This app went from a good music app for a lot of uses to a massively rushed, bug filled nightmare to use. The downgrade of this app is unacceptable considering it was the gold standard for modern music apps. Critical features have been missing since launch, and the app still has major bugs that make it unusable. Do not use this app, paper music is a far better solution than this disappointment

The old Beam was a good app with some issues. This one is mostly issues with an app buried somewhere beneath them. The lowlights I’ve noticed so far… They changed it so that to enter annotation mode, you hold the screen. Doesn’t sound too bad until you’re trying to zoom in or move the music around, and you end up accidentally drawing all over it because you held the screen too long. Also the bottom bar to switch pages as well as the Beam logo button never go away, which robs precious screen space and covers your music which is especially problematic on a phone. There are also features that are missing or broken from the old Beam app. First of all, they removed the feature that let you auto select your part, so now you have to choose your part for every individual piece, which is extremely inconvenient as a marching band student where we have dozens of different things we need to switch between. They also removed dark music mode, which was a huge battery saver with an OLED screen and was a much more elegant solution than having to invert your entire phone through accessibility settings. Finally and maybe worst of all, the save zoom feature is completely broken. The problem is that when you bring up the menu, it shifts the page down quite a bit, so when you then save the zoom level, it ends up saving somewhere off in the corner of your music instead of where you actually wanted it. Overall, this is a horrible and unnecessary “remaster” of the old Beam app.

Much more laggy and nearly impossible to annotate. Old beam let me freely annotate whichever way I wanted. This new version overcorrects my writing??? Making everything I try to draw with my fingers look incomprehensible. I’ll be trying to add a “B” above a measure and it auto-smoothens it into a “D.” Really annoying. Old beam didn’t do that. The markers also rest weirdly. I’d try to use a different color for the pen and it’ll draw in its original color first before I have to switch it again. Additionally, sometimes I can’t even annotate measures on the bottom of the page due to the bar being in the way and the app not allowing me to zoom and move down there. Speaking of the bar, it’s hard to make it appear consistently when reading music. Sometimes it needs one tap. Sometimes ten. Very annoying. The lag is unbearable. I miss old Beam :( annotating is the worst part right now though.

Whichever company bought out Beam, you people should be ashamed of yourselves. The new app is so much worse and is a disgrace to the art of marching band itself. Zooming in and out has become so much more of a hassle as a result of how sensitive it has gotten. Along with that, the settings on the songs i have been provided don’t even work, and as a result customizing how you scroll through pages has become loads more annoying. Finally, looking at sheet music no longer keeps your screen on, meaning that i either have to constantly tap on my phone while playing or change the settings of my entire phone to accommodate. In the end, please make your app better. Sincerely, a concerned student.