Scoring Software: Notion Music releases a version 2.0

Notion Music releases a version 2.0

NOTION 2.0 SELECTED FEATURES • Sounds of the London Symphony Orchestra, recorded at Abbey Road Studios • Click and drag notes • Write for up to 128 instruments in a single score • No external hardware or software needed • Expandable and customizable sound library • NTempo: real-time "conducting" of the score • MIDI device entry, including step time, stretch time, and real time • Automatic score layout and alignment • Instrument audio mixer: mute, solo, decay, pan, and balance • Export to WAV file • 33 level dynamic resolution from ppppp to ffffff with intermediate degrees • Timbre sampling at all dynamics and in all ranges • List price: $599

How would you like to channel the London Symphony Orchestra just by writing your melodies and harmonies into a computer? Or have a concert band play back your arrangements as fast as you can dash out the notes and chords with your MIDI keyboard? And what about being able to adjust for each instrument's soundstage placement, depth, and volume—all without laborious editing procedures and tweaking? Composition software such as Notion (as well as Sibelius) lets you see and hear the score instantly via an interface that is smooth and transparent to the user—even someone with limited or no computer experience.

From Songwriting to Scoring
Traditional composers and arrangers who score for ensembles are doubly challenged, even cursed, you might say. They must not only find inspiration to create their melodies and harmonies, they must also imagine how they will sound when scored for a large group of diverse instruments. Naturally, this gets harder as the size and diversity of the ensemble increases. Those trained in orchestration may find this relatively easy, but many songwriters feel intimidated by the thought of composing or arranging for larger ensembles. But if you're good at writing melodies and putting chords to them, you might also be a great arranger, orchestrator, or film scorer. And with the industry's emphasis on home production these days, songwiters sometimes find opportunities for scoring work— and expectations of professional sound quality—that didn't exist a few years ago.

But fear not. You can learn the principles of orchestration through books and by taking lessons, and you can buy a computer- based scoring program and start composing immediately for a "virtual" ensemble that you can customize to suit your needs. If you have good ears, and you can get some pointers along the way, you can acquire the basic techniques in a short time. Even in enough time to score a project you've been hired for.

You see, in the past, the only way to become better at scoring was through trial and error, using the musicians at your disposal as musical guinea pigs—provided they were willing to put up with your whims and experiments. But unless you can pay these people to support your orchestral meanderings, you'll typically find yourself in an environment that's quite hostile to "trying new things." And if you're a beginner, forget it. Most musicians wouldn't tolerate the mistakes of an "amateur orchestrator," no matter how good a tunesmith you are. What you need is a tool that allows you to hear what your ideas sound like before they ever get near a rehearsal studio and other musicians. That's where a scoring program comes in.

The Players
There are several scoring programs on the market, including Finale, Sibelius, Overture, and Notion. Finale and Sibelius are the big guns: professional, full-featured notation and playback programs that are highly evolved, while Overture and Notion are newer to the market. Notion doesn't have the professional publishing features of Finale or Sibelius, but it is extremely easy to use, and because it comes with its own orchestral instruments integrated into the program itself (meaning you don't have to load them in a separate operation), traditional and acoustic musicians are finding favor with it. No program seems to have bridged the process of input to playback as transparently as Notion has, while still producing high-quality sound. It is quick and easy to use, and it's well designed for musicians who don't regularly use computers and who may not be expert with digital recording technologies.

Fig. 2. The output of Notion is elegant, easy to read, and spaced according to the best practices of music-notation traditions. One of Notion's most innovative features is NTempo, which is a tempo track that appears above the score and that can be tapped out by the conductor. This allows the leader to vary the tempo of the performance, which can be critical if you're trying to match the music to some other live event — a film score, action in a play, dancers on a stage, etc.

Fig. 2a. Notion uses a wizard-style guide to help you set up your scoring project. You start by choosing the instruments in your ensemble, defining a key and time signature, and then you're ready to start inputting notes and articulations. Notion takes care of setting up the score and spacing the notes and other symbols you select. That's all there is too it!

In addition to producing professionallooking printouts (see Fig. 2), both for full scores and parts, Notion features a "virtual conductor" an a feature called "NTempo," which allows you to tap out the beat, pacing the playback according to your taps. This is a handy teaching tool (you can slow down specific sections for closer study), or you can use it to match the music's pace to some live or vido action—perfect for writing for film, drama and danceaction. So if you're an instructor, traditional or acoustic-instrument composer, a worship music director, or if you're just looking to avoid another steep software learning curve, Notion is the program for you.

Orchestral Wizardry
Notion makes it easy to score your work because the built-in instruments—digital samples that produce the sound of a full orchestra and other instruments—are integrated so well into the program. Most standard music production programs require a complex process that involves loading third-party sounds, assigning and routing of staves to instruments, and configuring the audio outputs, just to be able to hear the parts you're writing play back with an appropriate sound. You may even have to know how to program the sound generators or outboard isntruments to get the performance characteristics like dynamics and tone the way you want them.

This complex process can slow you down when you're trying to capture ideas before they evaporate. Notion simplifies the process by using a short set-up wizard that helps you choose the instruments in your ensemble (or you can make your own templates or select one of their presets) and define the key signature and time signatures. Presto: You're ready to input notes right into the score (See Fig. 2a). As soon as you place the first quarter note, you hear the instrument play. As your score develops, you can hear it immediately with the push of a button.

London Calling
And that playback is spectacular, thanks to samples made by the London Symphony Orchestra and recorded at the famed Abbey Road Studios (lauded for its room sound). The LSO's work has been heard in countless recordings of classical and popular music, as well as on movie soundtracks. This commissioning of a world-class orchestra (in a worldrenowned room) is unique to any available scoring program, and the special character of this illustrious ensemble performing your own compositions is a real inspiration!

Easy as A-Bb-C
Notion handles many of scoring's niggly tasks for you in the background. For example, the program drops rests in the right places (you don't have to be super accurate with your mouse movements), pitches snap into place, and it handles note spacing and layout automatically. This is especially cool when you have to change something already entered in the score. For example, I decided that instead of having four quarter notes with tremolo markings in my violins, I wanted to write out 16th notes. Notion widened the existing measure to accommodate the new measure, and adjusted the surrounding, affected areas.

The program will also provide "rhythmic respellings." Some composers will write a two dotted quarters and a quarter (a shorthand technique used even by Mozart), while others would notate the same figure more precisely as a dotted quarter plus an eighth tied to a quarter, followed by a quarter. Notion's ability to adapt the score to both methods—rather than forcing an editor to re-input the notes—is great for conforming an existing score a "house style" (which might happen if you submit your score for publication), and is especially handy when multiple people are working on the same project.

Other helpful features abound. For example, Notion gives you everal ways to create divisi parts on a single staff. The coolest—and clearest—involves simply writing the second part on a separate staff and then merging the two staves when you're done. The converse of merging is splitting, which Notion also performs with ease. This way, if you write a part out originally as a divisi, using the Multi-Voice Mode, you can break one part out to its own staff. Then you can reassign it to another instrument, if you like. Slick!

On the micro-editing level, articulations and other markings are dynamic, so that when you, for example, apply a forte mark to a note or passage, the note will not only sound louder; it will also sound as if struck (or blown or bowed) harder by the performer. This is accomplished by having the program calling up two different samples— one "normal" one; and one that was performed with stronger dynamics during the recording process (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. The graphical notation affects the playback, so that adding an accent makes a note louder, and crescendos make the music swell in volume. The user can define the performance parameters and ranges of articulations, dynamics, and tempo indications.

Fig. 5. The Audio Mixer window allows you to make quick adjustments to an instrument's Volume, Pan, and Decay (shown in red circle). You can also mute or solo an instrument or multiple instruments.

MIDI Spoken Here
Many people will find it easiest to get up and running with Notion by using the mouse to drag and drop notes, but you don't have to limit yourself to entering notes from the onscreen tool palette or the computer keyboard. Notion, following the model of MIDI sequencers, digital audio workstations, and other scoring programs, also accepts note entry from a MIDI keyboard. To make sure it transcribes what you're playing accurately, Notion gives you a click track, and then inserts the notes right into the score as you play along. MIDI keyboard entry is the preferred mode for musicians who either don't write out music beforehand (using their ear to compose directly into the score), or whose transcription and dictation skills are lacking. An even if you can proficiently transcribe your own (or others') work, MIDI input is a very quick and efficient to dispatch long passages of similar notes, like running 16th notes in a Baroque concerto.

Mixing It Up
One way for orchestrators to experiment with their arrangements is to increase the volume of certain instruments without notating it in the score. For this, Notion offers an Audio Mixer window (see Fig. 5), which will be familiar territory to musicians who work with digital-audio editing software. In this window, users can adjust the volume of each staff; its pan position (placement from left to right in the stereo field); the decay (how gradually or abruptly an instrument's sound trails off, similar to reverb); and its mute and solo status. Mute cuts out the sound of a particular staff, while solo isolates a staff and mutes the others. You can activate solo or mute on more than one staff, auditioning instruments and parts in any combination.

Coda
Notion is still a relatively new program, and as such has room to grow. Future upgrades will hopefully include the ability to notate instruments in the score in concert pitch and the inclusion of professional publishing features, like importing of graphics and exporting to eps and pdf file formats— strengths of programs like Sibelius and Finale. But Notion got one thing right from the get-go: it delivered a program with a well-designed, simple interface that produces gorgeous playback and professionallooking print-outs. Features can be added on, but to understand the whole composerarranger ethos—and to then provide such a transparent solution—must exist at the program's core, and Notion nailed that in a big way. And in an arena that already includes several evolved scoring programs, it's inspiring to see that there is room for Notion's seamless and elegant scoring solution tailored for musicians.