You can display a score in either of two ways – as multiple pages sized to exactly fit your mobile device screen, or as a single scrolling page.

When you play a score in multi-page view, we automatically turn the pages for you, which is great for following along with, or performing, the score.

You can display single parts of a score by selecting an individual part from the part chooser.

Note that there can be a delay of several minutes the first time a score is accessed from a mobile device. Our servers need to do a bunch of work to “mobilize” each score – the amount of time it takes depends on how busy our servers are, and how long the score is. Once a version of a score has been “mobilized”, viewing it should take just a few seconds.

When you view a score, we reduce the Noteflight header to a thin black bar to give you the most room to view your score on smaller devices – tap on your browser’s back button to return to the score listings, or you can display the full sized Noteflight header by tapping on the arrow in the upper right corner of the screen.

If you’re using a mobile device that supports Adobe Flash (many Android devices do), you can still access the full Noteflight editor by tapping on the “Open in Noteflight Score Editor” link above the score.

Stay tuned for more developments on the iPad and mobile devices – this is just our first step towards making Noteflight accessible everywhere, for all of our users (free users too)!

Some fine print on our first release (expect improvements in the future):

• Scores with synchronized audio or video media will play the built-in Notelight sounds, and video will not be shown.
• Document layout settings like note size and system spacing are ignored.
• Page mode doesn’t automatically scroll to keep the cursor in view.

April 23, 2012 Cambridge, MA –
Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) announced the re-launch of its SongSelect service showcasing the unique capabilities of Noteflight’s MusicXML sheet music viewer technology. As part of this major re-launch, CCLI has deployed a custom version of Noteflight’s MusicXML sheet music viewer, that supports SongSelect’s various score formats and features while adding new functionality that leverages Noteflight’s specific technological advantages.

Noteflight’s viewer is ideal for use within the SongSelect service due to Noteflight’s full-featured score layout and playback capabilities. This flexibility allows CCLI customers to exercise more control over layout, transposition, note size, inclusion of parts and many other options.

CCLI serves a large, diverse population of churches by providing SongSelect, a subscription-based licensing service that includes access to musical scores in a variety of formats including lead, chord and vocal sheets. As the most comprehensive legal source for worship music, the selection of the viewer technology was a critical consideration for CCLI.
“Over 60,000 churches across North America already have a SongSelect subscription. But we’re always looking to better serve our customers and provide them with the best possible experience. With web technology pushing forward so quickly, we want SongSelect to remain relevant as a worship team resource and Noteflight is an integral part of this vision.” remarked George Ross, CTO of CCLI.

“CCLI is unique in its global reach and in its use of a subscription model, which allows its customers great flexibility in tailoring their sheet music to their needs,” said Joe Berkovitz, President of Noteflight. “We’re extremely pleased to be able to serve an organization of this scale with our platform.”
Noteflight offers cloud-based music notation software to individuals, K-12 music teachers, university level music educators and has licensed its viewer technology to leading global music companies, including sheet music publishers and digital content distributors.

# # #

About CCLI:
Based in Portland, Oregon, CCLI also has regional offices in Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. Globally, CCLI provides license and resource services to over 200,000 churches, schools and ministries. For more information visit ccli.com

About Noteflight
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Noteflight, LLC. is dedicated to reinventing the way people create, share, and use written music. Noteflight allows users to take advantage of the full power of the Web to edit, display, and play back music notation in a standard web browser and is integrated with an online library of musical scores from which anyone can publish, link to, or embed their compositions. Noteflight Publishing Server allows music businesses to manage large, scalable cloud-based repositories of sheet music that can be customized for any device on the fly. For more information, visit noteflight.com.

Noteflight Press Contact: Joe Berkovitz, joe@noteflight.com, (978) 314-6271.

April 16, 2012 Cambridge, MA — Noteflight, LLC (noteflight.com), developer of innovative online music notation software, today announced its partnership with Dorian Business Systems, Inc, the developer of the Charms Office Assistant which provides K-12 schools and universities with a comprehensive, web-based music program management application. Noteflight for Charms will be made available as an optional purchase from within the Charms dashboard to allow teachers and students to take advantage of Noteflight’s musical score creation and sharing program. With a click of a button, schools will be able to select Noteflight and have it integrated with Charms, providing teachers and students with convenient single-sign on access to both applications.

For only $175 per year, Noteflight for Charms will provide Charms members with their own private Noteflight site. Noteflight is ideal for creating and sharing musical scores in a community setting, such as a band, choir, orchestra or any other ensemble. Students are able to create their own solos, contribute warm up exercises and easily gain access to practice materials. Teachers and band leaders can broadcast parts to their private Noteflight community and provide direction and feedback to band members. Noteflight for Charms will be made available among Charm’s existing offerings that include financial management, fundraising, asset management, grade book and parent communication tools. Teachers will be able to experience Noteflight prior to purchase.

“Noteflight’s vision of web-based music notation, combined with its support for music educators, made Noteflight a clear add-on for Charms customers.” said Michael Baker, Founder and CEO of Dorian Business Systems, Inc. “Charms and Noteflight were both founded on the notion of access to music instruction and program resources at any time, from any place via the web, and our partnership is based on this shared principle.”
Noteflight Founder and CEO Joe Berkovitz added: “Noteflight is always looking for ways to bring our music notation technology to teachers and students. Charms is a perfect channel in this way: it’s very popular with teachers and it has a powerful set of web-based tools for music programs. Together, the two products support musical creativity and ease of administration in a simple way that makes good sense. We are thrilled to be working with an industry leader like Charms.”

In addition to Noteflight for Charms, Noteflight offers cloud-based music notation software to individuals, K-12 music teachers, university level music educators and has licensed its viewer technology to leading global music companies, including sheet music publishers and digital content distributors.

In addition to Charms, Dorian Business Systems, Inc. offers web-based contest management software for state and regional organizations such as the Texas University Interscholastic League, and the Connecticut and Illinois Music Educators Associations.

# # #

About Noteflight
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Noteflight, LLC. is dedicated to reinventing the way people create, share, and use written music. Noteflight allows users to take advantage of the full power of the Web to edit, display, and play back music notation in a standard web browser and is integrated with an online library of musical scores from which anyone can publish, link to, or embed their compositions. Noteflight Publishing Server allows music businesses to manage large, scalable cloud-based repositories of sheet music that can be customized for any device on the fly. For more information, visit noteflight.com.

Noteflight Press Contact: Joe Berkovitz, joe@noteflight.com, (978) 314-6271.

About Charms
The Charms Office Assistant is a product of Dorian Business Systems, Inc., the leading provider of web-based management software to schools and state festivals. Founded in 2001, Charms has grown to encompass financial management for trips, fundraisers and other payments, asset management for libraries, uniforms and inventory, parent communication through tools such as built-in texting, phone messaging, emailing and chat and assessment with our gradebook and web-based recording studio. Dorian Business Systems, Inc. is located in Rowlett, TX, a suburb of Dallas. For more information about Charms, please visit www.charmsoffice.com

Press Contact: Paul Brown, pbrown@charmsmusic.com, (214) 556-1912

March 29, 2012 Cambridge, MA — During its live webcast of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto on March 23, 2012 on www.dso.org/live, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra partnered with Noteflight, LLC (noteflight.com), developer of innovative online music notation software, to invite its live broadcast audience to submit a 2-bar theme via the web as a subject for live improvisation by pianist Robert Levin. This partnership introduced an unprecedented level of interactivity to a virtual audience, allowing each web viewer the opportunity to not only observe the performance but play a part in it.

Under the guidance of Levin, renowned as an expert in baroque and classical improvisation, a global audience watching the webcast was directed to Noteflight.com to create and submit a musical theme using Noteflight’s unique online composition tool. The live audience in Detroit also submitted musical themes on paper. Several selections from both audiences were then chosen by Levin and transformed into a live, spontaneous improvisation in the style of Beethoven, with a section devoted to each of the themes. The submitted scores can be viewed on the DSO’s website: Audience Scores

“This innovative experience for our web audience is part of the DSO’s vision to expand public access to the orchestra’s music through webcasts, digital downloads, and events like this one,” explained Scott Harrison, Executive Producer of Digital Media. “We sought out Noteflight to help us with this exciting experiment because of the ease of their notation software and Noteflight’s global community of music enthusiasts.”

Noteflight set up a dedicated web location for the DSO, allowing the Orchestra to promote the event to its web audience via a simple link. Joe Berkovitz, Founder and CEO of Noteflight explained, “The benefit of being flexible, web-based, software is that we can easily innovate with partners like the DSO. We were thrilled to be identified as an innovative company that could support this exciting project.”

Noteflight offers cloud-based music notation software to individuals, K-12 music teachers, university level music educators and has licensed its viewer technology to leading global music companies, including sheet music publishers and digital content distributors.

# # #

About the DSO:
The internationally acclaimed Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the fourth-oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, is known for trailblazing performances, visionary maestros, collaborations with the world’s foremost musical artists, and an unwavering commitment to Detroit. Esteemed conductor Leonard Slatkin, called “America’s Music Director” by the Los Angeles Times, became the 12th Music Director of the DSO during the 2008-09 season. The DSO offers a performance schedule that includes Classical, Pops, Jazz, Young People’s, Neighborhood concerts and festivals. The DSO makes its home in historic Orchestra Hall, one of America’s most acoustically perfect concert halls, and actively pursues a mission to impact and serve the community through music. In April 2011, the DSO launched Live from Orchestra Hall, an unprecedented webcast series that makes DSO concerts available for free on the web and mobile devices. On May 10, 2013, the DSO will return to Carnegie Hall with Maestro Slatkin to perform all four Ives symphonies in one evening. For more information visit www.dso.org

DSO Press contact: Gabrielle Poshadlo, GPoshadlo@dso.org, (313) 576-5194.

About Noteflight
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Noteflight, LLC. is dedicated to reinventing the way people create, share, and use written music. Noteflight allows users to take advantage of the full power of the Web to edit, display, and play back music notation in a standard web browser and is integrated with an online library of musical scores from which anyone can publish, link to, or embed their compositions. Noteflight Publishing Server allows music businesses to manage large, scalable cloud-based repositories of sheet music that can be customized for any device on the fly. For more information, visit noteflight.com.

Noteflight Press Contact: Joe Berkovitz, joe@noteflight.com, (978) 314-6271

So please check out Kevin’s video sync of his composition Cucumbers and Gin.

We’d love to find out about how you’re using the feature. Please write to us at our info address, or post a comment here!

All of these instruments presently make use of the bass clef. The timpani has an extended range, while the other instruments use the middle line (Bass Drum) or one or two lines above it (Cymbals, Snare, Toms).

Happy Independence Day!

Now available in all versions of Noteflight. Note that you can start playback either from anywhere in the video, or from any measure in the score. Find out how to make one of these by watching this video.

MIDI input is one of the really big features in the release. It’s available in Crescendo and in all our educational versions, and allows you to enter notes using any MIDI controller which is hugely convenient. It does a pretty good job of figuring out accidentals based on context and melodic motion, too! You can check it out in our online demo even if you don’t have a premium version of Noteflight yet. Besides Crescendo, it does require an additional adapter to be downloaded so that the browser can “see” MIDI devices on your computer; see http://midi.noteflight.com for more information.

Synchronization of YouTube video and MP3 audio is also a huge deal, and it’s available in all Noteflight versions. You can include any YouTube video in your score and have it play along: the video’s soundtrack is used for the score playback. Same goes for MP3: if you have an MP3 of a score on the web, you can use it to play back your score instead of hearing the built-in instruments. You can even sync audio or video to an empty score for doing transcriptions! This also works in embedded scores, so you can now embed any audio performance as part of an interactive, follow-along score. The playback is fully integrated in both directions, you can designate a playback position either in the media or in the score itself. The best way to understand this is to watch our demo video illustrating the process.

A monthly Crescendo subscription is now available at $7.95 per month, for those who would like to use Crescendo on a shorter-term basis or who prefer not to make an annual commitment. We think this will be a great option for many of our users.

No more Crescendo score limits. If you’re a Crescendo user you will see a new limit of 1,000 appear instead of 250, but that is just in place to prevent accidental consumption of scores — we’ll raise it for you if you want!

Guitar and bass tabs are now available in the free version. We decided it wasn’t consistent to reserve these features for premium users, and we’d rather make more notation available to more people!

Quick recap

In Part 1 of this article I talked about notation’s origins, as communities started to capture and exchange musical works. In the West, these communities were early churches and monasteries using manuscripts as the medium. Over the next millennium, notation became standardized and fueled the development of a rich body of works. The medium transitioned to engraving and printing, with a corresponding quantum leap in sharing. The availability and exchange of these works defined a musical culture and bound it together. Today, even though audio recordings now dominate popular consumption, notation continues to play a strong role. Notation lets us focus on musical ideas, rather than on specific performances.

In Part 2, I talked about the evolution of software for creating music notation, and its initial focus on the printed page as the ultimate destination of a work. Ease of creation, sharing and collaboration workflow remain secondary concerns in desktop notation software, however. At present, most scorewriting tools still seem to be designed for a solitary, expert auteur with deep pockets. In contrast, the Internet is running riot in almost every other medium, as it satisfies the long-latent desire of our culture to instantly create, share, and comment on every kind of creative work at little or no cost. The next quantum leap in sharing has already taken place, but music notation is only now inviting itself to the party.

Our present time asks us to rethink the capabilities of music notation, the software that creates and delivers it, and the business ecosystem around it. The Internet and the web have replaced the scribe, the printing press and indeed printing devices altogether. Technology has destroyed the scarcity of information, and the industries we formerly built to exploit this scarcity are shrinking and changing. What’s next?

Music creation will be seamlessly joined to creative communities

The intersection of music-making, community, and communications technology is exploding today across the music business, changing many of its facets. Noteflight is one of the new companies working at this intersection and will be joined by many other organizations and businesses. Noteflight’s business is based on a simple set of premises: 1) the ultimate goal of music creation is sharing, 2) creative communities have a desire and a need to share, 3) the technology of sharing information has reached new levels of ease and power. We see other examples of this trend in sites such as Indaba Music, IMSLP, Kompoz, Wikiphonia, and others.

Given that everyday technology can now deliver a powerful score writing/viewing experience in any web browser or mobile device, music notation software is finally able to support communication, collaboration and community in a way it has not done before: by situating musical documents in the cloud, and integrating sharing and social features directly into the tool itself. As a starting point one need only look at the best and simplest ways people share other digital documents, and apply these techniques straight-up to digital scores. For example, a score in Noteflight has a URL, like any other web page. Share that URL and you have shared the score (assuming you have given permission). Bookmark that URL and you can easily find the score again.

An orientation towards sharing and social interaction also changes a tool’s design priorities, favoring ease of creation and interaction over extreme power and control. The world already has tools for laboriously crafting a perfect, final edition of a score, destined for the printer. Tools like Noteflight, on the other hand, are designed for capturing musical ideas quickly and allowing them to move around in the world, whether big or small, rough or perfect. They are also designed to satisfy the collective needs of a group, not just the needs of individual users.

In some ways this isn’t a reimagining of notation: it’s a return to the roots. In a previous post I wrote, “Notation created a musical web of composers and performers, feeding off of each other’s ideas and techniques”. Tools like Noteflight are allowing that same musical web to flow through the wires of our modern-day network, gathering renewed energy as it flows.

New publishing channels for artists and creative communities

I believe that the new community-oriented and web-based generation of notation tools such as Noteflight will change the face of publishing in sheet music, in a way that accords with other changes in the music business. As has been the case with audio recordings for some time now, artists will finally be able to deliver their music directly to their fans with the barest need for intermediaries. As with audio, the value of sheet music will change in our culture. The new value will likely be based more on the relationship between creator and performer, and less on the ownership of a physical asset. Less expertise will be required to provide one’s audience with notated music, and the low financial barrier will stimulate more ideas on how that music can be offered and used by creators and consumers.

We will also see more of the interesting phenomenon of “collective publishing”, something that has been difficult and rare in the past. User-generated libraries of content have enormous commercial value, and ways will be found to offer these in a legal framework that fairly compensates rights-holders.

Publishers are not blind to the commercial potential of such content, even though there is no way for them to “make it happen”: it has to arise organically. Take the fascinating example of the Real Book, probably the best-known “fake book” for jazz tunes used by working musicians around the world. When I went to music school in the late 1970s, the Real Book was an illicit commodity sold by street hustlers for what the market would bear. In fact, I bought my copy on Mass. Ave. in Boston from a guy whose other main business was selling weed to Berklee students. (For the record, I passed on the weed, have never attempted to smoke the Real Book, and went to New England Conservatory rather than Berklee.)

People were willing to pay a lot for the Real Book, because the quality and utility of the charts was far better than the stiff, over-arranged song sheets that could be bought legally from music publishers. This changed suddenly in the 90s, however, when the Real Book went both commercial and legal! Today, the Real Book is published by Hal Leonard Corporation, for a lower price (in 1980 dollars) than I paid on the street. The composers of the songs are compensated. Errors have been corrected. The printing isn’t all slanty and sketchy and the pages don’t fall out. It’s an unusual and happy ending to this kind of story, and one that I think will become more common. Had Real Book owners been sued RIAA-style for hundreds of thousands of dollars, everyone would be worse off.

There’s a lesson here, and to up the ante in a digital era, publishers will have to do much more than simply offer a product that is legal and priced comparably to an illegal product. They will have to offer a user experience that competes with free. Read on.

Digital sheet music commerce must escape the doldrums

Gale-force winds are blowing through the music business, rearranging the livelihoods of composers, performers, publishers, labels and retailers. Take a look at recording, live performance or radio and you’ll see industry revenues in free-fall during the last decade. Many are quick to point the finger at technology and the ease of copying and stealing digital media.

In contrast to the recording industry, the sheet music business has remained surprisingly stable, but it shows little growth. What growth there is, is concentrated in the digital download sector — but even this is surprisingly sluggish when contrasted with the explosion in digital audio. I think the reason for both the overall market stasis and the slow digital growth is the same: the assets remain mostly physical, not digital. In fact, even the digital part of the business is paper-based in spirit.

Until the recent advent of tablets such as the iPad, there have been no suitable and cost-effective devices for displaying digital music while playing an instrument. Desktops and laptops are too physically clunky, and have the wrong form factor for the job. Thus, most digital purchases of sheet music to date are no more than a faster route to hard copy. Both consumers and publishers have been looking at the market this way. Without direct consumption of scores in digital form, and without publishers actively imagining and delivering new benefits unique to digital media, demand for digital assets is taking much longer to develop in the sheet music market. (Ironically, the low-touch experience of current digital sheet music may be lowering the rate of sheet music piracy — but only at the expense of crippling the market’s growth and evolution.)

Take a threatened sheet music industry, a market that doesn’t fully exploit digital assets, and season heavily with DRM concerns. What do you get? An abysmal e-commerce experience, from start to finish. Most digital sheet music sites require the user to download and install a special music viewer plugin or program, often with byzantine installation requirements. (An acquaintance recently told me it took her 20 minutes to make an online sheet music purchase and get past all the viewer installation problems. Her vow? “Never again.”) If one runs this gauntlet, one then finds one has purchased what amounts to a facsimile of a printed page. It’s not like an e-book. You can’t make the music fit your screen at a readable size. You can’t change the paper size, or orientation, or line breaks. You can’t make the notes bigger or smaller. You can’t change it in any way, although you could write on your printout with a pencil, as most musicians do in practice. At best, you may be able to select one of a family of rigid facsimiles, such as the same song in a variety of different pre-selected keys.

(The print-based value system inside music publishers looks askance at digital delivery in some ways. Flexibility of layout? Sorry, that might disrupt the expertly fine-tuned music layout in the publisher’s original printed copy. This is a bit like NYTimes.com saying that you can’t increase the font size in your browser, because only a master typesetter can decide where an article’s line breaks should go, or control the exact spacing between words.)

Does that seem bad enough? Wait, there’s more. You can only print your purchased copy of sheet music once or twice before your purchased print rights are exhausted. Sheet music publishers are obliged to compensate artists for every physical copy that winds up in the customer’s hands. Even if the music viewer let you edit or adapt the work you paid for — say, by adding dynamics or phrasing, tweaking the lyrics, changing the arrangement — you’d want to print it multiple times until you got it right. You’d probably even want to save the results on your computer. Whoops, you didn’t buy the rights to do that. (To be completely fair, the publisher probably doesn’t have the artist’s permission to sell multiple print rights to you.)

The copyright holder’s rights matter, of course, and I am not arguing for abrogating them. But the customer’s desires also matter, and the rigidity and antiquity of the publishing system is holding digital sheet music commerce back. The decimation of the recording industry offers a frightening lesson in the consequences of ignoring what consumers want. Stronger DRM schemes, stronger print restrictions and more punitive lawsuits will not teach the customer to want something else. If publishers and retailers do not begin to offer more appealing digital product, the water may overtop the dam and flow downhill.

Tablets are the New Music Delivery Devices

The iPad and its ilk will surely change the face of notated music. Finally we have a portable device that has the right form factor, the right connectivity and the right design for displaying a score in a performance situation, or for working on scores in a truly portable fashion. It’s enough of an household appliance to be comfortable, and enough of a computer to be capable.

So far there are few credible tools for score creation on these devices, and most delivery apps are focusing on reproducing the paper-based experience on the tablet screen, working with PDFs of scores. Sorry, that’s not going to work — it didn’t work on the desktop or laptop, and it definitely will not work on here. Users will, at a minimum, demand the same flexibility from music viewers that they demand from, say, an e-book reader. I believe they will go even further: they will want the ability to modify and adapt the music they have purchased, for their own purposes.

How about score creation? Sheet music creation on tablets is going to be at its most exciting and most useful when it’s part of a global, seamless cloud of content that spans the universe of devices on the web. Hmmm… sounds like what we do at Noteflight! Stay tuned.

HTML5 is Coming

You hear a lot these days about HTML5, the open-standards successor to Flash. (HTML5 also builds on top of HTML4, but did you ever hear anyone say “HTML4” out loud? Just wondering.)

Is Flash disappearing overnight? Noteflight, like many other leading-edge web apps, runs on Flash today. There is still no other viable choice if we want to give our users the audio experience of hearing music played in a consistent way within Noteflight. Flash has the rendering and audio muscle to deliver the features we need, along with strong cross-platform compatibility. The considerable resources of Adobe Systems stand behind it, and it’s installed on almost every device — except for some of the most desirable ones.

The promise of HTML5 is that it will deliver all the same benefits as Flash in a framework of pure open standards, available in any web browser. The benefit to the musician is that musical web apps like Noteflight will work on a very broad range of devices, both desktop and mobile, and many of the browser features we love and take for granted will “just work”: printing, zooming, searching for text, and more. (Imagine viewing a score in Noteflight with German lyrics, and hitting the “Translate to English” button in the browser!) Although Flash is very powerful, its integration with the browser environment is necessarily limited. An HTML5 music platform will be that much more seamless with respect to the rest of the web.

It sounds great, and it will be. But it’s going to take time for all the browser manufacturers and all the devices to bring this vision to life in a way that works reliably for everyone, everywhere. In reality HTML5 consists of a lot of different pieces that are being defined in fits and starts, and the audio part of it is still taking shape. The good news? As part of the W3C Audio Working Group, I am working on Noteflight’s behalf to help bring this aspect of HTML5 to fruition along with a bunch of amazing folks across the industry.

Beyond HTML5: Music Notation as a Standard Media Type

Music notation used to be something you looked at in a music notation program. That’s changed with the advent of web-based tools such as Noteflight. Notation is now embeddable everywhere: you can stick a score into any web page, as part of that page, and it remains a fully interactive score. It can even be controlled with JavaScript from other elements in the page.

As with video, this leads to a situation in which different kinds of media begin to entangle with each other and interbreed. Text and images and audio and video and music notation complement each other, and in thoughtfully created content they will add up to much more than the sum of the parts.

Eventually, we may find that music notation becomes like HTML (hypertext), JPEG (images), or MP3 (audio): a standard data type, with a standard encoding across the web. At this point, a bunch of new horizons will unfold. It will become easier than ever to share written music, because the only applications that will survive in this environment will be those that support the standard. Web browsers will most likely incorporate at least a music viewer as a standard component.

(Note to the curious: MusicXML is a de-facto standard data format for music notation interchange between notation programs. It is extremely useful and is an increasingly important part of the sheet music industry, yet some vendors provide incomplete or spotty support for it from their products, no doubt in an effort to “imprison” their users’ data. A data format only becomes a true standard when it becomes very, very bad business to ignore it. I believe we’ll get there, whether via MusicXML or another route.)

I was fascinated by some of the reactions to Part 1, A Brief Manifesto. My intention was to offer a sort of “love note” to music notation, without hating on anything in particular (or, indeed, anything at all). To my surprise, some seemed to read the piece as a sort of rejection of digital production tools, or audio media, or electronica, or non-standard notational systems. I was even labeled a Luddite, which would seem to require me to take up a sledgehammer and start methodically smashing samplers and synthesizers (and presumably switch off those soul-sucking web servers that run Noteflight). Altogether too much work, and in any case my heart would not be in it: I’m a big fan of all these things. I’m an inclusionist, not an exclusionist. I just want to call attention to what notation uniquely brings to our musical experience — and by notation, I mean any form of musical notation at all, from a grand staff to George Crumb to Japanese gagaku.

Now on to Part 2.

Something I don’t like about written music is the process of writing it on paper by hand, which I find laborious in the extreme. Thank goodness for music software.

Music notation software was attempted at first by only a few trailbreaking pioneers (who deserve their own post) in the late 60s and 1970s. They found out that it presented an incredibly hard set of problems. Commercially available software notation tools finally came of age in the late 1980s and early 90s and, like all real-world solutions, addressed only a subset of the problems uncovered by the trailblazers.

People who build software are always working from some imagined vision of what other people will do with it. The resulting programs have strengths and weaknesses which are deeply entangled with this vision, and that vision is usually a creature of its times. It’s impossible to step outside of your present time and realize what you are taking for granted. Accordingly the starting point for digital music notation was very much an 80s/90s vision of “office productivity software”: an expert user privately communes with a computer over the course of hours, days or weeks and carefully crafts an end-product: a digital document, saved as a file on a hard disk. This document can then be shared with others in its final form through the technological magic of… printing.

This vision was nothing to sneer at. The advent of personal computers, personal high-resolution printers, and personal storage media was amazing and revolutionary. But despite the great leap forward in notation software, the implied goal remained one of easing music’s journey to the printed page, rather than the journey from one human mind to another. Yes, you could give someone a digital score file — if they owned the same software, in a compatible version, and you could physically get the file to them in a pre-Internet era. The only true medium of exchange remained the physical paper on which the score was printed (or paper-equivalent formats like PDF). Correspondingly, notation software put a premium on making the printout look good and on giving the user a lot of fine control over the printed rendering.

So the software of that time was concerned with making something. In 2011, I look at our culture and I see a different priority: sharing something. In the case of notation, this takes us right back to its origins: notation as a web of musical ideas, connecting musicians together.

Our modern culture is just as interested in the process of creation as the end product. We may be more likely to share streams of snippets about what we are doing, than to labor over a long autobiography. We’re more likely to post on Facebook than keep diaries or craft eloquent letters. Set aside notation for a moment; look at how this change has affected writing, recorded music, filmmaking, photography. The web has unleashed a perpetual, public flood of creativity in the form of blogs, posts, videos, tweets, shared media of all sorts. It’s mostly small-to-medium size works, not enormous works — but, big or small, it’s bringing pleasure to a lot of folks. We like the new ease and spontaneity of doing and making things for each other. We like the ease of sharing them.

I doubt that this is a deep change in human behavior. I suspect it’s simply become easier to do something we’ve always liked doing as a species. A great deal of humans’ creative output has always consisted of casually sharing small-to-medium achievements with each other, while magnum opuses are relatively rare. What’s new is that our tools and our technologies have finally accommodated this fact: people like to make a lot of stuff without a lot of fuss and share it with others. Not all that stuff is complicated, and not all of it is carefully assembled. The process of making it and sharing it is fun and is an end in itself.

In the cloistered notation software world, though, the song has remained the same until recently. Notation software stayed in the world of Microsoft Word, taking no notice of phenomena like Google Docs, blogs, social media, cloud computing. Finale and Sibelius were locked in a desktop struggle to the death — who could best serve the expert user, at several hundred dollars a pop? Ever more complex features multiplied, in increasingly cluttered user interfaces. The whole concept was still geared to the personal hard drive and the personal printer, not to the Internet.

In the meantime, times had changed. People wanted — no, expected — to have fun using software! They expected to share the results of having that fun with others, a fun thing in itself.

Notation software was ignoring…

• The sketch of a melody that comes out of nowhere and begs to be captured quickly.
• The desire to instantly share that melody with a friend.
• The desire to find out what one’s friends think of one’s melody, and to make new friends in the process.
• The pleasure of exploring a creative medium without reading a manual or taking a training class.
• The music student working on a laptop in a coffee shop, instead of a workstation in a school music lab.
• The busy musician at a gig, making a chart on the spot for another player to read.
• The joyous creativity of a world that loves to recycle and adapt its favorite musical ideas.

So what’s happening, and what’s next? I’ll post my thoughts of that in Part 3, next week. Of course, Noteflight is part of this picture in its reimagining of notation for our connected era, but there are many other exciting developments taking place simultaneously. The combination of all of them is going to be very heady indeed.