Around The Neck

Previously, I looked at Noteflight (www.noteflight.com) and presented an example on the blog of a piece by Sor. After further review, the idea is good but not practical for composition. It is great to be able to collaborate, share, and comment on other people’s compositions. However, the program itself is just too limited for most works. It only allows for two lines and has few special symbols (including string numbers which I use often). You can put text in through the text tool but you have limited control of its output.

Apparently there is an upgrade from the free version to the paid Noteflight Crescendo. This version claims these new features:

• A full palette of over forty professionally recorded orchestral, jazz and rock instruments, from leading sound provider SONiVOX.
• The ability to create scores with parts written in guitar tab format.
• More powerful sharing permissions, such as sharing with only designated users.
• Storage and management of a larger number of scores and compositions.
• Ability to create templates for musical activities by themselves or for others: great for learning activities.
• Selection of stock templates, such as piano score, string quartet and other ensembles

Though all the features listed above are nice, they still are not what I’m looking for in a notation software. The features in the actual notational software are, as of this writing, just not available. The idea of sharing is great and will work for many who use the program. But for those of us who want to write in more than two lines and have much more control over the output, it just won’t fly.