Features of our music notation software

Writing your score:

Entry of notes is directly from the computer keyboard. Notes are placed by their name (eg key A for note A) and the attributes added as you type - e.g. press the full stop (period) key for a dotted note. In addition the musical systems (the staves linked together) can be created exactly as you want to see them, and this construction can be varied from system to system within your score. The features include:

• Clefs: Treble, Bass, Alto, Tenor catered for and also two Neutral clefs for unpitched instruments.
• Entry of notes is very fast. Includes grace notes, beaming, staccato, marcato marks, dotting, tuplets, tieing, slurring, note length, cross-headed notes, acciaccatura (etc), rests and more.
• Many supplied Templates and the facility to add your own without limit.
• Variable stave size - from about 0.1" to 4" (2mm to 100mm)
• Full range of system construction options - no limit to the staves per system: the only limit is the number you can squeeze onto your page! The largest score sent to me by a customer was on A3 paper and consisted of 37 staves per page, 1332 staves in total (stave size 0.15" = 3.8mm), and 29,443 musical objects on those staves!
• Completely flexible and variable stave and system spacing for different types of musical layout.
• Choice of 12 note head shapes.
• Cue-sized (small) staves.
• Staves for percussion instruments (drum kits) consisting of from 1 to 5 lines or the ability to add occasional percussion instruments onto a normal stave as for instance Hand Claps.
• Staves for TAB notation of fretted instruments. Library of tunings available, or add your own.

Tools:

There is a range of tools to add and edit other objects. These include

• Symbol tool for adding (by "drag and drop") any of over 180 occasional symbols such as fermata, trills, turns, mordents, figured bass, and many others.
• Curve tool for phrase marks.
• Hairpin tool for dynamic marks.
• General-purpose straight line drawing tool. You can draw lines on the paper in order to form brackets over or in the music, or use this tool to draw arrows or any other lines you need.
• Tempo Tool to add tempo marks either as absolute (eg "note=120") or as relative (eg note = dotted note)
• On-request note alignment and neatening of your score.
• Reports on style violations (eg wrong number of notes per bar etc). But hey - it's your music and you don't have to obey the computer!
• Page numbering tool with flexibility in position and style.
• Bar (measure) numbering tool with flexibility over position and values.
• Block tool for copying and moving.
• Very fast editing of the objects on the stave. Mostly "put the mouse over it, press a key or right-click".
• Saving of parts of a score, merging of scores.
• Very fast creation of musical exerpts for inclusion in a word-processed document via the clipboard.
• Creation of a Word document for sending to others without Music Publisher

Text and words:

On-page text plays a large part in any musical work and Music Publisher allows you to place any text at any position in any font. However, certain text has special requirements and conveniences: There are three tools for text:

• Lyrics Tool for faster entry and automatic alignment of words under notes.
• Chord Name Tool for easy entry and alignment which will produce text which will transpose if you transpose the music, and also play back if required.
• General Text Tool: Titles and miscellaneous text (eg instructions) can be placed anywhere in any font.
• Headers and footers facility with features such as date of printing, unusual page numbering, file name of score on your computer.

Transposition:

Transposing your music is simplicity itself in Music Publisher:

• Change part of or all of the score by the number of semitones (half-steps) up or down. You can for instance change all the staves for Clarinet.
• With optional change of clef. Great for changing say the Viola parts to Clarinet when re-arranging a string quartet for wind quartet.
• Textual chord names also transposed automatically.

Sound:

The program can play back your work at any stage of construction. You can select from just one stave right up to the whole work, and with or without observing repeats.

• A choice from 129 voices - the "General Midi" set plus "silence" and with individual volume controls on all staves in addition to the normal dynamic markings.
• With up to 2 different voices per stave (stems up and stems down).
• Change of instrument mid-stave.
• Single-keystroke 'replay with same settings': great for composing.
• Tempo and dynamic changes observed.
• Pizzicato and brass mute instructions observed.
• Optional playback of chords entered in Chord Name mode.
• Choice of 61 untuned instruments and noises on percussion staves, or as special note-heads on normal staves.
• Library of 'percussion maps' for allocating instruments to stave positions. You can add your own to the library.
• Optional play as you enter music feature.
• Playback in choice of temperaments including Scottish Bagpipes.
• Program can notate and playback quarter tones. Click here for more information and an audio demonstration.

Help:

The support with this program is particularly extensive.

• Built-in tutorial to get you started.
• Choice of 4 user competence levels to give you more help at the stages you need it with optional retirement of those particular warning prompts which get annoying.
• Tip-of-the-day feature which you can disable when you get sick of it. Can't stand it myself, but some customers love it...
• Over 300-page help file organised as short answers to "How do I..." questions.
• "What's this for?" facility on all buttons and controls. Check out the effects of pressing a button before you do it!
• 220+ page coloured indexed manual supplied on disk as a PDF file.
• Laminated crib-sheet: on registration a double-sided colour-printed laminated card measuring 6" x 8.5" is sent which contains all the key-strokes available in the program. Many users have found much faster ways of doing things as a result of browsing it.
• Unlimited free support from the author by email, phone or letter. But I would say that from my thousands of customers I get typically only one support email or call each day! So they either find the program and the help system easy, or else they've chucked the program in the waste bin!

General options

• Choice of language. You can choose to have the program communicate with you in British or American musical terms. We find that many UK musicians have no idea what a measure is,and most Americans fall about with hysterical laughter at the term semihemidemisemiquaver.
• Optional on-screen rulers to help you define exactly where you place objects.
• Single-key showing or hiding of additional features the program is using. For instance the instrument to be used in playback and transposition distance.
• Configuration of Folders to be used for storing files, scans, midi files.
• Colours to be used by the program when showing objects with special properties, or the colour of the cursor or the background 'paper' - pure white can load to eye-strain on some computers. Colour-blind customers have rung to thank me for this feature.
• Special time-wasting features to enable those who like to tinker with colours and background effects to pretend they are working. And plenty of Easter Eggs in the program. If you don't know what they are you don't want to know...

Great Highland Bagpipes:

Music Publisher has quite a following among pipers and extra specific optional features have been included to make their life easier and ours a little noisier:

• Stems: automatic melody created in stem down with all doublings with 3 flags or beams.
• The note range of the instrument is restricted and this is echoed in the software so that (e.g.) there is no ambiguity about which B,C,D,E or F is meant.
• Key: as is customary, automatic playback in 2 sharps even if no key signature is placed.