Review: Notion 4 shatters your musical notation notions

May 11, 2013

When I first heard that Notion Music had dropped the price of its musical notation editor and scoring package from $249 to $99, I thought that the company was getting ready to close shop and having a fire sale. Or they'd gone crazy. Apparently, however, the company's experience with the iPad version of Notion has convinced them that selling more programs at a lower price might make them more money. Whatever the reason, it's nice to know that the slickest score editor on the planet is safe, sound, and improving. Both the Notion interface and its onscreen notation are eye-candy. The first thing you'll notice when you run Notion is how good-looking everything is. The interface, the pages, the notation, the musical symbol palettes, etc. are all rendered in a very inviting style. The program simply makes you want to compose. It's also easy to use compared to most of the competition. I have a long-standing beef with the notation software industry's lack of true drag-and-drop editing. Notion doesn't support it either, but its editing methods are slightly more intuitive than those employed by Sibelius, Finale, or MuseScore, so editing is easier with Notion. Notion 4 has three excellent virtual instrument grids: a guitar, a piano, and a drum pad which allows you to enter notes. Notion Music's more guitar-oriented Progression featured a guitar, but these are new to Notion. The piano and guitar feature a preview mode so you can try things before you enter them, and both let you enter melodies or chords. If you're instrument-dependent, these are very useful features. The drum pad features a library of rhythm patterns you can drag to your score, but doesn't have a preview mode as the piano and guitar features. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2036919/review-notion-4-shatters-your-musical-notation-notions.html#tk.rss_reviews