A review of Finale version 27. Headlining the new features are deep support for two open standards: Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL), and MusicXML. Tighter SmartMusic integration, playback improvements, and user interface enhancements round out what’s new.
Newzik has announced Maestria, a new optical music recognition technology that uses artificial intelligence to become more accurate over time, as well as a new product called LiveScores, which use Maestria to create interactive scores.
A journey through engraving the entirety of The Rite of Spring from scratch into Dorico, to learn more about both Stravinsky’s masterful composition and how to use the music notation software. Includes Dorico files.
A review of four leading optical music recognition, or “music scanning” apps, and how they work with music notation software: PlayScore 2, ScanScore, PhotoScore Ultimate, and SmartScore 64 Professional Edition. Plus links to sample files from each app that you can download and test yourself.
Daniel Spreadbury returns to Scoring Notes to talk about the common set of font specifications known as the Standard Music Font Layout, or SMuFL. We get into the history of music fonts and how we got to where we are today with this essential component of music notation software technology.
Sibelius 2020.12 is available. The new feature in this release is the long-awaited ability to import Sibelius files directly into an existing Sibelius file or template. There are other improvements in the areas of plug-ins and fonts.
Noteflight, the web-based music notation software that allows musicians to create, share, teach, sell, and purchase music, continues to innovate with updates and new product offerings, so that professionals and educators can take their inspirations and collaborate, no matter the circumstances.
What are the best practices when preparing a score with the expectation that it will be read from a screen, not paper? This is an excellent question — one whose answer today may likely change in the coming years.
Sibelius 2020.9 is available with enhancements to the Focus on Staves feature, enabling new layout and formatting workflows for scores and parts. There are other improvements to MIDI and MusicXML importing, ManuScript, and accessibility.
MakeMusic has released Finale version 26.3. In addition to a fully-translated Spanish version, this release brings support for Dark Mode on Mac, better performance while editing and scrolling, MusicXML improvements, and a handful of bug fixes.