Features of our music notation software

Music creation or writing your score

Entry of notes is directly from the computer keyboard. Notes are placed by their name (eg key A for note A) and the attributes added as you type - e.g. press the full stop (period) key for a dotted note. In addition the musical systems (the staves linked together) can be created exactly as you want to see them, and this construction can be varied from system to system within your score. The features include:

• Treble, Bass, Alto and Tenor clefs (in 2 sizes each).
• Entry of notes is very fast. Includes grace notes, beaming, staccato, marcato marks, dotting, tuplets, tying, slurring, note length, cross-headed notes, acciaccatura (etc), rests and more.
• Many supplied Templates and the facility to add your own without limit.
• Variable stave size - from about 0.15" to 2" (4mm to 50mm), giving up to about 30 staves per A4 or Letter sized page using a small stave size. The only limit is how many you can squeeze on the page!
• Full range of system construction options - no limit to the staves per system.
• Completely flexible and variable stave spacing for different types of musical layout.
• Full set of barline styles.
• Various note head shapes.
• Cue-sized (small) staves available.
• Single-line staves (for percussion etc).
• The only limit is 10,000 staves in the whole work. But heck, I think that should be enough: if it's not then I'll increase it on request!

Tools:

There is a range of tools to add and edit other objects. These include

• Symbol tool for adding (by "drag and drop") any of over 180 occasional symbols such as fermata, trills, turns, mordents, figured bass, and many others.
• Curve tool for phrase marks.
• Hairpin tool for dynamic marks.
• Straight line drawing tool (e.g. first and second-time bars - although there is an operation to have this done for you in one operation).
• Tempo Tool to add tempo marks either as absolute (eg note=120) or as relative (eg note = dotted note)
• Automatic alignment and neatening of your score.
• Page Numbering tool with flexibility in position and style.
• Block tool for copying and moving.
• Very fast editing of the objects on the stave. Mostly "put the mouse over, press a key".
• Saving of parts of a score, merging of scores.
• Very fast creation of music "pictures" for inclusion in a word-processed document.

Text:

On-page text plays a large part in any musical work and Music Publisher 6 allows you to place any text at any position in any font. However, certain text has special requirements and conveniences: There are three tools for text:

• Lyrics Tool for faster entry and automatic alignment of words under notes.
• Chord Name Tool for easy entry and alignment which will produce text which will transpose if you transpose the music.
• General Text Tool: Titles and miscellaneous text (eg instructions) can be placed anywhere in any font.
• Headers and footers facility with features such as printed date, unusual page numbering, file name of score on your computer.

Transposition:

Transposing your music is simplicity itself in Music Publisher 6:

• Change part of or all of the score by the number of semitones (half-steps) up or down. You can for instance change all the staves for Clarinet.
• With optional change of clef. Great for changing say the Viola parts to Clarinet when re-arranging a string quartet for wind quartet.
• Textual chord names also transposed automatically.

Sound:

The program can play back your work at any stage of construction. You can select from just one stave right up to the whole work, and with or without observing repeats.

• A choice from 129 voices - the "General Midi" set plus "silent" for the Karaoke enthusiast...
• With up to 2 different voices per stave.
• Tempo and dynamic changes observed.

Great Highland Bagpipes:

Music Publisher 6 has quite a following among pipers and extra specific options have been included to make their life easier and ours a little noisier:

• Stems: automatic melody created in stem down with all doublings with 3 flags or beams.
• The note range of the instrument is restricted and this is echoed in the software so that (e.g.) there is no ambiguity about which B,C,D,E or F is meant.
• Key: as is customary, automatic playback in 2 sharps even if no key signature is placed.

Help:

Support with this program is particularly extensive.

• Built-in tutorial to get you started.
• Choice of 4 user competence levels to give you more help at the stages you need it with optional retirement of warning prompts which get annoying.
• Tip-of-the-day feature which you can disable when you get sick of it.
• Over 300-page help file organised as answers to "How do I..." questions.
• "What's this for?" facility on all buttons and controls.
• 190+ page coloured indexed manual supplied on disk as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file.
• Unlimited free support from the author by email, phone or letter. But I would say that from my thousands of customers I get typically only one support email or call each day. So either the software is pretty easy to use or they've thrown it in the rubbish bin. That's a joke in case you were wondering!