Performing Arts Technology @ UNCG

Just a quick one-off here, as I’m quite busy with other projects.  I happily subscribe to Spotify.  If you don’t know what that is, you should definitely find out, quickly.  And while it was mostly for personal enjoyment and exploration of music while at work, I’ve found another great use for it as a classical musician preparing for an audition.

The search function is great for typing in the name of a piece you’re expected to prepare for an audition (let’s go with Mendelssohn’s Midsummernight’s Dream, scherzo section, which is standard fare for clarinet auditions).  If I were unfamiliar with this excerpt, and wanted quick access to a large sample size of recordings for my preliminary research, Spotify is perfect.  If you are specific enough in your search query, it’s possible to line up a number of recordings right in a row of the same movement.

That way, I can listen to a number of them back-to-back and listen for interpretive differences, tempo differences, etc. that will help me better prepare for my audition.  It may be true the Naxos can do something like this as well, but you can’t argue with the swiftness that Spotify offers.  And, Spotify has access to some pretty good recordings too!

Its classical library is even getting deep enough where this might be useful for use in schools too – I searched for Eric Whitacre’s Sleep, and found at least 10 recordings.  The “best” recordings may not necessarily be there, but isn’t that a subjective thing anyway?

The cool part about being a paying subscriber is that I can Star the recordings I like (or all of them!), make a playlist, and sync that playlist to my iPhone / iPad for later listening as well.  Audition prep on the go!

Spotify is definitely changing the way I start to prepare for auditions – please feel free to add any info about how it’s helping you!

Recently, Technology for the Classical Singer posted an article on how she handles screencasts from her iPad (which are coming out great, by the way!).  I wanted to share a slightly different approach that I came across, mostly because the audiophile in me doesn’t like the idea of feeding the iPad headphones back into the mic.

The solution posted by Tech4Singers wins in terms of simplicity; the screen recording app takes care of the uploading and all for you.  You don’t need a computer at all to use it.  My solutions do require a Mac computer.

Disclaimer: I have two potential solutions, and both are more complex than the one that Tech4Singers suggests.  But I’m assuming that those of you who want to record iPad screencasts are fairly tech-savvy anyway…so you’ll be able to hack it.

1. The setup begins with an iPad with Touchposé, being projected via AirPlay onto a Mac by way of Reflection
2. Hook up a microphone to your Mac (or use built-in).  Personally, I have a cheap set of MXL 990/991 mics that I feed into my machine using an M-Audio Profire 610, and I use a pop filter to boot.  I’m a bit more hardcore, I guess.
3. Download and install SoundFlower (by Cycling 74), an audio rerouting application.  You may need to restart your computer after this (I honestly don’t remember).
4. Open Audacity, set output device to SoundFlower, turn on monitoring (passes input directly to output without need to record), and make sure your input is coming from your microphone, whether internal or external.  This step will allow us to record our voice during the screencast, and send it to SoundFlower.
5. Open System Prefs, and set system output device to SoundFlower.  The iPad sound is sent to Reflection during mirroring, and Reflection sends its audio to the default audio device (it doesn’t have its own audio options).  Now we have our voice via Audacity, and the iPad sound via Reflection both being fed to SoundFlower.
6. Use Quicktime to do a Screen Recording (Lion or later required), selecting SoundFlower as the audio input device, and selecting the area of the screen that Reflection is running in rather than doing a full-screen broadcast.  Now, the audio that we’re feeding to SoundFlower is routed to the input on Quicktime during our screen recording.

The only real downside here is that you are not able to monitor the iPad audio, but neither can you really with the sound coming out of the headphones as in Tech4Singers’ solution.

The second iteration of this setup involves skipping the SoundFlower setup, but involves some post-production merging.

1. Same as previous – iPad w/ Touchposé –> Reflection on Mac
2. This time, you’re recording the iPad on Reflection, including sounds.
3. Set up a microphone as above, and feed it into a new track in Audacity.
4. Record on both Reflection and Audacity – you’ll end up with a video (with audio) from Reflection, and you’ll get an audio track in Audacity that can be spit out as a WAV or MP3 file.
5. Merge these two in an application like iMovie, and fine-tune your audio sync as necessary.
6. Export from your video app.

This second solution is a bit simpler overall, but what I love about my first solution with SoundFlower is that it produces a video instantaneously that can be uploaded right then and there.  The second solution requires less messing around at first, but you add the post-production step, which is not only not really ideal, but takes a lot more time as iMovie (or your app of choice) to bring in, and then re-render the video.  And again, no audio monitoring of the iPad here either.

Regardless, I think Touchposé and Reflection have a lot of use for me in other settings, as I do workshops and training at UNCG on the iPad.  I could see that coming in handy, since half the battle on the iPad is knowing where and when to tap!

That’s it for me.  Hope this has been educational, at the very least.

After reading numerous posts (like this one) that pose the question, I decided that it’s about time to share my methods for batch optimizing my sheet music scans using Acrobat.

“Optimizing” PDFs, if you’re not familiar with the term, basically does a few things – deskews (straightens), despeckles (removes background noise), and shrinks the file size.  That last one is the one that most iPad users are after – more space means more music you can fit, and means faster loading on the iPad.

The standard way to do this is to open the PDF in Acrobat and select Document > Optimize Scanned PDF.

Getting to the Optimize command in Acrobat

Having to do this with each document individually , however, gets tedious.  Luckily, Acrobat actually has a pretty powerful Batch Processing function that allows users to create a series of commands that can be automatically run on a group of documents, that will save the user tons of time.  Here’s how I created my Batch Optimize action (instructions created on a Mac, running Acrobat 9.5.1, FYI):

1. Go to Advanced > Document Processing > Batch Processing…
   

   Batch Processing menu item on Mac, Acrobat 9.5.1

2. Select “New Sequence…” and name it something meaningful (e.g. “Batch Optimize”
3. On the next screen, click “Select Commands…” – you should be able to find Optimize Scanned PDF in the Document folder on the next popup.  Select it, and click “Add >>” to add it to the sequence.
   

   Adding the Optimize action to the sequence

4.  Double click the Optimize Scanned PDF action on the right side to adjust the settings for the action.  Here are my settings that I find to produce good-quality scans for a new iPad with retina:
   

   My optimize settings

5.  Click OK to return to the main window for your new Sequence.  Keep #2 (Run commands on set to “Ask When Sequence is Run.”  You can choose your own preference for #3 (Select output location) – if you leave it at “Same folder as originals,” it’ll overwrite the originals.  For me, that’s fine, but if it’s not for you, then you can select either Specific Folder or Ask When Sequence is Run.
6. Select OK when you’re done, and now your new Batch Sequence should appear in the menu.  Select it and click “Run Sequence” – choose your files and go!

For what it’s worth, I have created another Batch Sequence for tagging my music, forgoing the outdated forScore app for Mac.  Most of the music I tag is guitar music for church, so I’ve created a Sequence (using the Description command) that will tag the PDFs (using Subject and Author, which forScore will interpret as Genre and Composer), and leave the title as is.  So, as long as I title my pieces correctly while scanning, I run two Batch Sequences and my music is forScore-ready.  Heck, if I wanted to, I could even combine those two into one Process – maybe I’ll get to work doing that.

So, there you have it.  Granted, I do have access to Acrobat Pro through work, so I didn’t have to fork over the money for it.  For those of you in a similar situation, I hope this helps.  Acrobat is capable of so much more than I even know, so in a way it’s overkill, but you can’t argue with results.

If anyone reads this blog on a regular basis – first, thanks  Second, I am sorry for not posting a lot lately.  I have a few posts in mind, but have been quite busily occupied with some major projects here at work, and busy with home life as well.  Things are slowing down a bit, so I hope to resume my weekly regimen here soon.  Hang in there, and thanks again for reading.

There are a LOT of apps out there that convert your iOS device into a “scanner” using the device camera.  Admittedly, I haven’t tried all of them…or even most of them…or even some of them, really.  That’s because the one that I have used with any regularity is so good, I haven’t felt the need to go elsewhere.

TurboScan for iOS - my favorite mobile scanner app

TurboScan for iOS ($1.99 in the App Store) has performed admirably for me as a performing musician.  As with most other posts on this blog, I speak from the perspective of an artist / teacher in the Arts, not as a general user.  I am currently using this app to get music into forScore, essentially replacing my flatbed scanner.

Here’s how it’s used:

1. Snap a picture of the document you want to “scan”
2. Adjust the frame of the document – this is a great feature that allows you to eliminate skewed images, which can occur if you don’t take a perfectly straight picture
3. Choose the brightness level of the scan (also nice)
4. Add more pages (if desired)
5. Name the file
6. Export to a number of different places in JPG or PDF formats, including e-mail, camera roll, and the Open With… app list (you can guess where I go with this).

The other virtue of this application is its SureScan mode, where you take 3 pictures of the same document, and the app performs its magic to make the best possible image out of the three snaps.  You don’t *have* to do this, which is nice if you’re in a hurry because it takes quite a bit longer to do.

The results have been great – but if I have the time, I add a few extra steps:

1. After completing my scan, I’ll open in Dropbox.
2. I’ll open Acrobat Pro, and perform a Batch Processing action I created that simply runs the Optimize Scanned PDF command on whatever documents I choose.
3. I’ll tag the documents using forScore for Mac, as I always do
4. I’ll then open the documents in forScore, using forScore’s ability to Import from Dropbox.

These extra steps are entirely optional, but that’s my typical workflow with TurboScan.  Ultimately, the best-quality scans I have are still from the flatbed scanner, but TurboScan is more-than-acceptable, especially if I’m on the go.

File size is also managed well.  At the “medium” setting, my full-page PDF was 773 KB.  At the “small” setting, my full-page PDF was 461 KB.  In my opinion, both are readable just fine on the iPad, so you can safely use the “small” setting for your sheet music.

However, neither of these file sizes can hold a candle to Acrobat’s “Optimize” function.  While .5 MB isn’t large at all (~2,000 pages per GB), optimizing the PDF with Acrobat shrunk it down to 77 KB, which would give you ~13,000 pages per GB.  You can see why I take the extra time to optimize all of my PDFs.  Even besides file size, optimizing will straighten, despeckle, and performs background removal on the document, making a squeaky-clean PDF.  Worth my extra time and energy, IMO.

The other great thing about this app is that, though it’s not universal, it works very well on the new iPad (yes, I’ve got one now, and it’s amazing), now that it’s got a “real” camera in it.  So, if I’m scanning into forScore on the go, I will typically use my iPad and go straight to forScore, bypassing the optimization and tagging it in the forScore app.

The one thing I don’t know of is a way to optimize a PDF on the iPad.  I have searched intermittently for something that will do this, similar to how Acrobat does it, and have come up empty.  If anyone out there knows of something that’ll accomplish this, please let me know!

Hope this helps.  For $2, TurboScan is one of the best sheet music scanners you can buy.  Haven’t tested it with color, or with other types of documents, but other people have, and love it.

My advice – don’t waste your time with other scanning apps out there.  Unless you have serious OCR or encryption needs (which you don’t for sheet music), go get it now!