User Guide for Android
Overview
With What’s My Note?, you use a smartphone or tablet, instead of a piano, to learn your notes. Photograph a page of the score, or import the score from a PDF or image file. Then touch individual notes in the photo to hear them played.
You control which notes are played, and how fast, as if notes were played on a piano. Phrases are played by sliding a finger from the start of the phrase to the end. Intervals can be repeated by sliding back and forth between two adjacent notes.
What’s My Note? reads published choral music – the kind used by high school choruses, church choirs, barbershops and musical theater. For more information, see the Document Requirements page.
Photograph Music
- Take the photo in bright, even light.
- Use a clean unmarked original copy of the music.
- Lay the page flush on a flat surface.
- Include the full staff width in every photo.
- Align the music to the green guidelines.
- Hold the camera still until you hear the shutter click.
- It may help to use both hands and rest your elbows on the table.
- If the full page won’t scan, try rotating to capture a half page.
It may take several tries to obtain a good picture, even when all of these conditions are met. Please be patient. With practice, you will learn how to obtain pictures on the first try. Reading music is difficult, even for computers. Your phone needs all the help it can get!
Your page might not readable. For more information, see the Document Requirements page.
Multiple Page mode
By default, the camera disappears after taking a photograph, so you can play the new music. To change this setting, tap the icon:
Photograph one page
Photograph multiple pages
Import Files
You can import a PDF document or image file (JPEG or PNG) from the browser, email, or any other app on your device that may hold document files.
Note that this is most likely to succeed if the PDF was prepared by a publisher or using music publishing software. PDFs received as faxes, or scanned from a low resolution scanner may not be readable. Photographs must be high-resolution, and created under bright light.
To import a document into What’s My Note?, first display it in the app where it currently resides. Then:
– Select “Open with . . . ” from the menu
OR tap the share icon at the bottom left of the screen.
– Select “What’s My Note? – Import” from the list.
Play Music
- To hear a note, press and hold it.
- To hear an interval, drag between the notes.
- To hear a melody, drag across the notes from left to right.
- To zoom to a particular position on the page, double-tap at that position. Double-tap again to return to the full page view.
Track
This option allows you to see what note is currently playing.
The track bubble can be activated or hidden from the Settings view.
Replay
The Replay Panel allows you to record the notes you play, and then play back the recording.
To record a passage that spans more than one page, record the start of the passage, pause the recording, move to the new position, then resume recording.
The Replay Panel can be activated or hidden from the Settings view.
Settings
To configure how What’s My Note? reads music, selected Settings from the menu.
Octave Settings
Octave issues arise because vocal music is often sung an octave higher or lower than written. This may be indicated by an “8” attached to the clef, but most often, it is not explicitly notated. Hence, the need for a setting.
Here are the choices:
Play as written.
Play treble clef an octave lower than written. Select this option if you are a tenor.
Play bass clef an octave higher than written. Select this option if you sing bass in a women’s barbershop quartet.
Missing Clefs
When the music does not contain clefs, a default clef can be selected from the bottom row of the Settings View.
Manage Your Music
To assign a name to a page of music, tap the title above the music view.
To view a list of all your music, tap the Directory icon 
. Here you can choose a particular page to view and play.
To delete or move pages, enter the Directory view, then tap the edit icon 
. (The sample page always remains at the top of the list.)
Sharing Your Music
You cannot export music from What’s My Note? to others’ devices because to do so could be a violation of copyright.