I started test-driving Noteworthy Composer when it was a Windows 95 application. I thought it was a fairly good, albeit rather primitive program, back then. Since that time it has undergone significant improvement.
I recently downloaded the most recent free trial version of Noteworthy Composer. I immediately set down to transcribing a song which I had written into the program. I was already somewhat familiar with the program already, and this made working much easier.
One great benefit of Noteworthy Composer is that it is set up to write music using traditional musical notation, unlike other programs which have strange notation systems which are difficult to impossible to learn.
Noteworthy Composer also now comes with several musical templates which can make your musical transcription much easier. This is especially essential since Noteworthy Composer now contains many more options for which instrument to use. With so many choices, making a selection can be confusing, and the templates help to narrow those choices down.
I chose a vocal melody with a piano accompaniment. While they voice sounded rather synthetic, the piano was amazingly true to life. I was even able to choose from a variety of pianos to see which one suited my piece the best. I tried acoustic grand piano and bright grand piano, and found that the latter was the best choice for my work, which has a lot of low bass notes which can tend to fuzz out during playback. My playback did sound a little fuzzy at points, but I was able to cope well by making changes to the score, such as removing certain bass notes which seemed to overload my computer’s speakers.
I was also able to learn rather quickly how to add dynamics such as crescendo, ritardando, and changes in volume to my musical work. I was also able to very easily add pedal, slurs and ties to my piece. The finished work looked just like a musical score should.
Noteworthy Composer creates MIDI files. These are not sound files, but rather instruction files which tell the computer how to play the piece. They must be converted to sound files by another program. I simply used Windows Sound Recorder to literally “record” the piece onto the computer’s internal microphone, thus converting it into a wav file. You can also use an external MIDI keyboard to feed your music directly into the program.
Noteworthy Composer also has several print options that allow you to print out your score. You can also work on multiple scores at once, and cascade the windows to make them easier to manage. A zoom function is also available if you have difficulty seeing the notes on the screen; however, they render fairly large even in the normal magnification, so most people should not have difficulty using this program.
The trial program is available for free download in several different places, including Noteworthy Composer’s website, and Download.com.
I felt that this program was well worth the $39 for the product license. I am currently using it to create music for my video work. I absolutely love this program and the incredibly lifelike music it creates. I believe that this incredibly versatile program is an absolute must-buy for any person who regularly composes music, or works in the music business.
