Link Post
Robby Burns
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation ...
David MacDonald unboxes the Odla music notation controller

concert band

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🎬 Develop Performance Skills Remotely with Cloud Software

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I have been meaning to write about "what I have been doing for online learning" since the fall.

This has proven difficult for many reasons, mostly that there is a lot I have been doing and it is all interconnected.

Generally, my planning and technology use has fallen into two categories.

  1. Tech that supports synchronous classes (via Zoom/Google Meet/etc.)

  2. Tech that supports the asynchronous work (via LMS, cloud-based and student-facing software, etc.)

Fortunately, I was invited to present at two music conferences this year, MMEA and TMEA, and each of my accepted sessions has serendipitously aligned with each of those areas.

This presentation in the video above is an overview of the asynchronous part. In other words, how I am keeping my virtual instruction focused on playing instruments solo, through student-facing tools like Noteflight, Soundtrap, Flipgrid, and a handful of iOS utility apps.

These strategies were developed while I was teaching virtually but they can just as easily be used in a hybrid or in-person teaching model. I would argue that they are just as valuable in either of those environments.

This presentation was first given at TMEA on Saturday, February 14th, 2021.

You can view the notes to this session here.

METT Episode #24 - Bringing in the New Year, with Richard McCready

Richard McCready returns to the show to bring in the new year. We reflect on what we learned over the past year and discuss how music teachers can challenge their perception of tradition, creativity, and learning process, moving forward. Of course we also share our app and album picks of the week.

Show Notes:

METT Season 2, Episode 1 - Digital Organization Tips for Music Teachers with Guest Richard McCready (Richard’s last appearance on this show)

Maggie Shorb on Twitter

Essential Music Technology: The Prestissimo Series (Oxford University Press)

RiverHillMusicTech.com

Truckin' My Blues Away - Blind Boy Fuller

App of the Week:
Robby - Apollo
Richard - Jamzone

Album of the Week:
Robby - Christmas with Travelin Light
Richard - Classic Delta and Deep South Blues from Smithsonian Folkways

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Richard - Twitter | Website

Please don’t forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in…
Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

METT Episode #22 - Teaching Hybrid, Composing Music, and Finding Balance, with Tyler S. Grant

FREE: Remington Exercise Play-Along Tracks - Holiday Edition

If you have not already checked out my Scale Exercise Play-Along Tracks, do it now! Everything is currently 10 dollars off on my store if you use code THANKFUL at checkout. This puts them at only $5! Sale ends tomorrow.

And if you are itching to add some holiday cheer to your rehearsal warmups, you can download my Holiday Edition of the Remington play-alongs from that collection here. These are free of charge.

What makes them a “Holiday Edition?” Sleighbells, of course. And that half-diminished 7 chord everyone thinks sounds “Christmassy.” Sample below.

METT Episode #17 - Talking About the Weather, with Chris Cicconi

Dr. Christopher Cicconi, Assistant Professor of Music Education, and Director of Bands and Orchestra at Towson University, joins the show to talk about selecting meaningful repertoire for your ensemble. We also talk about score study with iPad Pro apps, involving yourself in your music teaching community, and yes, I go on a tangent about my favorite new weather app.

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Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby - Weather Line and Carrot Weather
Chris - Fidelity

Album of the Week:
Robby - Trust in the Life-force of the Deep Mystery - The Comet Is Coming
Chris - Game of Thrones Highlights - Spotify Playlist | Mad Max: Fury Road Soundtrack

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Chris - Towson University Profile Page

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

Thanks to my sponsor this month, MusicFirst.

Making Just Intonation Play-alongs with Trap Beats for Band Rehearsal (Using the Yamaha Harmony Director and Logic Pro)

My band classes meet online using Google Meet once a day for 45 minutes. I am trying to keep them playing as much of this time as possible while slowly introducing the tech tools we will be using to submit work this semester.

Using the Yamaha Harmony Director, plugged in through Logic (along with some trap beats and 808 bass lines I recorded in with software instruments), I have started to make some play-along tracks to route through the Google Meet via Loopback.

This is kind of like a hardwired version of my Tonal Energy/Garageband workflow I have written about here before, only the keyboard hardware and pro editing software allow for much more precision.

They sound like this:


See below for the Logic Pro setup. I am using a drummer track for the trap beat, an 808 bass instrument as a software instrument to record the bass line, and the Harmony Director is being recorded live as an audio track. The HD is plugged directly into my audio interface to do this.

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I decided to keep the bass part droning in the key area of the scale because that software instrument plays in equal temperament by default. It also sounds more like an authentic trap beat this way, where the bass line functions similar to a bass drum.

I already used this method in my first period class this morning and the band loved it. This is just the beginning. I whipped this together in a hot minute and anticipate making a variety of scale patterns in different musical styles.

🎙 #14 - Empowering Performing Ensembles at a Distance, with Theresa Hoover Ducassoux

Theresa Hoover Ducassoux joins the show to talk about technology for teaching band at a distance, productivity methodologies, Google apps for personal and school use, Flipgrid, empowering students, and more...

Other topics:

  • Personal productivity systems and apps
  • The Getting Things Done Methodology
  • Teaching band online
  • Being creative with whatever teaching scenario and schedule your district is moving forward with this fall
  • Engaging students with musical performance using the Flipgrid video service
  • Google apps for personal productivity
  • Google apps for classroom teaching
  • Organizing files in Google Drive
  • Automating band warm ups
  • Chamber music breakout groups using Google Meet and Soundtrap
  • Getting Google Certified
  • Her book- Pass the Baton: Empowering All Music Students
  • Our favorite album and apps of the week

Show Notes:

App of the Week:
Robby - Loopback by Rogue Ameoba (They have educator discounts)
Theresa - Flat for Docs

Album of the Week:
Robby - Jennifer Higdon Harp Concerto
Theresa - Dustin O’Halloran, piano solos

Where to Find Us:
Robby - Twitter | Blog | Book
Theresa - Twitter | Website - MusicalTheresa.com | Book - Pass the Baton: Empowering All Music Students | Blog - Off the Beaten Path

Please don't forget to rate the show and share it with others!

Subscribe to Music Ed Tech Talk:

Subscribe to the Blog

Subscribe to the Podcast in... Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Castro | Spotify | RSS

🔗 Institute for Composer Diversity: State Repertoire Lists (Wind Band)

The Institute for Composer Diversity is curating special lists from their database, and their first one features wind band music! I am especially excited that this list includes works for beginners, an area that I find it typically challenging to program for. There is a lot of beginning music on this list to pick from.

State Lists — Institute for Composer Diversity:

Required state repertoire lists exist differently in every state in the U.S. and ICD, along with our partners in On The List and many others, wants to help to make sure those solo, chamber, and large ensemble lists appropriately provide students with music from many diverse voices. We’re starting with wind band works, but will grow this project to include choir, orchestra, jazz ensembles, and chamber works!

The lists below comprise a growing list of works for wind band composed or arranged by either a woman composer or a composer/arranger from an underrepresented heritage which have been selected by one or more U.S. state for repertoire lists. K-12 schools are required to perform works from these lists at district-and state-wide band festivals and competitions. Most of these works are in our Works Diversity Database (and those that aren’t will soon be)!

First Impressions of StaffPad for iPadOS

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Introduction

I remember seeing the introduction of StaffPad for Windows Surface tablets back in 2015. Applications that convert handwriting to music notation were not widespread yet and I was absolutely shocked by the demo videos.

My amazement was immediately followed by frustration when I leaned this was a Windows only product. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I understood. The iPad was (and is) widely held as a superior tablet for consumer and professional use, but iOS did not have proper stylus support at the time. There were only third party options, and none of them leveraged the operating system for the level of accuracy that the Apple Pencil now provides.

When the iPad Pro launched months later, I thought "surely StaffPad will now be possible." Turns out I was right. Though it has taken many years, the StaffPad team has been hard at work, and the product is now available for iOS.

I have been beta testing StaffPad for the past month. I consider myself to be testing it largely from the perspective of a music educator, specifically a middle school band director, which means that I am doing things like...

  • Reconstructing missing flute parts from my music library using the original score

  • Arranging extra percussion parts for works that are sparse in percussion writing

  • Writing short folk melodies to use in our sectional curriculum

...pretty basic stuff. If you want a very balanced and comprehensive review of all the StaffPad features, not just the ones I depended on, I strongly recommend you check out the Scoring Notes review by David MacDonald.



TL;DR: If you want to skip this review, I'll get to the point:

StaffPad is an exceptional tool for music educators. It is elegantly designed, astoundingly intuitive, and makes exactly the right trade-off for what a teacher would and would not need in a pro-level score editor. It is a best-of-class example of what a professional 'iPad-first' app should look like. It legitimizes the platform by being a tool that executes tasks that no other computing device can.

While I believe StaffPad near-perfectly conceived, it's hand writing recognition is a headache to use at times, and it needs to improve a lot in this area for me to consider it rock-solid-dependable. Fortunately, I got better at it as I wrote this review.

Ok, let's get to it.

UPDATE: I spoke at length about my experiences using StaffPad on my pocast. Listen and subscribe below.


Design and Features

The design of StaffPad is one of the most impressive I have ever seen. It is undeniably professional, but maintains the elegance and simplicity you would expect if you are familiar with Apple’s native iOS apps. It manages not to be overbearing with buttons and knobs, yet none of the tools seem too far away or too many menus deep.

Let's look at the home page.

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Everything is beautifully laid out in a way where my eyes naturally gravitate towards the information relevant to me. There isn’t any information on this screen that doesn’t need to be.

Home shows just recent documents, Library shows all of your stuff, templates shows the customary templates you would expect from a score editor, and Collections shows some pre-made StaffPad scores designed to show off the sound library. I appreciate how the Templates page is not bogged down with dozens of rare options like Mariachi Band.

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The Store button takes you to a screen where you can buy sound libraries and other extensions. More on that later. Discover takes you to some helpful introduction videos.

I am going to get into note input in a bit. Before that, I want to pontificate the nature of writing notes with a pencil  on a touch surface.

At launch, the iPad made a promise to simplify computing for every person, allowing you to touch directly what you want to do on the screen and removing the abstraction of pointing and clicking, the preferred interface of personal computers for decades.

John Gruber, amongst other Apple commentators, have recently had a lot to say about the original promise of the iPad; about how it has maybe lost its way as it has tried to become more like the Mac, introducing inscrutable multitasking gestures and imitating professional PC software rather than leveraging the strengths of a touch interface. There is a great conversation about it on his podcast, which makes special reference to how revolutionary the original GarageBand app was for iPad.

I mention all of that here because I think StaffPad perfectly fulfills that original iPad promise. Writing notes directly on the screen really is the way to write music, as it removes all abstractions and lets you just touch where you want things to go. It also exists in a category of rare, niche, and professional iPad apps that a) cost real money, and b) could not really exist on a Mac. I already wrote about this a little bit here.

So what features exactly does StaffPad have? If you want an exhaustive list, check out StaffPad's help page. It is very detailed and straightforward.

Though StaffPad’s website has a great introduction video, the help page lists everything StaffPad can do in a concise manner.

Though StaffPad’s website has a great introduction video, the help page lists everything StaffPad can do in a concise manner.

If you need specialty engraving features and every editing feature money can buy, you need Dorico or Sibelius (but choose Dorico). If you need a sketch app for music notation, that can make 90% of your score needs come true from the comfort of your couch, StaffPad has you covered.

There are trade-offs. But for my basic purposes, they are just the right trade-offs. For a handwritten sketch app, StaffPad strikes exactly the right balance of what it does and what it doesn't do, especially considering the quality of the resulting scores. There aren't a lot of ways to customize your score's layout, but StaffPad makes really good default choices about how to stylize the final product.

I appreciate that everything StaffPad does is very discoverable and not buried too many layers deep. Most things, you can just write directly on the screen with the pencil (though I had a lot of trouble with articulation, and especially with dynamics). StaffPad attempts to solve the problem of organizing features by using what I call a "double tool bar." I am sure they have a technical name for it. Basically, the tool bar shows one set of tools, and when you tap the upward or downward facing arrow on the upper left corner of the screen, it shows another set of tools.

If I knew the logic behind how StaffPad has organized these tools, I would probably be able to find them better, but because the options are selectable from two sides of the same toolbar, I often get confused which "side" of it I need to be on to get what I want. At least changing it over is only a tap away. 

One side of the tool bar has buttons which contains the following...

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Play, pause, forward, backward buttons.

Button to trigger Reader mode.

Button to toggle a metronome.

Options to change the voice (of which there are four).

Button to toggle an annotation mode. This mode allows you to scribble freely on your score and highlight certain sections. This mode is necessary because regular strokes draw notes on the staff by default. I can’t think of any standard notation editor that allows freeform annotations with a stylus since most of them are not designed for a tablet.

A loop tool. This tool is great but buggy. It does what you would expect. It allows you to circle a section of music and then copy, paste, or duplicate it. This is a nice way to solve the problem of there being no keyboard shortcuts for selection, copy, and paste, in the app. Sometimes StaffPad crashes when I use it.

The famous three-dots button. (which in most apps means "more") This button takes you to most of the notations that you cannot write on the staff directly with the Apple Pencil - trills, fermatas, rehearsal markings, etc. This button is so frequently accessed that I kind of wish it showed up on both sides of the tool bar. Furthermore, it would be great to be able to edit the order the options appear, rather than scrolling to the right every time I need a rehearsal marking.

Fenby. - a digital assistant that you can talk to. Fenby is wicked cool. Similar to digital assistants like Siri, however, it works really well only when it works. I got used to telling it to "add strings" or "transpose" the score, but there are other commands listed on the StaffPad website that I could not get to work.

The other side of the tool bar includes buttons for...

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Undo and redo buttons. Which, again, are so commonly needed that I wish they showed up on both sides of the tool bar. You can use the new text gestures introduced with iOS 13 to three finger pinch (copy), three finger spread (paste), three finger swipe left (undo) and three finger swipe right (redo). Once you get the hang of these, you really start to fly.

Also, a bonus note (and my favorite take away from Paul Shimmons' StaffPad review): copying a selection of music in StaffPad, and pasting it into another app results in a beautifully formatted score excerpt. It’s nice touches like this that make StaffPad a delight to work with.

Copy and paste using the new three finger gestures in iOS 13 is very natural. 

Button add/remove instruments. This screen is super elegant and I love it.

Automation layer. You can actually draw your automations right onto each stave with the pencil. It is too bad this is a feature I will not use that much, because the implementation is really slick. I hope that all iOS DAWS consider adding Apple Pencil support for automation layers.

Button to toggle transposing vs. non transposing score.

Playback buttons. Again, these are on both sides of the toolbar but I use them far less often than some of the other options.

Button to access version history.

Share button. The share menu is ridiculously elegant and straightforward. It has all of the export options you would want, and appears very clean. My only complaint is that it does not work the way standard iOS share buttons work where once you share something, the share menu is no longer active. In StaffPad, it is more of a "mode" that you enter in to. I don't prefer this, but it is also not the end of the world. 

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Home button to go to the main screen.

Settings button. This screen is really straightforward and easy on the eyes. This is the one case where I do wish StaffPad would add more options. The screen is designed nicely enough that I would not mind scrolling downward for more options.

For example, I would like to be able to customize the tool bar or choose for the Apple Pencil's double tap gesture to do something other than initiate a lasso select.

Fenby. I do not think this feature is useful enough to put on both tool bars.

Note input

Ok so here’s where the rubber meets the road. StaffPad only accepts note input through the Apple Pencil. I have written about this elsewhere. I would love for StaffPad, like Notion, to have a Mac counterpart. But it’s not designed that way. Because Windows operates on a tablet, Surface users of StaffPad do not need to distinguish between tablet and PC operating systems. StaffPad runs on Windows, period. macOS is a different operating system than iPadOS, so there is no way I can run StaffPad on my Mac.

Interestingly, the main PC score apps, Dorico, Sibelius, and Finale, have made no attempts at an iPad app. I find that we are in this weird fragmented stage with Apple software where nearly any productivity app (I am thinking iWork, the Omni apps, even now Photoshop) can run on any Apple platform and even sync your work between devices, meanwhile niche pro apps still tend to exist on only one platform (Pro Tools/Ableton on the Mac and forScore/StaffPad for the iPad for example). These niche pro apps take unique advantage of platform conventions (the ability to work with complex audio streams in the case of DAWS on the Mac, and the Apple Pencil in the case of iPad).

Maybe its for the best. But I can’t help but feel like StaffPad would be superior if I could snap my iPad into the Smart Keyboard Folio and enter notes from there, or boot up a Mac version and enter notes with a MIDI keyboard..

Because I can’t do that, it is imperative that StaffPad’s handwriting recognition is air tight.

Simply put: it doesn’t register for me all the time. While I am getting better at it after a month of practice, it has a way to go. Sometimes I write really messy and get surprisingly great results on first pass. Other times, I write as slowly and neatly as I can and StaffPad doesn’t convert the notation.

Fortunately, StaffPad’s rules for notation conversion are very thoughtfully considered. Unlike Notion, notes do not convert until I tap somewhere outside the current measure I am composing. This means I can stop and think as long as I want before moving on. StaffPad also leaves anything that it doesn’t recognize in my own handwriting while converting the rest. This means I do not have to worry about an ambiguous pencil stroke being converted into StaffPad’s best guess, and I can go back and fix it later. Speaking of fixing things later, there isn’t a need to be too careful, because notes that end up a line or a space to high or low can be held with the pencil tip and dragged wherever you want on the staff.

This video shows off the design, features, and note input of StaffPad in action. 

StaffPad’s design ingenuity continues to shines in the details. You are allowed to write whatever you want in a bar, regardless of if it fits in the time signature or not. StaffPad also allows you to drag the bar line to the right with the pencil if you run out of room. These considerations work well for my brain, because there is less cognitive overhead. I feel like I am writing with a pencil and paper, not a computer.

Still, there are times that I  have to try numerous attempts before achieving success. The StaffPad support team recommended that I do notes in one pass, articulations in another, and dynamics in yet another, until I gain confidence with the system. They also recommended that I try to write the notes at approximately the size they will appear once converted. This advise helped but I am still making more mistakes than I would like.

My wife is a professional artist. She uses the iPad Pro to do illustrations and design mock ups. In other words, she has way better control of a pencil than I do. I asked her to spend some time writing various different musical symbols, at varying speeds and sizes. She, too, was perplexed at which of her pencil strokes worked and which ones didn’t.

StaffPad’s help documentation (again, excellent) makes it look really easy. The examples of handwriting are really loose. As a percussionist who detests how other score programs handle drum set notation, I would love to be able to write drum parts as easily as the support documentation illustrates. No matter how hard I try to imitate it, I am getting inconsistent results enough so that I am reluctant to try these features again in the future.

While I am reflecting on note input, I need to acknowledge that StaffPad has, by far, the best implementation of erasing that I have ever seen for the Apple Pencil. There is no double-tap, or need to tap a button on screen to turn on the eraser. You simple press harder! It takes a little getting used to, and it is easy to press too hard when attempting to compose and erasing by mistake. But overall, I wish all apps would adopt this style. It is truly a dream.

Most of my testing for StaffPad included preparing for my recent band concerts. My Concert Band has 10 percussionists and some of my music had only three or four parts. I also have some flutes in my Jazz Band this year, and planned some repertoire that does not have original flute parts. Arranging these additional parts took place while I was on leave for the birth of my first child and was awaiting a return to school, where I would have only two weeks to prepare this concert before the performance date.

Headaches aside, the lightness and simplicity of StaffPad’s design, mixed with its direct note input, made this an indispensable tool for me in the past month. Projects that would have had more overhead using a heftier score editor like Dorico were a breeze using StaffPad and iOS. The iPad’s portability made it easy to sneak little additions to my work into busy days of carrying, holding, and feeding a newborn in one arm while sitting on the couch in my living room rather than at a desk.

Between pencil input and the tool bars mentioned above, there are a handful of features that are hidden beneath contextual menus that are achieved by long pressing on various places in the score. Long pressing in a measure allowed you to change the time or key signature. Long pressing on bar lines allows you to change their style or add measures to the music, add lyrics, text, or chords. These menus are very tastefully done, and as I have already mentioned, they have just enough features that they are confusing to dig through, but just enough that I was never wondering where something was. The lyrics and chords options are not as in depth as other score applications, but they were just right for my needs.

iOS-ness

There are features available to third party apps that I believe should be in every app. I was disappointed that StaffPad did not follow a few of these conventions.

Specifically, I wish StaffPad supported Split View. iPad apps can now share half the screen with another app. StaffPad only works in full screen.

This was frustrating for me, particularly in my arranging project mentioned earlier. I wanted to be able to open forScore on one half of the screen for a reference of the full score, and then compose in StaffPad on the other half of the screen. StaffPad customer support informs me that they experienced weird multi-touch results when StaffPad was on half of the screen and that it doesn’t work. But I would still like to see it happen.

You can use other apps in slide over view, which is where you drag an iPhone-sized version of an app over top a full screen app for quick reference. You can see if the screenshot below that this is really too small to be tenable for score reference.

Referencing a score is awkward because StaffPad doesn’t support the iPad’s splitview feature.

Referencing a score is awkward because StaffPad doesn’t support the iPad’s splitview feature.

Playback 

Spitfire and cinesamples audio libraries, amongst others, are available as inn-app purchases. They sound fantastic! Given how seamlessly they work with StaffPad, it is astounding how easy it is to get good sounding playback. If only using advanced audio plugins with score apps was this easy on macOS and Windows.

That said, I am extremely hesitant about buying these plugins. These samples, once purchased, only work with StaffPad on iOS and cannot be used with any other program like they can be if you purchase the PC versions of these plugins directly from the companies that engineer them.

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Conclusion

StaffPad is a unique composing application that leverages everything unique about the iPad to provide what I anticipate will be an indispensable tool for my work as a music educator. While the handwriting recognition doesn’t always work as I expect, it gets better with each update and also as I practice it.

StaffPad is elegantly designed and makes trade-offs that position it as perhaps the most natural score editor I have ever worked with. I am so glad that this app exists both as a tool for my professional work, and as a statement about what the iPad can be. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a score app that balances power and ease as long as they acknowledge that there is a learning curve and a price.

Want other opinions? Check out these reviews:

Scoring Notes: StaffPad wows with long-awaited iPad release and new free StaffPad Reader

Technology in Music Ed | Chris Russell: Working with StaffPad

iPadmusiced | Paul Shimmons: A Revolution and Turning of the Tide - Music Creation is Changing for the Better With StaffPad for iOS!

App of the Week: PDF Expert 7

Readdle Launches PDF Expert 7, Free Update for iPhone & iPad

Today we are incredibly excited to launch PDF Expert 7 — our vision of what the ultimate PDF experience for every iPhone and iPad should be.

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This week’s update to PDF Expert secures it as my favorite PDF app on iOS. The one and only problem I have been having with it for the past year or two was its lack of integration with the iOS document browser, which shows you the same interface as the Files app when selecting which PDF you want to work with. I wrote about this last week with reference to the OmniGroup’s apps getting support for the native file browser this fall.

Accessing the the document browser is a tap away at all times. A ‘recent documents’ option is also one tap away. This is helpful because PDF Expert does a great job of integrating different options for managing your PDFs. It has Dropbox and Google Drive support. It also allows you to store PDFs locally within the app. This is useful for me when I am creating new PDFs or temporarily making copies of them for the purpose of editing the order of pages, the text of my documents, etc...

The PDF Expert 7 interface. ‘My Files’ are locally stored documents which do not sync to iCloud. They can be viewed in the Files app through the PDF Expert file provider.

The PDF Expert 7 interface. ‘My Files’ are locally stored documents which do not sync to iCloud. They can be viewed in the Files app through the PDF Expert file provider.

I like my ‘one true’ copies of my documents to live in iCloud. I will often take a scan of a stack of concert band parts, drag it into PDF Expert, extract the individual pages into separate parts (Flute 1, Flute 2, etc.), and then save these parts back to iCloud. I don’t want any of the extra files generated during this process cluttering up my documents folder, so its nice to have a quarantined area of PDF Expert where they can live.

The old PDF Expert interface.

The old PDF Expert interface.

The PDF Expert file provider, accessed through the Files app.

The PDF Expert file provider, accessed through the Files app.

These local files can also be accessed from the native Files app as PDF Expert is a file provider.

Furthermore, PDF Expert gets its own iCloud folder where you can store documents by default. This is becoming less necessary because of how easy it is to access the Files interface, regardless of where your PDFs are stored.

As mentioned above, the ‘recents’ option makes it more streamlined to find what you want, no matter which of these methods you have used to store documents.

I am focusing a lot on the file workflow here because PDF Expert 6 already had the best feature set of any PDF app I have used on iOS. A clean interface, great editing tools, the ability to edit the text and images of a PDF (for real!) and more. These features are now all free. PDF Expert 7 introduces some pro features that come at the cost of 50 dollars a year. Some of these features include converting to PDF from Word or Excel files, and the option to customize the look and feel of the editing tools at the top of the screen. I am glad PDF Expert chose these features to put in the paid tier. It is just enough that it will be worth it for some users, but all of the good stuff is still in the free version.

I will probably try the one week free trial but will most likely stick with the free version.

These PDFs are stored inside of iCloud Drive, inside a folder called PDF Expert. Though this is becoming less necessary now that the Files app is integrated more directly into the app.

These PDFs are stored inside of iCloud Drive, inside a folder called PDF Expert. Though this is becoming less necessary now that the Files app is integrated more directly into the app.

The new PDF Expert interface puts the iOS document browser. In this screenshot, I can directly access PDFs that are stored in my musical Scores folder, which is in my iCloud Drive.

The new PDF Expert interface puts the iOS document browser. In this screenshot, I can directly access PDFs that are stored in my musical Scores folder, which is in my iCloud Drive.

Find Robby elsewhere on the web