said, it's pretty niche.
I think score sharing done right (i.e. better than this) would be pretty awesome, too. Open it up to non-members and add search, tagging, ratings, commenting, etc., and you'd have the YouTube of musical compositions and arrangements. There's a BIG community of musicians out there for whom that could prove very valuable.
[Insert standard HN remark for sites that require users to sign up before they can try the app.]
Regardless, pretty cool to have something like this on the web.
Why not make it so that if you want to save your composition you need to sign up?
Application like this, you don't need a video. Just let people use it immediately.
But you have to sign up before you can even really see what it does. That's worse than a small install.
I dunno about this one, but I'd understand any designer who wants people to get accounts. There's some rationale there.
I would suggest centering the site and having a slightly more pronounced logo at the top; maybe adding more color too - less black. Also the window where you have sheet music make it larger, while on the side keeping text there. Though change the text on side of sheet music to be 3 bullet points that say the what, how and value proposition. Describe it quickly and briefly. Also as some1 mentioned above get rid of sign up or offer portion of svc no sign up required.
hth
It says it's from Cambridge, though, so maybe other people know more about it than I do?
To be able to share the project is awesome. And the revision too. It's like GoogleDocs for composing music.
http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/2177201ae448ab894682b1...
But I think you have to leave yourself logged in to do it.
I've been transcribing some music recently, and this is one of my big gripes with "western" musical notation: the control flow is really weak. You can't encode something as simple as "same as before, but replace the last measure with __" (much less something like simple macro substitution!). You get "repeat a section once", "repeat the last measure", and a weak form of GOTO. Even a simple score is not at all DRY, which I've found makes it harder both to transcribe and to learn.
Are there any alternative music notation systems that have more powerful features?