At Innovatrombone we understand that the use of new technologies within our field is a great resource when it comes to making our work easier for trombonists. Therefore, today we have the pleasure of presenting to our users the application developed by a Spanish company that is revolutionizing the world of metal instruments.
BlackBinder
A little more than a year ago the application for reading digital scores, BlackBinder, was officially launched. Focused on its beginnings (as for brass instruments) in the trumpet, the App has never ceased to expand its possibilities for the rest of the instruments in the family.
For the development of the application the BlackBinder team was advised by one of the most international quintets of our country, Spanish Brass, who in May last year made their first concert with the App and for quite some time have been working and advising on different changes.
Spanish Brass with part of the BlackBinder team.
The BlackBinder project has not stopped growing and as a result of its evolution only a few months ago an agreement was signed with the Orquesta de Radio Televisión Española, so that all the brass-wind sections of the Orquesta use the application in their rehearsals and concerts.
Digital transformation project of the RTVE Orchestra (OCRTVE)
BlackBinder uses a new technology, since the scores that we visualize with your reader are not in PDF, they follow the XML format, which allows us to make any change in the score without losing at any time a good image quality. We can enlarge and reduce images, make annotations and delete them, correct wrong notes, establish margins and work with the score in motion changing the tempo depending on our needs.
(Photo App Tablet)
Today and thanks to the acceptance that is having BlackBinder, many trombonists are already using this great resource to do their work.
The Spanish Brass brass quintet with Inda Bonet, Ximo Vicedo, David Rejano, Fabrice Millischer and the Canadian Brass quintets with Achilles Liarmakopoulos and Seraph Brass with Hana Beloglavec are some of their collaborators.
We spoke with Sergio Peñalver, CEO of BlackBinder, who tells us how the idea came about:
Sergio Peñalver
Innovatrombone: Hello Sergio, tell us: how did the idea of creating BlacKbinder come about?
Sergio Peñalver: Carlos Piñuela, co-founder, guitar and New Technologies teacher at the Conservatorio Superior de Navarra, thought it couldn’t be that 300 years after printing, technology hadn’t reached music. And he came to the conclusion that this is because there was no solution that improved the user experience with paper, especially with the turn of the page. To turn paper into a PDF is to reproduce the same problems and add two more: Size and piracy.
Innovatrombone: At the beginning of the project, what was your priority?
Sergio Peñalver: From the beginning, we prioritized the protection of industrial property. We thought we had to protect it and we were going with the idea that they should have invented this. After tracing the patent bases, we saw that no one had approached our approach before. So in 2014 we applied for a patent, which is now effective in the US, Russia, Europe and China.
Innovatrombone: And to finish Sergio, can you tell us the experience of embarking on a project of these characteristics?
Sergio Peñalver: At the beginning we followed all the “standards” of Lean entrepreneurship; to make a quick prototype, a good presentation focusing on the problem and on the solution and to go out to the market to tell it. It was very well received.
First mistake: To think that with technology alone we were going to sell millions of apps. We made Android version, IOS version, investment in design, and in 2015 we achieved the technological milestone of an entire orchestra playing with Blackbinder and that no musician had to worry about turning pages. There were no pages and everything was synchronized. But we hadn’t learned to sell.
Second pivot: Focus on customers. Learn what the market demands. We went to the best conservatories in the world to learn. Doing things with any musician. We realized that each musician is a very different world.
Third pivot: Focusing solely on Brass musicians. We started with trumpet, individual musicians, quintets, publishers, teachers, students and orchestras with their Brass section… And that’s where we are!
BlackBinder and the trombonists:
As we said before, the App has a series of trombonist collaborators that we present below:
Spanish Brass with Inda Bonet
Ximo Vicedo (Principal trombone in the Orquesta de Radio Televisión Española ORTVE)
Fabrice Millichere (concertist and professor of trombone at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg).
David Rejano (concertist and principal trombone in Los Ángeles Philharmonic)
The Seraph Brass Quintet with trombonist Hana Beloglavec.
The Canadian Brass Quintet with Achilles Liarmakopoulos.
Remember dear trombonists, the application for reading digital scores that is revolutionizing the world of Brass is called BlackBinder and you can find it in the following link clicking here: BLACKBINDER
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