Friday notation roundup: June 13, 2014

Here’s what’s been happening the last few weeks in the music notation software world, in case you missed anything:

• MakeMusic released a Finale update: Finale 2014b has more than 100 bug fixes to audio, MIDI, file handling, stability, note entry, fonts, and more.
• If you want to learn how to use that Finale update, MakeMusic announced a series of workshops around the US in July and August.
• If Sibelius is your program of choice, workshops are being offered this summer by Mike Klinger’s MIDI Workshop in Washington State; Bruce Munson in Colorado; and Katie Wardrobe’s Midnight Music online.
• Avid produced a slick promotional video featuring composers touting the new features of Sibelius 7.5. Can a 7.5.1 update be far behind?
• If you prefer to write music by hand, but need a quick way to get your scribbles into a computer, worlds collide in Neuratron’s NotateMe app for iOS and Android, which was recently updated to v.2.0. The special $22 price is gone, but at $40 it’s still a good deal.
• Also in the world of mobile notation software, Notion’s iPad app was prominently featured in Apple’s splashy “Your Verse” ad campaign starring Esa-Pekka Salonen. To celebrate, the company is offering their desktop app, Notion 4, at a 50% discount ($50 instead of $100) through June.
• Five talented students are coding away for MuseScore as part of Google’s Summer of Code 2014. You can read their updates here, here, here, here and here. Hear hear for an eventual MuseScore 2.0 release!
• Steinberg released v.0.99 of the Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) their open standard for mapping musical symbols, and also released v.0.99 of their flagship SMuFL-compliant font, Bravura. V.0.99 is a release candidate for an eventual v.1.0.
• Progress continues on Steinberg’s scoring software. Its name, a version number or a sneak peek are still under wraps for the time being, although we did get a photo of developers making the program’s inaugural edit — or maybe they were playing Angry Birds, we don’t know for sure.

Anything we missed? Feel free to enlighten us in the comments. Have a great weekend!

Updated 10:00 am with news about the Notion iPad app and Notion 4.