Music Publisher (Notation / Sight Reading)

Keywords: music  notation  music editing  score  writing  music publishing  transpose  scan  scanning  music ocr  midi 

Music notating software with a difference. Its design philosophy is simply to replace pen and paper: it leaves you in complete command of the whole score-writing process and layout. For total flexibility and control it allows you to put whatever you want wherever you want it - it does not impose any standards of its own, so if what you write is musical nonsense then that's up to you. In fact think of it as a word-processor for music. The full range of facilities are there from clefs to ending barlines. It covers general text (drop text anywhere you want it), lyrics, 160+ miscellaneous symbols (just place on the paper as required), many types of line and even a shape tool should you want it, plus headers and footers and of course transposition, playback and Midi file production. In keeping with the philosophy suggested by the program's title it can create high resolution pictures of any part of the page for transferring very quickly to a word-processor. There is a wealth of help with the program: Four user levels give decreasing amounts of help as you move yourself up; there's a built-in Tutorial; a "What's this for?" button on every control; a Tip of the Day and the strongly indexed Help file is organised as the answers to 270+ "How do I..." questions. There is also the ability to generate a Keyboard Shortcuts printout and an online or email discussion group and registered users are supplied with a 120 page printed indexed illustrated manual. While the program is complete in itself, there are a number of optional add-on modules available which cover extra functions such as Scanning In; Extended note head shapes (but 6 types are in the basic program); playback in Different Temperaments and Automatic Bar Numbering. In preparation are Part Extraction; ABC format reading and writing and TAB Notation for fretted instruments.