Symphony Pro - Music Notation

I had such high hopes for this but it is absolutely unusable and the documentation is absolutely no help. Deprsssing, regret paying for it. Crescendo beats it by a mile.

I use this app when I quickly have to write down some musical thoughts I don't have time to open finale. Combine with the Apple Pencil it's really nice. Later, I can import it into finale as an XML. it's really just a musical notebook for me. Definitely had to play around with it for a while in order to use it effectively. I think it's worth 10 bucks.

I love this app, believe me. The resources you get for free are tremendous. But sometimes some of those resources don’t work. First and foremost is the ties. I don’t know why but ties are not working. Not for piano, not for winds, not for nothing. Being a aspiring jazz musician, ties are very important in composition, so that needs to be fixed.

This is a great app, but it has two major problems. Because of these two problem, I almost want to give it three stars, but I’m going to give it four because it DOES have potential to be outstanding. A lot of thought went into this app, so it has potential. The first problem is that it’s glitchy. Things disappear, get moved around, etc. This is extraordinarily infuriating when you spend hours working on a project only to come back the next day and a bunch of parts of the project are moved or resized or something equally obnoxious. The second problem is that entering text is an absolute NIGHTMARE. If you only enter LIGHT text here and there, it will probably work for you just fine. But, if you’re using this particular app to write educational material (like for lessons or classroom), it’s just awful. I did manage to write an entire guitar method book with it, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience to deal with the text aspect of it. Text gets resized, moved around and the worst part - when you export the project, sometimes the text is a jumbled mess. If they fix these two issues (especially the text issue), I’ll give this five stars.

Honestly, It’s my favorite app on my iPad

I’m an old cello guy who has all his music in SP. The program allows playback customization to meet my declining skills. Adding accompaniment parts allows me to use Bluetooth to play accompaniment via an external device while using a pedal to start, stop, and repeat the score or parts of it. These features are a real help in practicing. I’d say, however, the program has some "quirky" faults: 1) It will not back-up my scores to the iCloud. Apple support showed me how to manually copy/paste scores to the Cloud. I finally had to creat a spread sheet to track changes and a date when it was manually backed up. 2) The Apple pencil does provide better a selection technique than a fat finger, but the pencil isn’t always recognized by the program especially if the pedal is active. 3) The User Manual needs an update. I’ve spend lots of time trying to figure out a complex program. Sometimes the explanations are vague or don’t address the searched issue. I am very appreciative of the Lab’s continued work on improving a remarkable software program. Thank you.

This is the first time I’ve felt compelled to write a review for an app, but after dropping $25, it seems worth the time. Bought the main app along with the $10 add-on for handwriting recognition and it just simply doesn’t work. Maybe it’s user error, but I literally cannot select the correct bar and staff I want to write in with the display going wonky and zooming in and out. Once I finally get the correct staff selected, when I go to write (you know the thing you have to pay an extra $10 for), it lets me write one note and then fails to allow me to write any other notes for a chord and fails to recognize a sharp symbol. I tried five times just now to write a simple D and F# in the bass clef and every single time without fail, it got the D, interpreted the # as a staccato marking and didn’t even let me write the F. All I’m trying to do is write down some basic ideas and the user experience SEVERELY limits the usability for such a simple action. Not gonna lie, feeling pretty ripped off right now. Hopefully someone else can avoid the mistake I made.

…for transcribing, arranging and scoring, and have had no real problems [intermediate skill level]. Works well with iPad split screen if not too many other apps are open. Would be great if I had an Apple Pencil, I’m sure.

I have not yet had time to put the latest version of this app through all of its paces, but I wanted to make sure to adjust my review in light of the fact that the app has been updated at least twice in the past two months. I’m happy to see the developers are still active, fixing bugs.

This updated review is written several years after my review from when I’d begun using the app regularly. I’m happy to say that recently the developers’ online presence has resumed after a period being out of contact with users. I’d come to SP as a longtime professional pen & ink music copyist. I was a beta tester for this app from v4-v6, & had high hopes for its progress. I was in close contact with the design team & head programmer, sending them detailed reports they found very useful. It was gratifying to see my suggestions or bug fixes implemented, sometimes within days, & know I was influencing development based on my practical experience. Suddenly, some time after v6 was released, with no warning, my beta license, which had been renewing automatically, expired. Multiple emails to the head & design team went unanswered. I finally had to purchase the current retail version just so I wouldn’t lose years of work & could convert them to an exportable format. After over a year I sadly began shopping for another iOS notation app, dreading taking on a new learning curve from the beginning. THE GOOD NEWS: I see the developers have now resumed user communication & renewed their commitment, after understandably being overburdened keeping up with iOS updates. Apple does little to consider how their updates affect independent developers. Although we users saw nothing on our end, I’m sure it was a hectic time for the SP team. Small developers perform a complex balancing act between user support & maintaining basic compatibility; accommodating a small OS change can mean months of work, causing communication delays. On the other hand, your comments are read directly by the people writing the code, not some clerical sub-subcontractor who may only vaguely (if that) understand what the app does. Responses are individual, not scripted. I’m impressed with the SP team’s dedication to their work & look forward to seeing future developments. ____________________ THIS IS MY ORIGINAL REVIEW OF v4, SEVERAL YEARS AGO: I should qualify this by stating that this is the only notation app I've ever used, so my only bases for comparison are my 20 years experience as a professional music copyist doing string & horn charts for recording sessions, & lead sheets; as well as what I've read about other apps. The features seem to compare favorably to other tablet apps, & after a bit of a learning curve transferring my pen & ink techniques to the app's features, I've been able to functio