Results for notation

Noteflight has announced the launch of Noteflight Crescendo, a premium online music notation service.

The next generation of their acclaimed Noteflight platform, which enables individuals to write music online, Crescendo provides musicians with advanced features and improved sound quality while still offering an easy and fun means to create and share scores.

“By launching Crescendo we are now able to provide the music community with the best of both worlds–a more powerful online music notation platform for professionals, educators, students and music enthusiasts and a free model for the novice or occasional user,” said Joe Berkovitz, President and Founder of Noteflight.

Following the successful grassroots launch of their online music composition and score-writing platform in 2008, which resulted in tens of thousands of users in 130 different countries, Noteflight Crescendo delivers users a richer sonic experience and more advanced capabilities. An affordable, approachable alternative to desktop notation programs such as Sibelius and Finale, Crescendo takes online music notation to a new level while still maintaining affordability, ease-of-use and the excitement and interactivity of a social music platform.

Built on the same elegant and powerful interface, Noteflight Crescendo users gain access to a set of sophisticated features, including advanced collaboration and a higher quality orchestral sound library provided by virtual instrument manufacturer, SONiVOX (http://www.sonivox.com). Where the free version of Noteflight includes a basic set of instrument samples drawn from the public domain, the Crescendo instrumental palette offers over forty professionally recorded wavetable instruments from SONiVOX. These instruments provide an immersive new dimension to the Noteflight musical experience.

“Our partnership with Noteflight has enabled us, for the first time, to enter the exciting new arena of cloud computing services,” said Jennifer Hruska, Founder and President of SONiVOX. “We’re thrilled by the advent of products like Crescendo that bring the audio experience of SONiVOX instruments to the global online music community.”

In addition to improved sound and more instrument choices, Noteflight Crescendo features include the following.

• Sophisticated sharing permissions, including the ability to share a score only with designated members of the Noteflight community.
• Ability to create templates for musical activities by themselves or for others.
• Selection of stock templates, such as piano score, string quartet and other ensembles.
• Access to increased storage capacity on Noteflight’s servers for storing more scores and compositions.

A subscription to Noteflight Crescendo can be purchased for under $5 USD per month; the company plans to launch the service later in Q1.

More information: Noteflight

Avid has announced the release of Sibelius Student, a notation and composition software platform specifically designed for students in grades three through 12.

Based on the same popular software used by industry professionals, Sibelius Student offers a tightly packaged set of features designed to help students complete music theory assignments, compose pieces for real ensembles, score music to video and increase literacy in music notation, while providing teachers with specific features for classroom use and management.

New in Sibelius Student

• Magnetic Layout – Snaps score elements into position automatically, avoiding the need for time-consuming manual positioning and editing.
• On-screen Keyboard window – Enables young musicians to use the computer keyboard to compose, developing their familiarity with music notation via an easy-to-use interface modeled after a piano’s keyboard.
• Versions and Comments – Saves multiple versions of a score within the same file and enables the addition of Post-It style sticky notes to saved versions, allowing development to be tracked over time and changes to be easily recalled.
• Export audio files – Empowers students to share scores as audio files by using the high quality virtual General MIDI sound module to convert compositions into audio, enabling easy sharing and collaboration.
• Virtual instruments and effects support – Supports the use of VST or Audio Unit virtual instruments or effects, providing for greater control and coloration of playback sounds.

Network Pack and Classroom Control
Sibelius Student is also available as a Network Pack, which includes 20 seats of Sibelius Student and a single copy of Sibelius 6 Professional Edition to help educators prepare lessons and supervise classroom work remotely. A Classroom Control panel in Sibelius 6 lets teachers control students’ computers through the school’s existing data network, and provides teachers the ability to send scores or worksheets to all students at once, freeze student’s computers to gain attention, send out on-screen messages, and gather students’ work into a single folder at the end of instruction.

Sibelius Student is now available to purchase for $99 USD. 20-Seat Network Packs are available for $1,499 USD.

More information: Sibelius / Sibelius Student

Karlheinz Essl has released version 3.3 of Lexikon-Sonate, an interactive realtime composition environment for musical composition and live performances.

Lexikon-Sonate is a work-in-progress which was started in 1992. Instead of being a composition in which the structure is fixed by notation, it manifests itself as a computer program that composes the piece – or, more precisely: an excerpt of a virtually endless piano piece – in real time. Lexikon-Sonate lacks two characteristics of a traditional piano piece:

there is no pre-composed text to be interpreted, and
there is no need for a pianist or an interpreter.

Instead, the instructions for playing the piano – the indication “which key should be pressed how quickly and held down for how long” – are directly generated by a computer program and transmitted immediately to a player piano (or the built-in Quicktime synthesizer) which executes them.

Changes in Lexikon-Sonate v3.3

• Numerous improvements
• Slightly changed user interface
• Runs with MacOS X 10.4 – 10.6

Lexikon-Sonate is available to download for Mac OS X (10.4.11 – 10.6) – for Intel and PPC processors, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

More information: Lexikon-Sonate

Avid has released version 6.1 of Sibelius, the music notation software, which includes an innovative toolset designed to provide aspiring and professional musicians with a more efficient approach to music composition.

Sibelius 6.1 provides compatibility for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7, and includes other improvements and fixes. It is available free of charge for registered Sibelius 6 users.

Changes in Sibelius 6.1

• Sibelius will now avoid collisions between magnetic slurs and objects under their arc — e.g. notes, articulations and accidentals — by adjusting the shape of the slur and moving its end points to produce the best shape.
• New Play > Repeats dialog, allowing you to specify any sequence of bars for playback, and also to specify that nth-time endings should be played back after a D.C./D.S. jump
• Live Tempo can now include tap points, so that you can specify where you will tap, allowing the use of advanced conducting techniques such as melded and dead beats.
• Sibelius is now compatible with HyperControl™, the new two-way communication standard built in to M-Audio’s Axiom Pro range of keyboards. HyperControl automatically maps the keyboard’s controls to playback, Mixer and note input controls in Sibelius, and the Axiom Pro’s LCD display constantly updates to show the current values.
• Improvements in keyboard navigation between notes in different voices, and in which notes are played when individual notes in chords are selected.
• New Sibelius 6-style chord symbols can now be left-aligned.
• New baseline and superscript chord symbol suffix appearances for word-based suffixes (e.g. add, omit, sus, etc.)
• Further options for the numbering of 2- and 4-bar repeat bars.
• It is now possible to specify the width of leger lines on half note (minim) and whole note (semibreve) rests.
• Improvements to the positioning of the left- and right-hand ends of tuplet brackets.
• The Word Menus page of Preferences now shows the words as they will appear in the actual word menu, rather than plain text versions of them.
• It is now possible to adjust the Y position of rests once more, using a new Rest Y control on the Notes panel of Properties.
• New Merge Bars plug-in.
• Export anti-aliased bitmap graphics via File > Export > Graphics.
• Export embedded TIFF files in grayscale via File > Export > Graphics.
• Pick-up bars at the start of a score can now be exported as a short irregular bar rather than a full-length bar padded with rests when exporting a MIDI file.
• Many improvements to MusicXML import.
• Many improvements to the ManuScript language.
• Sibelius is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7.
• Sibelius for Windows is now a Large Address Aware application, allowing it to access up to 3GB RAM on 32-bit Windows, and up to 4GB RAM on 64-bit Windows.
• …plus many other small improvements and fixes.

Sibelius 6 for Windows and Mac is available to purchase for $599 USD (educational pricing is $329 USD per copy with additional discounts when purchasing bundled multi-seat licenses). The version 6.1 update is free for current Sibelius 6 users.

More information: Sibelius

MakeMusic has released Finale 2010a, a maintenance update for the notation software for Windows and Mac.

Finale 2010 – the world’s most powerful music notation software – lets you express your creativity and love of music. Compose, arrange, notate, and print engraver-quality sheet music.

Changes in Finale 2010a

• New Percussion Functionality including new options in the Percussion MIDI Map Editor that allow you to create custom percussion MIDI maps for ultimate control over the sounds your percussion staves play back.
• Support for Macintosh OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
• Enhanced integration of Staff Styles and Linked Parts – Apply Staff Styles to only the part or score you are viewing, and easily update staff styles in a score to match its part and vice versa.
• 271 Classroom Flash Cards designed to print double-sided (with the answers on the back) and to be used in front of the classroom. Topics include keys, note names, rhythm, vocabulary, and musical symbols.
• 126 Individual Flash Cards designed to print double-sided (with the answers on the back) and used by individual students for self-quizzing. Topics include keys, note names, and musical symbols.
• 30 Ear Training Worksheets designed to be used with the free, downloadable Finale Reader. Students can print the worksheets, use the Finale Reader to play the examples, and write the answers on the printed worksheets. Topics include intervals, chords, and melodic dictation.
• See the complete list of what’s new.

Finale 2010a is now available for Mac OS X and Windows. This is a free maintenance update available to Finale 2010 registered users.

More information: Finale

Recordare has released version 5 of Dolet for Finale, a plug-in for the Finale music notation program.

Recordare’s Dolet plug-ins serve as “universal translators” between music notation applications. The Dolet 5 for Finale plug-in reads and writes MusicXML 2.0 and Open Score Format 1.0 files for high-fidelity translations between music notation programs.

Dolet 5 for Finale adds support for Finale 2010, including Finale 2010’s new percussion and chord features. It moves beyond the MusicXML support provided with Finale 2010 by including support for the Broadway Copyist font family. Dolet 5 for Finale also improves import from Sibelius 6 files, adding support for importing new features such as feathered beaming, jazz articulations, and German chord symbols.

More than 30 new-and-improved features have been added in version 5 compared to the previous version 4.8. Advanced MusicXML 2.0 features such as part-name accidentals and per-part measure numbering are now supported. Other improvements include better import of cutaway staves and nested tuplets.

Changes in Dolet 5 for Finale

• Finale 2010 support added
  • Finale 2010 percussion maps.
  • Finale 2010 chord symbols.
  • Export of Finale 2010 auto-sequenced rehearsal marks.
  • PNG, JPEG, GIF, and BMP graphics formats.
  • Broadway Copyist font family.
• Improved import of MusicXML files exported from Sibelius with the Dolet 5 for Sibelius plug-in
  • Improved import of optimized systems that use default staff spacing.
  • Import of text in glissando lines.
  • Improved import of jazz articulations.
  • Improved import of arpeggios.
  • Import of feathered beams.
  • Import of German and Scandinavian chord styles.
  • Credits on blank pages, with an approximate location based on the center of the page.
  • Import and export of more notehead styles, including arrow up, arrow down, slashed, back slashed, and shape notes.
• Improved support for MusicXML 2.0 and Open Score Format
  • Per-system, per-measure, or no measure numbers displaying per part, using MusicXML 2.0’s measure-numbering element.
  • Accidentals in part and group names and abbreviations, using MusicXML 2.0’s name-display elements.
  • Open Score Format support is updated to Version 1.0. For more information on Open Score Format, see http://openscoreformat.sourceforge.net/.
• Other new features
  • Specifying both a named and generic (engraved vs. handwritten) default music font.
  • Improved export and import of trills and glissandos.
  • Improved import of:
    • Stems in percussion staves.
    • Transposed instruments without key signatures.
    • Cutaway staves.
    • A4 and other metric page sizes.
    • Nested tuplets.
    • Unknown fonts as text fonts for lyrics and words.
    • Percussion clefs in documents using the Jazz font.
    • Major seventh and half diminished chords in documents using the JazzCord font.
  • Improved export of:
    • Non-printing key signatures.
    • Endings over empty measures.
    • Total pages text insert.
    • Number of instruments per part.
  • Support for the Kousaku Percussion font.
  • Non-TIFF graphics now import into Finale 2009 as well as Finale 2010.
  • On Mac, the export dialog changes the file suffix on .mus files when the MusicXML format changes.

Dolet 5 for Finale supports Finale 2000 and later on Windows, Finale 2007, and later on Intel Macs, and Finale 2004 and later on Power PC Macs. It is available for purchase for $199.95 USD. Upgrades from Dolet 4 for Finale are available for $129.95 USD.

More information: Recordare / Dolet 5 for Finale