Every now and then there are innovations that come along and simply change the way that our work gets done! The process of having an audio file that a musician would like to figure out a written musical arrangement of is nothing new. The process with which we get that done has changed though over the years. This post is NOT about a new process, new app, new “thing”. But instead it is about using technology in ways that have changed how I have worked in 2022.
Back in the day I would have my cassette player and a pad of paper/pencil on top of my piano. I would hit play, and then mess around on the piano until I figured out the notes and then scribble it down on the paper. Then I’d hit the rewind button and repeat over and over and over until the process was finished.
Then came apps that would allow me to set an auto repeating section of the music so that I could hear it over and over without having to constantly guess at how long to hold that rewind button on my tape player! What a relief THAT innovation was! After cassettes came the CD and then of course working with digital audio files like MP3’s and such.
Then came the apps, AnyTune, that would allow me to actually SLOW DOWN the recording WITHOUT changing the pitch! Now THIS was outstanding! Because my playing by ear is not my best skill. So now I could repeat a section of music and slow it down!
Of course the ability to use apps to create digital music notation greatly speed up the process! Especially when I could use my MIDI keyboard to record parts in real time or better yet, sometimes at a slower speed and then speed it up later!
Of course the advent of DAWS made it easy to have a digital audio file alongside MIDI recorded tracks. This allowed for quickly working up arrangements and backing tracks based off from the original recordings. But the music notation has always been a secondary thought in any DAW. Yes, there has been the ability to view the piano editor but I want NOTATION. Yes, Logic has a score editor but have you actually tried making full arrangements and using the score view? Yeah, I didn’t think so…. I mean it’s better than NOT having that option but….
Another problem we have these days are when I pull in an audio file is the fact that the audio recordings probably do NOT stay in one steady tempo the entire time, music is not really music unless it has some feeling to it which means tempo changes! So now my beat grid is all off in a DAW. Now…. I do know there are ways to tempo map the grid/audio but I am here to tell you that it is NOT a straight forward process and I am a pretty tech savvy person. So I’m pretty sure that someone who is not using this stuff all the time is NOT going to even bother!
StaffPad Audio Abilities
ENTER StaffPad with the Audio Update!
In December 2021 StaffPad released an amazing update that included the ability to pull in audio files alongside working with standard music notation. The fun part is the fact that it is dead simple to edit the tempo map so that the music notation grid stays in sync with the tempo fluctuations in the original recording!
Step One – Create a score and add an audio track In order to get your audio into StaffPad simply drag and dropping it from the iOS Files App into an Audio track. You could also record the audio using your iPad builtin microphone.
Step Two – Tempo Mapping – this is the process to match the fluctuations of the recording to the grid in StaffPad. So add a tempo map from the Utilities menu. Then enable Tempo Mapping by tapping on .
Step Three – Once you’re in tempo mapping “mode”, you can drag the beat and bar markers of the tempo staff freely to match them up with the audio file. Drag the bars to match the transients of the audio file, and you can quickly map even a complex piece.
Make sure you turn the Adaptive Audio off on the audio track as well. Do this by tapping on the name of that audio track and flipping the switch. Also turn your metronome on as you are listening to the audio track and watching those transients in the waveform to make sure you are actually lining the beats up. Don’t feel like you have to line up every beat – start with the measures first. Usually it isn’t every measure you have to line up either – especially if the original recording was done to any sort of click track.
Here is a YouTube video so you get an even better idea of how this all works.
Adaptive Audio in StaffPad
StaffPad also has some other amazing audio features like being able to change key of the score you are working on even when you have audio tracks! You can even make some pretty extreme changes and everything still sounds pretty good!
Another part of the adaptive audio is taking the process above with tempo mapping a step further…. After mapping out all those fluctuations you can then actually get the original audio to stay steady and NOT fluctuate! You can see that in action in the video above!
Watch this video for more info….
All On My iPad
The best part of all of this is that I can do this on my iPad.
One missing link is that I would still LOVE to be able to hook my MIDI keyboard up to StaffPad so I could record parts in real time!
ipadmusiced.wordpress.com 