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Music And Computers
As a musician myself, turning sheet music is the bane of my art. Ok I confess. I haven’t touched a musical instrument since the 11th grade but I did play for almost 8 years so there! Back to the subject at hand, the CLEF system consists of a flexible LCD touch screen with a built-in stand and a wireless foot pedal.
Use the pedal to turn digital sheet music or just touch the screen. It also throws in some computer functions by allowing on the fly scoring, note taking, and collaborative writing. When you need a real computer, a keyboard slides out from underneath the screen and use the foot pedal as a stereo to enjoy the music you just played.
Designer: Sungho Lee
13 Comments »
TH says
There are a number of products out there that do this – some of them have been around for almost 10 years now: eStand, and MusicPad.
There are many appealing aspects in digital music stands. Of course having the music in digital format saves you from having to manage music sheets, which is a big hassle, especially in an orchestra. Also, in some of these systems, the annotations or changes the conductor or composer makes would immediately be made to the sheets of all players. Extra options like playback or recording are not that important.
There are problems, as well, however. The biggest problem in these is readability, especially when under bright stage lights. The new systems are actually getting better and better in this respect – the demands (and solutions) are pretty much the same as for a good e-book – you want great contrast but low energy usage (both are issues this design doesn’t seem to address). Also, pencil on paper music sheet is still the easiest way of making annotations for most musicians, but of course a stylus would do the job as well. And that’s why I really wonder what the keyboard is for in this, I’d think you’d have a touch screen in this. Or have this as a slave unit and do all the tricky stuff such as managing the music library etc. on a separate computer. For this to have any use, it has to have a long battery life and be extremely reliable. So we are looking for something closer to Kindle than a tablet computer.
Of course, price is an issue, and so far the prices of these have been somewhat higher than what orchestras or music schools (or individuals) have been willing to pay.
Marco Leoné says
Another alternative is MusicReader Digital Music Stand which runs on a Tablet PC, laptop or desktop.
Hendrik Coetzer says
Yours was the only reply worth reading – yes I like the concept, but isn’t anybody awake out there – to sell it would be kind of – the concept here – the prices is so ridiculously high, no band, school or individual will ever be able to afford it – so stop advertising your product to joe everybody, and market it to professional blockbuster hollywood gigs – their the only guys who will be able to afford it! We here in south Africa, have a currency 10:1 with yours – if it sells for 899US$, it’s gonna top out here at R9,000 (SA Rand) that’s equal to a good small secondhand car – or two month’s full salaries for a regular middleclass guy here!
Sorry, can’t buy your products, even though we could use them here – some guy once said that it’s better to make 10 bucks from a 100 people, than a 100 bucks from 10 people – dunno, but it seems to make sense to me…
jin woo han says
hm… too much focus on only one aspect…
but good, clear design
inf says
I’m not a musician too, but may be it would be great for the gift
Jonathan Franzone says
FreeHand systems has a product called MusicPad Pro that is very similar … at least in functionality. Plus it is real and not a concept. Of course it doesn’t look quite as nice as this artwork.
nilly says
Hello,
Great product, I must say, and great design, but the price isn’t mentioned anywhere… How much does it cost actually?
Thanks in advance!
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