Notation Composer

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Notation Player, Notation Musician, and Notation Composer are all members of the product family developed by Notation Software, Inc.

The original MIDI to notation technology used in Notation software products was created by Notation Software, Inc. in 1994 for Jump!Music’s Piano Discovery System, an educational music program. The original MidiNotate MIDI transcription program was released in 1999 with a MIDI to sheet music notation transcription engine, which allowed the user to see the music notation of a MIDI song file. It also allowed some minor modifications of the musical notation and performance playback.

Development continued on a more powerful music editing and performing program, which would also include a more intuitive interface. In October of 2004, MidiNotate Musician and MidiNotate Composer were released. Both programs use a MIDI-to-notation transcription engine improved from the original MidiNotate. In December of 2006 the product line was changed to reflect the parent company name "Notation", and the products were released as Notation Player, Notation Musician, and Notation Composer. These software applications are currently at version 2.2.

Notation programs maintain a clean display by the use of a three-level palette which clearly shows the editing tools that pertain to a selected object (e.g., note, barline, etc.). When a particular object is selected, the tools related to that object appear in the palette, eliminating clutter in the interface. Many editing tasks are also done graphically, rather than via lists of MIDI events.

Notation Player is a free player that has the same MIDI to notation transcription capabilities as Musician and Composer, but is limited to playback with the display of the notes as they play. It can play and transcribe MIDI files to sheet music (musical notation), as well as the proprietary .not NoteSoft files created using other Notation programs. The Player also prints out the transcribed scores.

Notation Musician has the following capabilities:

Play back files while watching the notes play on the screen
Automatically creates individual instrument "Parts" from a MIDI file for each instrument in the file when it is opened
Automatically split keyboard staves/tracks into a two-handed piano part when the file is opened
Make practice loops with changes in tempo
Add lyrics
Transposition of key for performance, as well as transposing instruments such as Bb clarinet
Easy-Notes view for aid in learning notation (this view displays note names inside the noteheads)
Various types of printed parts preparation for scoring which have backward/forward capability
Numerous annotation capabilities for engraving of scores
Splitting of drum track for fine editing of different drum instruments

Notation Composer has all the capabilities of Musician, as well as compositional and playback performance editing (i.e., music sequencer) capabilities:

Editing of notes for either musical notation and/or playback performance
Entering of notes via mouse, computer keyboard, or recording via MIDI instrument in real time
Unlimited staves (as many as necessary) capability
MIDI controller editing using graphical editing interface
Save files in .mid (MIDI), .not (NoteSoft(tm) format) or .xml (MusicXML)