The EM Poll

What's the Score?

Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Peter Hamlin

           

FIG. 1: Notion’s score area dominates the screen, with a sidebar for the Tools, Entries, and Expressions palettes. You can click on the timeline above the score to navigate to any measure.

Music-notation software has become a must-have tool for musicians who work with written scores. It dramatically speeds up the work of composing and arranging, eliminates or reduces the need to pay music-copying fees, and creates professional-quality scores with a few mouse-clicks. This software eliminates much of the tedium of working with notation and reduces errors as well.

Music-notation programs have come a long way over the years, and there are many to choose from. I'm going to focus on the three most-used programs: Avid Technology Sibelius 4.1, MakeMusic Finale 2006, and VirtuosoWorks Notion 1.5.5. All three programs run on both the Windows and Macintosh platforms, include their own integrated sound playback library, and satisfy the most sophisticated notation needs.

Space constraints prevent me from thoroughly describing the operation of all three programs. Therefore, I will focus on those features that differentiate them and that might be reasons to choose one program over another. For an overview of three other notation programs worth considering — Adept Music Notation Solutions Nightingale 4.5, GenieSoft Overture 4.0.2, and NoteHeads Igor Engraver 1.7 — see the sidebar “Also Noteworthy.”

Work Space

Each program has a work space for entering notes and editing your music. Notion, the newest program, presents a particularly approachable work space for someone new to notation software (see Fig. 1). You get a large score area for working on the music, and a sidebar with menus that provide all the tools you need. The sidebar has three menu palettes: Tools, Entries, and Expressions. A fourth palette, Properties, expands when there are properties that can be edited for a selected feature.

FIG. 2: Sibelius has a large work area for the score and floating windows for special functions. The Navigator window (lower left) helps you navigate the score.

In Notion's work space, the cursor appears in the shape of whatever object will be created when you click on the score (a note, a time signature, a dynamic symbol, and so on). Notion has a handy timeline at the top of the page, which you can click on to navigate through the score.

Sibelius's uncluttered work space has floating windows to access various features (see Fig. 2). The Navigator window shows a miniature version of your score with the portion of the score that is now in the work space highlighted. You can drag this visible area to navigate through the score. The Keypad window mirrors the key arrangement on the computer's numeric keypad. It has five layouts, which can be selected with function keys F8 to F12, and it gives you access to many note-entry features. Other floating windows control playback features, sound mixing, Native Instruments Kontakt Player (the tool that plays the instrument samples that come with the program), parts, video, and properties.

Finale has a toolbar across the top of the work space with icons for accessing specific tools. The score work space is located below the toolbar (see Fig. 3). Twenty-nine tools give you access to features such as staff editing, key-signature editing, note entry, and so on. You can customize the toolbar to show only the tools that you use. You can select a tool by clicking on it, and you can assign function keys F2 to F12 to select specific tools.

FIG. 3: Finale’s tools are found just below the menu bar. The score work area is in Scroll View mode. Nonprinting color coding helps distinguish different types of symbols.

Finale has two score views: Page View shows the score as it will be printed, whereas Scroll View shows the score as an unbroken continuous staff flowing from left to right. In Page View, you can move through the pages one by one or you can type in a page number. In Scroll View, you can type in a measure number or scroll forward and backward with the mouse.

Notion's simple, straightforward interface is a big plus. Sibelius has an elegant integrated work space that is a pleasure to use, and the Navigator floating window is especially handy. Finale's Scroll View is an appealing option that I especially like for viewing a score in the early stages of composition.

Time and Key Signatures

To enter a time signature in Notion, you select Time Signatures on the Entries palette in the sidebar. The resulting Time Signatures palette presents a choice of the most common time signatures, but it's easy to create specialized time signatures with any beamed grouping. Key signatures are similarly easy to enter using the Key Signatures palette. You select traditional key signatures from a list of choices. You can create custom, nontraditional key signatures and even have microtonal accidentals (see Fig. 4).

FIG. 4: Notion offers nontraditional key signatures (left) and microtonal accidentals (right), which play back microtonally.

In Sibelius, you select Time Signatures from the Create menu. You can select standard time signatures, or you can open a separate window to create your own, complete with custom beam and rest groups. You use the Key Signatures menu to choose traditional key signatures. Nontraditional key signatures are not supported, but they are so rarely used that they will probably not be missed.

In Finale, you can right-click on a measure while the Time Signature tool is selected and choose from a menu of common time signatures (including alternate groupings for asymmetric time signatures). If you need to create an unusual time signature that isn't on the list, you can do that by separately choosing the number of beats and beat duration. Finale's Key Signature tool lets you select a standard key signature or create a nonstandard one of your own design. As with the Time Signature tool, it is a bit cumbersome to create nontraditional key signatures, but right-clicking provides quick access to common choices.

Notion is the most flexible for selecting and creating time and key signatures and is very easy to use. Sibelius is also easy to use but not quite as flexible, whereas Finale is flexible but somewhat cumbersome in how it handles nonstandard time and key signatures.

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