Updating the category for this request to "Downloadable Content" as this is an area I intend to improve in BN.

Derek Lee thanks man! Appreciate the reply. Good stuff. BTW, what’s the symbol for a closed hi-hat in Beat Note? I saw a half open hi-hat, but not closed.

So … just now clicking between the beat note app and the browser, I just accidentally added a note to one of my measures. Not sure what note i added. There’s a lot of notes in this one measure. Now I kinda need to look at the whole measure and kinda redo it.

It would be nice if there was just a cancel button. Like, so I’m not committed. Or at least an undo button.

Derek Lee Hey Derek. Quick question, how is this measure counted? Not sure why this count isn’t adding up to me. On the third quarter note, not sure where the last beat is landing. Or where the fourth quarter phrase starts.

I’m reading this like this, the hits in parentheses:

(1) - e - + - a - (2) - (e) - + - (a)

Not sure how the second half lands. Thanks man!

Derek Lee sorry to blow up your forum with all these messages. (Email better?) Just wanted to mention another quick thing. That modal overlay you get when you connect different audio devices. … you got to kill that :)

I get that it’s supposed to work in a designed way, but it doesn’t. It just constantly comes up and interrupts the authoring of measures. You can’t switch between Beat Note and another app without that modal coming up and causing you to wait at least 3 seconds. Over and over. It kills the UX.

Justin Thanks for your comments! Lots of stuff here. Let me go through them one by one and try to make sure I cover them all. 😅

Justin Closed hi-hat - While a plus sign "+" can be used to indicate a closed hi-hat, one of the books I referenced for deciding on the initial music notation implementation indicates: "the inclusion of the plus sign over every note would be cumbersome and clumsy. It should be assumed that all notes for the hi-hat are closed unless otherwise indicated. The articulation for the closed hi-hat should not be used unless the composer or arranger feels that its inclusion would clarify a particular passage." (This is from Norman Weinberg, Guide to Standardized Drumset Notation.) Therefore, I have omitted the closed hi-hat articulation for the initial implementation.

Justin Undo changes - There's an existing enhancement request to add undo functionality. Please cast your vote here: https://roadmap.beat-note.app/feature-requests/p/add-ability-to-undoredo-changes

Side note: If undo was a simple and quick change I would've done it ages ago. It's super complicated and requires a lot of work, and I intend to prioritize and implement it when the right time comes. 👍🏻

Justin Re: "how is this measure counted?" The image you pasted does not look like it came from Beat Note and looks like the music notation is incorrectly beamed. It looks like the "ah" of beat three is missing the 16th note partial beam and the "e" of beat four is missing a dot which would give it the value of 1.5 8th notes, or 3 16th notes. If I were to write this rhythm using Beat Note the way I expect (based on what you're showing here), I would write it as follows (see attached).

I'd create this as a beat and send you the link, but I think it should be clear what the count is for this based on the grid. If you want me to send you a beat link I can do that too - just let me know! 👍🏻

Justin Re: "modal overlay you get when you connect different audio devices" So this is a complicated topic and I'll try to keep this as high-level as possible.

Every time the audio output is changed (speaker, BlueTooth, headphones, HDMI, Airplay, etc), it essentially destroys the entire audio configuration in the app, which then needs to be re-built from scratch and re-started in order to get any audio to work properly. So far as I understand, this is a limitation of the OS based on what Apple provides.

Therefore, in order to properly handle this - and communicate to the user what the system is doing - I am purposely displaying this to the user so they know what is happening. The alternative (what was implemented previously) was not showing anything to the user while the app appeared to "freeze" (completely unresponsive as the entire audio chain is reconstructed).

Long story short: I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. There are certain limitations that I have to work with, and I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

Justin Re: "I get that it’s supposed to work in a designed way, but it doesn’t. It just constantly comes up and interrupts the authoring of measures. You can’t switch between Beat Note and another app without that modal coming up and causing you to wait at least 3 seconds. Over and over. It kills the UX."

What I'd really love to ask you for, not just in this case but in all cases, is the benefit of the doubt, some kindness, curiosity, and empathy. Based on what you see in the app, I hope it's clear that would never do something to purposely "kill the ux" of the app. That is the furthest thing from my intention.

As I mentioned above, there are technical limitations I'm trying to work around. And please believe me when I say: I've lost hours upon hours upon hours trying to test out these scenarios and find the best solution for this problem.

If you are encountering this scenario every time you're editing a measure, then there's something different in how you're using the app, or how your device is responding, that doesn't match my expectations. This screen should only be shown if the audio output changes - and it should only be shown one time. I have to pause the interaction of the app for a full second to re-load the audio configuration - I have not found any way around this. So if you're seeing this notification any other time than that, then it's unexpected and I would consider that a bug. But I can't fix it or even research if it I don't know that you're experiencing it. Especially with something like this - I need a step-by-step and 100% repeatable process so I can determine what's happening.

What would help me the most is a video or a screen recording showing this behavior. Additionally, sending me an email from the app (under the Settings page > Email Derek) includes the technical information about your device. Then I can start to research it, hopefully understand what you're experiencing, and hopefully find a fix for it.

Justin Re: "sorry to blow up your forum with all these messages. (Email better?)"

Different methods of communication are better depending on the scenario.

This community forum is great for topics that benefit from adding transparency and communication with the entire community. My primary intention with this is communication around feature requests and enhancements.

The community forum also benefits most when conversations stay on topic. If you have questions or other feature requests that are not related to the current topic (like undo), it's best not to add a comment here because it detracts from this request.

For bugs and expected behavior, they can be shared here but I benefit from having more technical information, like your device and account information, for most bugs. Therefore notifying me via email from the app (Settings > Email Derek) is most beneficial.

If you have musical questions I'm more than happy to help and email is probably best. That, or you can always set up a time for us to chat (Settings > Meet 1:1). Sometimes the forum and email is sufficient, but communication is one-directional and slow. I prefer meeting in person for deeper topics as well.

That said, I want to encourage and support the feedback you share, so it's more important to me that you share your feedback than how you do it! So you can leave the organization to me - but of course if you can help keep things organized as well that's also helpful to both me and the community in general. 👍🏻

Derek Lee I made a video. Hopefully this helps. Much appreciated.

Justin Thanks for the video! This is super helpful to understand how you're using the app so I can re-create this scenario and see what's going on.

So far as I understand - Beat Note should only process that audio output change if you're changing the audio output. I don't know for sure without digging into it - but there is a possibility that Songsterr is also doing something unexpected with the audio. I don't have control over other apps or how other apps interact with the audio tooling/SDK, so let me investigate and see if there's anything I can do to improve this for you.

I can't tell you how much seeing the video helps! Now that I understand what's you're doing, I can try to replicate on my end and see what's happening. 👍🏻

Justin FYI I just tested the scenario you sent me (switching from Beat Note to SongSterr) and I was able to replicate the behavior you are seeing. 👍🏻 What's most interesting is even when audio is not playing in SongSterr - when audio hasn't even been started - this happens.

That said - I also tested (previously, and also again just now) switching from Beat Note to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Audible, and Podcasts - and nothing happened at all.

I don't know for sure, but it seems SongSterr might be doing something unexpected with the audio session. I don't know if I can work around this or not. I'll experiment with a few ideas I have tomorrow and see what is possible. So far as I know, I'm following all of the "good citizen" recommendations when it comes to acquiring, releasing, and sharing audio sessions on my side.

Justin I spent some time with this and made some improvements. I wish it were simpler, but it seems any event related to audio such as output route changes and interruptions seems to pollute the audio session. It's not clear to me what gets polluted in which scenario, of which there are many, and there's no easy way to test all of these scenarios other than to go through them manually which takes a ton of time (and has already been a huge time investment). To make matters more fun, it seems to differ across iOS versions.

For now, I've implemented the following in version 3.4.6: switching to SongSterr appears to cause an audio output route change event to be thrown, both when switching _to_ SongSterr as well as when switching _from_ SongSterr to Beat Note. I've improved this by comparing the last used audio output route to the current audio output route and if they're the same, then I don't process that notification.

I did some additional testing to see if I could avoid re-constructing the entire audio chain when coming back to BN from SongSterr and there were cases where I could and cases where I couldn't. As mentioned above, there appears to be something that pollutes the audio session, and I don't have proper visibility into this API's state (that I can find) to determine if it's polluted or not to make a proper decision. If I can find a way to determine this then I can avoid that hit and save another second when switching back and forth.

I think this is a significant improvement over what was there before so let's start with this and I'll continue to see what else I can do to further improve. Please give this a try and let me know how it goes. 👍🏻 Submitting the new version to Apple shortly; I expect it should be approved by them and available for download by Sunday May 5th.

Justin Apple's on top of things today and already reviewed and approved the new version I submitted. 👍🏻 You should be able to download 3.4.6 and give it a try with SongSterr and let me know how it goes!

Derek Lee awesome man. Yep, I just installed the update. The audio modal thing is gone. Great work!

I feel like this notation for SongSterr is weird. Listening to Eminem’s Sing for the Moment, and I don’t hear a 16th on the kick. Feels more simple.

Oh, and thanks for the call out in the latest update, in the description text. Appreciated!

Never mind, I hear the 16th kick now. Wasn’t hearing through SongSterr.

Justin Glad to hear the SongSterr interactions are smoother now! 👍🏻 Thanks again for your feedback - this is a great example of how you and many other users are going to be using the app in ways that I couldn't have imagined. Without your feedback, there wouldn't have been any way for me to even start to debug that issue because I don't have any visibility into other apps you might be using, or how they are doing things.

As for the Eminem song, I find it interesting how SongSterr is using 16th note stem-notation even for beats that are not 16th notes. I've heard from some teachers that this style of notation can be easier for students new to music notation to read, but personally I find it a bit confusing as I'm not accustomed to it. Particularly beats where a quarter note or an 8th note would sufficie, it's strange to see 16ths being used. I wouldn't be surprised if that added to your confusion since a 16th note (meaning, not a quarter note or 8th note) shows up only one beat in the measure (the "ah" of beat 2, leading into the downbeat of beat 3).