Comparison of Notation Composer and Notation Musician

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Comparison of Notation Composer and Notation Musician

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The following chart compares the purposes and features of Notation Composer and Notation Musician. For ordering and pricing information for these two products, see How to Buy Notation.

 

Purpose and Features

Notation

Musician

Notation

Composer

Download MIDI files Internet and transcribe them to sheet music that you can print or view on the screen as the notes play.

Yes

Yes

Search the Internet for MIDI files, download, and unzip them using a built-in Internet browser.

Yes

Yes

Transcribe MIDI file to sheet music with excellent accuracy, including detection of swing rhythms, grace notes, trills and tremelos.

Yes

Yes

Correct any errors that might be made in the transcription of the note rhythms.

Yes

Yes

Automatically analyze and display chord names.

Yes

Yes

Enjoy and study the music notation a song as it plays.

Yes

Yes

Highlight the notes and lyrics as they play.

Yes

Yes

Slow down the tempo so that you can hear the rhythms more clearly.

Yes

Yes

Temporarily increase the volume of one staff while decreasing the volume of other staves, so that you can focus your listening on a particular instrument or voice. "Solo" a staff while the others are muted.

Yes

Yes

Organize songs into playlists and play them back with Notation's built-in jukebox.

Yes

Yes

Practice music as you sing along or play your instrument with accompaniment

Yes

Yes

Transpose the pitch of a vocal part to match your voice range.

Yes

Yes

Automatically turn pages.

Yes

Yes

Set up practice loops, to repeat a section of the song at optionally increasing tempos.

Yes

Yes

Remotely execute commands from your keyboard, such as Start Playback, End Playback, and Fast Forward.

Yes

Yes

Quickly prepare parts from a MIDI file, for use by yourself or musicians in a performing group.

Yes

Yes

Prepare an "Easy Notes" part for student musicians, showing note letters (for example "C") in the noteheads.

Yes

Yes

Prepare a "Sing-Along" vocal part, for easy sight-reading from the screen while the song plays.

Yes

Yes

Prepare a fake book lead sheet part, with melody and chords.

Yes

Yes

Prepare piano reduction of a score that has multiple instruments or voices.

Yes

Yes

Extract individual parts for the players or singers in your music group.

Yes

Yes

Transpose an instrument's part to its natural key, such as for a Bb clarinet,

Yes

Yes

Split a single piano/keyboard staff into right- and left-hand staves.

Yes

Yes

Split a MIDI drum staff into separate one-line drum instrument staves.

Yes

Yes

Split a staff into melody and accompaniment parts.

Yes

Yes

Annotate the sheet music that has been transcribed from a MIDI file.

Yes

Yes

Add lyrics.

Yes

Yes

Edit note beams.

Yes

Yes

Transcribe the following types of ornaments:

Temporarily display an ornament as written-out notes, or revert it to a written-out performance.

Yes

Yes

Add accent marks and articulations, dynamic marks, hairpin crescendo marks, slurs, pedal marks, and other special music symbols.

Yes

Yes

Add staff symbols: brackets and braces, clefs, key signatures, and barline types.

Yes

Yes

Add free text anywhere in the score.

Yes

Yes

Add rehearsal marks.

Yes

Yes

Add 8va octave marks.

Yes

Yes

Add repeat barlines and endings, which will be interpreted during playback.

Yes

Yes

Add special repeat directives, such as "D.C.", for which you can specify the destination measure.

Yes

Yes

Format and print the score and parts.

Yes

Yes

Choose the default font size, face, and style for various categories of music symbols and types of text. The default can be overridden for specific items.

Yes

Yes

Specify the default horizontal spacing (degree of stretch or compression) and default vertical spacing between staves.

Yes

Yes

Control the layout of each page:

Yes

Yes

Add and control the placement of page title, footer and header text.

Yes

Yes

Optionally hide resting staves.

Yes

Yes

Expand or collapse multiple-measure rests.

Yes

Yes

Format parts using templates.

Yes

Yes

Display one-line drum instrument staves using special percussion noteheads.

Yes

Yes

Export a High Resolution PDF for sharing your score

Yes

Yes

Export a High Resolution image (.png, .jpg, .bmp, .gif) for sharing your score

Yes

Yes

Purpose: Re-arrange the notes of an existing song, or create music from scratch.

No

Yes

Create a new song using a pre-defined template for a variety of solo instruments, duet pairs, small ensembles, and large ensembles. Or, use a custom song template that you have previously prepared.

No

Yes

Add notesby whatever method is most convenient for you:

B816using the Sequential Note Entry method, whereby where you rarely have to select the note duration, even when the sequence of notes has different note duration.
B816using Step-Time recording, one note or chord at a time, from your MIDI keyboard or input device.

No

Yes

Change pitches of notes.

No

Yes

Add staves (instrument parts).

No

Yes

Add measures..

No

Yes

Add ornaments::

No

Yes

Change the meter and barline positions.

No

Yes

MusicXML - Transfer your score to other popular music notation programs, such as Finale(tm) and Sibelius(tm), using the MusicXML file format.

No

Yes

Purpose: Record music from your MIDI keyboard or input device.

No

Yes

The recording of your performance is transcribed using the same excellent MIDI-to-notation transcription technology that Notation uses to transcribe MIDI files to sheet music.

 

 

Set up the tempo for recording.

No

Yes

Set up the number of pick-up measures.

No

Yes

Record (punch in) into a selected region of a staff.

No

Yes

Add (punch in) a recording of pitch bends or MIDI controllers on top of notes previously recorded.

No

Yes

Purpose: Edit the performance (MIDI) of the song.

No

Yes

Notation Composer offers the features of a typical MIDI sequencer program but in a more musically oriented way. Editing of the music performance is highly integrated with the music notation. Notation Composer offers an intuitive and fun way to refine the details of the performance without requiring that you know details about MIDI nor requiring you to work with tedious numbers.

No

Yes

Edit the exact as-performed rhythms of notes while viewing Piano Roll Notation that is drawn on top of the notes.

No

Yes

Edit the loudness of individual notes while viewing "vectors" (lines drawn at an angle from each notehead) that graphically show the loudness of each note.

No

Yes

Snap ("quantize") the as-performed attack or release of a note to its notated rhythm.

No

Yes

Independently edit the notation or the performance of notes, or edit both.

No

Yes

Edit the underlying performance of ornaments: grace notes, trills, turns, tremelos, and arpeggios.

No

Yes

Graphically edit the song tempo.

No

Yes

Graphically edit the volume level, left-to-right pan, pedal, and pitch bend activity in a staff.

No

Yes

Graphically edit any MIDI controller data.

No

Yes

Export an audio file of the song

No

Yes