NotateMe Now for Android

This would be great if it worked better. Problem is, it makes all sorts of bad recognition errors that are very difficult to correct. It wastes more time than it saves, just to fix the errors. There should be a way to edit the score easily like with cut copy and paste, replace, etc., so that writing recognition errors can be quickly corrected. Instead I often find the need to erase a whole bunch of stuff and redo it. Some stuff cannot be corrected practically. In summary, the concept is great, especially with the Google Pencil. The problem is, recognition is terrible, even when it should be plainly clear.

It’s a great idea, but it doesn’t work at all. Quarter notes and rests look nothing alike. Eighth notes look nothing like quarter rests, whole notes look nothing like quarter rests. The only pitches it recognizes, and not even constantly are c and d below the treble. The ap is a great idea and I prefer notating by hand, but it just doesn’t work. An idea isn’t a product.

It looks like this app was abandoned like 3 years ago.

I used to use NotateMe on a Samsung Galaxy Note a few years ago, and remembered it being a little aggravating to learn how to write so the app could understand, but basically useable and useful for transcribing before doing the rest of the work in Sibelius. I installed the free version on my Mobile Pro, expecting it to have hopefully improved and to work reasonably well with the Google Pencil, but..... ugh. It’s such a pain! I have trouble writing dotted rhythms because it doesn’t recognize my dots, no matter how big or small I try to draw them. If I want to write 16th or 32nd notes I sometimes have to try over and over and over to draw the beams, because it doesn’t recognize them; or some of the notes under them just disappear for no reason I can see; or extra partial beams get added in random places; or accidentals or extra slurs or extra rests in other voices show up out of nowhere. I have to make note stems absurdly long to get it to work, except that for beamed groups that go between the top and bottom of the staff I start running out of space in the writing area, which is oddly skinny given how much screen space there is available. Sometimes I have to write the same thing six times in a row before I get it to say what I want. I think my handwriting at this point would satisfy any theory teacher I’ve ever had, and the app still can barely decipher it. It also crashes a lot, no matter what I quit out of in the background. And it has stopped playing back from the edit view, and will only play back from the formatted score now. The only reason I give it two stars instead of one is that for music with only a single voice and no complicated rhythms it’s OK. The only reason I’m still using it is that I’m trying to transcribe a Bach violin partita in order to ultimately arrange it for a different instrument and I don’t feel like hunting down another app.

I’m hesitant about spending $40.00 for the upgrade. The basic version has numerous funky glitches; notes and symbols appearing that I didn’t write, etc. good luck getting the app to correctly place a note above or below the basic 5 line stave. It’s a true test of patience. You’ll get used to erasing an entire measure for a silly reason that moving notes around won’t cure. Very frustrating.