Half Notes

The available oversize keyboard control in NoteCard 3.2 comes as a bit of a visual shock, but will permit extra mousing accuracy.

This is the text of a recent press release: “Learning Musical Notes A Serious Pleasure With Notecard 3.2 (but satisfying user expectations needed literally out-of-the-box thinking, reveals developer)”.

AHA! Software has released a newly-enhanced version of its popular music education application, NoteCard, whose goal is to help even musical beginners achieve rapid but profound memorization of the musical notes. According to the developers, the new release retains NoteCard’s traditional focus on results, but continues an ongoing effort to make the software more approachable for users of all ages.

“We still have some great features in the pipeline for future cycles, but on this occasion we concentrated more on ease of use, and adapting to evolving user expectations”, says developer Nick Sullivan, who wrote the first version of NoteCard on a Commodore 64 computer in 1983, and has continued to extend and refine it ever since. “For instance, we had reports that some users found the keys on the onscreen keyboard to be just a bit too narrow for complete mousing accuracy. We suspect that in most cases this problem would probably have dissolved anyway after a little extra time spent with the program, but the fact remains that for some customers it made NoteCard less approachable.”

The goal of widening the onscreen piano turned out to pose a tricky design challenge, however. The piano keyboard already consumed nearly the full width of the NoteCard window. Widening it further would require either enlarging the window itself, or creating a new, independent window of the required size, but the designers were unenthusiastic about either option. Reconfiguring the main window seemed like overkill when the goal was to accommodate a single instrument. But giving the user the burden of a second window to manage was just as undesirable.

To resolve this design dilemma , the team decided that although a wider secondary window was necessary, physically detaching it from the main window was not. When the user selects the wider keyboard display in NoteCard 3.2, the keyboard appears simply to expand beyond its window borders. When the main window is moved, the keyboard window automatically moves along with it.

The resulting arrangement may raise some eyebrows for its lack of orthodoxy, says Nick Sullivan, but he predicts that users will adapt without difficulty. “It does look a bit odd right at first, as though NoteCard had suffered some sort of aneurysm. But then you see it behaving like a perfectly conventional window, one that just happens to stick out a bit at the sides, and you forget all about it.”

AHA! Software’s unvarying design ideal for the NoteCard software, easily stated though difficult to achieve, is to help users memorize the musical notes as efficiently as human brains will allow, and then recall them quickly and infallibly when needed.

“Note-reading is a prosaic skill”, says Sullivan. “It’s not essentially musical at all. But if you can read with speed and confidence from almost the very start, it’s a huge advantage. Many beginners spend far too much of their practice effort consciously decoding the notes. With NoteCard, note-reading becomes largely subconscious, as it is for an experienced player. That leaves the conscious mind free to deal with more important things, such as music.”

About the NoteCard software

NoteCard is a product of AHA! Software, distributed through AheadWithMusic.com. NoteCard can be operated either in Free Mode, at no cost, or in Paid Mode, with additional features, following a one-time payment of $19.75. Discounts are available for institutional and group purchases. NoteCard is available for laptop and desktop computers running Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. Use of a MIDI instrument keyboard for note input is supported but not required.

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For information about topics covered in this release, or to schedule an interview with the creators of the NoteCard software, please contact us at news@aheadwithmusic.com.

Nicotine not physically addictive, mind is key, scientist finds

A new scientific study reports that nicotine, the potent chemical responsible for many of the body’s responses to tobacco, may not be truly addictive as generally believed. Psychologist Dr. Reuven Dar of the Tel Aviv University says that his research, reported in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, shows why nicotine patches and gum have not proved more effective in helping people quit smoking.

Unlike the opiates, such as heroin, nicotine does not produce true physical withdrawal symptoms if the drug is not taken. But what about the intense cravings that plague most quitters, and end up driving them right back to the habit in short order? Are those just an illusion? No, but Dr. Dar believes their cause is psychological rather than physical. Smoking is a habit — a highly seductive one — but not an addiction as such.

See our press release for the full story.

In the news this week: A new federal law tightens regulation of tobacco companies in the U.S., an Islamic high council in the Philippines declares a fatwa against the production and use of tobacco, and a forthcoming tax threatens $11 cigarettes in New York City.

New U.S. law tightens regulation of tobacco companies

A new federal law that went into effect in the United States this week contains several important provisions with regard to tobacco smoking. In general, the legislation further constrains the marketing of tobacco, and provides for enhanced disclosure and regulation of smoking formulations. However, there are also some significant concessions to the tobacco companies. Some highlights:

• It is now illegal to sell cigarettes with added flavorings — except menthol, which has been deferred for “additional study”.
• Labeling restrictions on tobacco products have been tightened another notch, with new requirements including larger minimum sizes for warnings.
• Words like “mild” and “light” are now prohibited from cigarette advertising on the grounds that consumers might receive a misleading impression of product safety.
• Tobacco companies are now required to disclose the substances added to tobacco in manufacturing, subject to control by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
• However, the FDA is specifically not allowed to force tobacco companies to eliminate nicotine from their products, nor to ban existing products.

[Summary of legislation]

Tobacco smoking illegal under Islam, says Supreme Council

In the Philippines, a council of Islamic leaders has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, declaring it a sin for Muslims to smoke tobacco or participate in its trade. The Supreme Council of Darul Ifta of the Philippines, under Grand Mufti Sheikh Omar Pasigan, based the judgement on teachings that prohibit activities harmful to the body. As in the West, smoking has been subject to mounting pressure in Muslim countries for some time: a smoking ban has been in effect in Mecca and Medina, cities regarded as holy in Islam, since 2002.

[Official statement by Philippines Department of Health]

Cigarettes head towards $11 a pack in NYC

When a new state tax comes into effect in New York on July 1, the tax total on a pack of cigarettes in New York City — where there is also a municipal tax — will rise to $5.85, the highest in the country. This could push the retail price of a pack of smokes in the Big Apple to nearly $11, bringing the yearly cost of a pack-a-day habit to about $4000, more than $2100 of it in taxes.

Although middle-class smokers may grumble at the new tax, such measures are toughest for the burgeoning ranks of out-of-work smokers, and those on low or fixed incomes, especially long-time users caught between their addiction and their encroaching poverty. Government loves the cash, and anti-smoking activists will look on with satisfaction as smoking rates ratchet downward one more notch under the increased financial pressure. As for the multitude of low-income smokers who can’t face quitting, they’re the bottom of the iceberg in this story, and  we may not hear too much about the impact of the tax on their lives. But at 11 bucks a pack, there will be, along with some small number of success stories, a lot of addicts in pain.

[TIME blog item about the forthcoming tax hike]

The GottaKickit Smoking News Digest is a service of GottaKickit.com. GottaKickit is an inexpensive, low-stress smoking cessation plan designed to help smokers break free of their habit with the aid of an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android-based mobile device.