Features of our music notation software

Philosophy

It's all in the title. The software concentrates on the way a musician sees music: on the page, and exporting the page contents (or parts of a page) into other software such as PDF, Word and Desk-top publishing. It is highly What-you-see-is-what-you-get and edits are made to the actual music page as it will be printed. In short it's a replacement for pencil and paper and thinks like a musician thinks. A handful of our customers use it to earn their living as copyists. See here for a list of some of our current user's backgrounds.

But the printed output is not the only thing it does. You'd expect music software to let you hear the music and so it does and of course it can produce midi files for using in other software or sending to friends. The Scanning Edition can scan music into the system, and the Transposition tool can alter the key. So an a great number of our users buy the software simply to transpose existing sheet music. It's fast and accurate.

Other users (including the author!) use it for composing: in short it's not only a replacement for pen and paper but also an orchestra!

Writing your score:

1. The standard way of entering music 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.

2. Alternatively you can use a MIDI keyboard to enter your notes by playing notes or chords on it. This is a 'step-wise' result, the notes appear on the stave independently of how fast you play. Experience has shown that 'real-time' play-in means a lot of correction afterwards.

   However there are options to input chords to two-stave system, and this is a very fast way of producing hymn tunes.

3. Or if you purchase the Scanning Edition then you can scan-in existing music using your scanner. This is fast and accurate.

Whichever method you use the notation 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 comprehensive range of tools with which you can add and edit your score. 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 excerpts for inclusion in a word-processed document via the clipboard.
• Creation of a PDF or Word document for sending to others who don't have 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.
• The ability to create more than one sound on a stave. For instance classical composers wrote a single stave for 'cello and bass - now you can hear this as intended. Writers of organ music value this as they can imitate the varying sounds and pitches of the instrument - no more relying on the weak Church Organ MIDI sound.
• With up to 2 different voices per stave (stems up and stems down).
• Change of instrument mid-stave.
• Single-keystroke 'play again with the 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 play 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 four 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!
• 270 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. So you can select your own language on menus, titles and such.
  NB an American Measure is a British bar and that semihemi-whatsit is a sixty-fourth note!
• 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 lead 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.