Music Education meets the Web

Thanks to my Plurk buddy Skip Z, a wonderfully active educator from the US of A, (you'll also find him here on me.edu.au) I have finally stumbled across something I have been waiting a long time to see...

Noteflight is the first online music composition tool that sits entirely on the web. Although not as powerful as other software programs such as Sibelius, the Noteflight score editor allows you to do the basics: compose online, play back your work and print it. Also after creating your own scores, you can choose to share them with others, can publish them to Noteflight's online music library, link to them, or embed them in your blog. Composing and accessing your work on the run just got easier!

Still in Beta, Noteflight has limited instrumentation - piano, bass, drums, violin, guitar, flute, soprano sax, trumpet and electric bass but the actualy instrument sounds are pretty good - you don't get the horrible squeaks you get with other score writers on play back!

Some other great features include:

• Versioning allows you to make keep earlier versions of your work to make changing your mind easier! 
• Note input with the keyboard or mouse
• Ability to add a comment to parts of your score or specific notes
• Describe your work and tag it 
• Simple key, time and transposition functionality
• Feedback - tell them what you want to see!
  

I would suggest reading the terms of use outlined when first signing up with Noteflight. It appears that you, as the composer, own all of the content you place on Noteflight. However your work will be covered under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, something which may be quite alien to most musicians... Reading up on it is best to make sure that you understand how your music can be viewed and used by others,as well as what lisences you must abide by if you edit someone elses's work - do this before you decide to place your entire life's work online...

As I mentioned before Noteflight is only in beta but there are some great possibilities on the horizon, including the ability to import your scores from other programs uaing MusicXML. Finale can export this format directly, and Sibelius allows MusicXML via Recordare's Dolet plugin.

So what's missing?

• You can't add dynamics or ritards or accelerandos
• No lyrics functionality
• No cut and paste between scores
• Can't add grace notes, tremolo or other ornaments
• You can't isolate parts of a score.

Judging by their feedback forum these are all things that they are hard at work on. For the first free service of its kind I think that the team at Noteflight should be very proud at what they have achieved and, most importantly, what they have started. It can only get better from here.

Viva la Musicia!

Tags: composing online tools music music education score writing
Posted at 09:57AM Nov 12, 2008 by Alison Hall  |  Comments[0]