We’ll be publishing coverage from the 2026 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California. The show has events running from January 20-24, 2026, and floor exhibits active from January 22 through January 24. It’s a huge exhibition, so we’ll focus on what we do best: covering the field of music notation software and related technology. Follow all of our NAMM 2026 coverage at Scoring Notes.
Hello from the Anaheim Convention Center! If Thursday at NAMM is about first impressions and orientation, Friday is where things start to come into focus. The crowds are thicker, the demos more polished, and the conversations a bit more candid — less “here’s what we’re announcing” and more “here’s where this is actually going.”
Friday was a full Scoring Notes day: notation software, music creation tools, publishing workflows, and the connective tissue between them. I moved deliberately across halls and levels, checking in with many of the companies shaping how music is written, taught, transcribed, and shared in 2026. This post is a field report — short highlights from each stop, with embedded videos where possible. I’ll follow up with deeper coverage and full interviews once I’m back home and the NAMM floor noise has faded.
Friday morning: In the front door and up to Level 3 on down
The day began upstairs, where the relative calm of the upper levels makes it easier to focus on software conversations before diving into the denser halls below. From there, it was a steady descent through Hall C, Hall B, Hall A, and finally the ACC North spaces — each with its own rhythm and audience.
The sections below follow roughly the order I visited them.
Yamaha / Steinberg — Dorico (Level 3: 300E)
I went looking for Dorico but encountered the reminder of the enormity of Yamaha, Steinberg’s parent company, and all that it does. The exhibition was massive, and, since I’ll catch up with John Barron tomorrow, I moved back down to ground level.
Piascore (Hall C: 7900)
Piascore’s ongoing work at the intersection of digital sheet music, tablet-based performance, and distribution has led it to become Japan’s most widely used interactive music reader, with more than 300,000 users. Piascore has long been known as a tablet-based sheet music ecosystem with strong support for MusicXML and professional publishing workflows. What really stood out in my conversation with Hiroyuki Koike, founder of Piascore, was how deeply the company is investing in AI-driven interactivity. Hiroyuki demonstrated a new coaching feature that listens to a performer play in real time, analyzes the performance, and provides immediate feedback—designed to be helpful, encouraging, and non-threatening rather than judgmental. It’s an example of interactive sheet music that goes well beyond simple playback or pre-programmed responses. Hiroyuki was candid that the “best” uses of AI in music are still emerging, but he was clear about Piascore’s philosophy: music remains at the center, and technology exists to support musical exploration and learning. Rather than forcing AI into rigid roles, Piascore is actively experimenting to discover where it genuinely adds value for performers. That openness, combined with the platform’s scale and longevity, makes Piascore an especially interesting case study in where digital notation may be headed next.
Muse Group / Hal Leonard — MuseScore (Hall B: 8714)
I next stopped by the Hal Leonard booth, though its presence on the show floor appeared noticeably smaller than in previous years. Muse Group, which owns Hal Leonard, did not seem to have MuseScore on display, at least as far as I could tell.
Alfred Music / MakeMusic (Hall B: 8902)
I next caught up with Heath Mathews, general manager of MakeMusic and Alfred Music, to talk about where the company stands today. Heath emphasized that MakeMusic’s focus has become increasingly clear and deliberate: everything centers on making the lives of music educators easier. Whether through MakeMusic Cloud, Alfred’s editorial direction, or product decisions across the organization, the guiding principle is to remove friction from day-to-day teaching and help educators spend more time actually making music with their students. It’s a mission-driven approach that has sharpened rather than narrowed the company’s scope, aligning technology, content, and pedagogy around a single goal.
One concrete example Heath highlighted is the Foundation Series, which leverages Alfred’s deep licensing relationships—particularly with Warner Bros.—to combine instantly recognizable music, such as themes from Harry Potter, with beginner-friendly educational material. Instead of asking novice students to slog through abstract exercises, the series lets them play simplified parts alongside professional backing tracks, creating an immediate musical context even before they can perform full melodies. According to Heath, this approach has dramatically increased student engagement, effectively doubling participation in some cases. By integrating these materials with widely used method books and classroom workflows, MakeMusic is turning familiar repertoire into a powerful educational hook—meeting students where they already are, while giving teachers practical tools that fit seamlessly into their existing practice.
My Music Staff (Hall B: 8907)
I then headed to My Music Staff, where I spoke with Amanda Bothwell, marketing lead, about the practical business needs of music educators and studio owners. Many members of the Scoring Notes audience balance teaching with freelance work, and Amanda described My Music Staff as an all-in-one business management platform built specifically for music lessons. The service handles core administrative tasks such as scheduling, lesson tracking, student notes, file sharing, and payments, with the aim of streamlining day-to-day operations so teachers can focus more on instruction.
Amanda explained that My Music Staff is designed to scale from individual teachers to large music schools with hundreds of instructors and thousands of students. The platform integrates with commonly used services including PayPal for payments, Mailchimp for marketing, and QuickBooks for accounting and reporting, while also supporting payroll and teacher management. Founded more than a decade ago to address the real-world needs of music teachers, My Music Staff can integrate with an existing website or operate as a standalone solution, offering customizable forms, automated trial lesson scheduling, calendar integration, and ongoing customer support.
Klangio (Hall B: 9715)
Klang.io makes AI-based transcription workflows converting audio into editable notation formats. Transcription sits at the boundary between performance and notation. For many musicians, transcription has always lived in a space between art and approximation. Performances are expressive, messy, and context-dependent; notation, by contrast, asks for clarity, intent, and structure. Bridging that gap is not simply a matter of better signal processing, but of musical judgment: deciding what matters, what should be simplified, and what a human will need to shape by hand. Sebastian Murgul, co-founder and CEO of klang.io, gave me a live demo of the software, with a performance by Jan Henning on a double-necked guitar, showing off klang.io’s capabilities. We’ll be having a more in-depth conversation with Sebastian later.
PreSonus — Notion (Hall A: 11513 & 12007)
Fender Notion is positioned within a broader ecosystem of composition, playback, and production tools and continues to occupy a distinctive space between notation and production, particularly for composers who move fluidly between score and DAW environments.
I caught up briefly with Chris Swaffer, senior product manager of software at Fender, on a very noisy NAMM show floor; my apologies in advance for the less-than-ideal audio from this exchange. Chris outlined Fender’s recent software realignment, bringing Studio One (now Studio One Pro) and Notion Mobile (now simply Notion) together under the Fender Studio umbrella, with a strong emphasis on tighter integration and a clearer experience for users. He described workflows where ideas sketched in Notion on an iPad with Apple Pencil can move seamlessly into Studio One Pro, reflecting a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work to make the tools function as a more unified ecosystem.
I’ll be following up with Chris in a separate, more in-depth interview soon — thankfully in a much quieter setting — where we’ll be able to dig deeper into what these changes mean for composers, producers, and notation users alike.
Avid — Sibelius (ACC North Level 1: 15000 / 15102)
I made my way to the ACC North section of the convention center — opened in 2017 to accommodate the growing needs of the show — and found myself at the Avid booth talking with Joe Plazak, senior principal product manager of software for Sibelius, as he met with users, composers, and colleagues on the show floor.
Joe shared that many visitors were excited to see what’s new in Sibelius, including interface updates such as the forthcoming Dark theme, slated for a February release, along with long-requested engraving improvements that are finally moving to the top of the development list. He also emphasized how valuable it has been to connect directly with composers in Los Angeles, particularly those working in film scoring, and to better understand the specific pressures and workflows they face in real-world production environments.
Drawing on his background as a longtime developer, Joe reflected on what it’s like to watch Sibelius used in high-stakes professional settings, where speed, reliability, and flexibility are essential. Seeing composers open and close scores rapidly and make constant, time-critical changes reinforces both the strength of Sibelius’s original architecture and the responsibility of the current team to maintain and extend it carefully. Joe described his role as balancing forward progress with stewardship of a mature, mission-critical tool that many musicians depend on daily. I’ll be following up soon with a more in-depth joint interview with Joe and Sam Butler, where we’ll dig further into these topics and what’s ahead for Sibelius.
I also wandered over to an immersive sound recording studio Avid showed off with Pro Tools, which spurred some remodeling ideas.
Happiness
It was time to set up for what has become an annual NAMM tradition — the Scoring Notes happy hour: a rare opportunity to visit at once with so many people involved with music notation software and related technology.
It was a perfect way to unwind and reflect on everything from another whirlwind day at the show.
Looking ahead to Saturday
Friday wrapped with several conversations that will continue tomorrow in more depth. On Saturday, I’ll be sitting down for focused interviews with:
- Joe Plazak & Sam Butler (Avid) — Sibelius
- Chris Swaffer (Fender / PreSonus) — Notion
- Sebastian Murgul (Klang.io) — AI transcription
- John Barron (Steinberg) — Dorico
Those interviews will become standalone posts with embedded video, transcripts, and analysis — and I’ll link them here once they’re published. For now, it’s time to recharge before another full day on the floor.
Keep coming back to Scoring Notes for more coverage from the 2026 NAMM Show.
