News :: 15MR: MagicScore School v5.110 (Quick)

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is MagicScore School version 5.110 by DG Software—An application for creating music notation, including support for MIDI usage.

This will be a quick review because while I do have a MIDI keyboard and equipment, it is currently in storage and as such won’t be able to test the MIDI functionality.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states: (Short)

“MagicScore School 5.0 is a notation software for music aficionados, students, teachers, schools and colleges. The program offers people interested in music a variety of notation options – input, editing, printing, correctness check and much more.”

Quick Pros

• Assembles music in readable format
• Easy to work with compared to many other applications I have used
• Ability to export to MIDI, Kareoke Midi & Music XML
• Sheet music prints great; Organization options handy

Quick Cons

• Has issues with many mainstream MIDI files
• Is missing some advanced features I’d like to see outside of sheet music creation

Expansion

I’ve used sheet music applications before, and found myself resorting to either hand-writing my sheet music or augmenting the application with the use of hand-written sheet music because the results of the ‘interpreters’ Either butcher the sheet music so it is basically illegible or tries to make the sheet music way more complex than the music really was. This is the first application I’ve found that produces sheet music very much like well-written sheet music is supposed to look like. It is also nice to be able to import and export to a range of other formats as well; You can theoretically make a MIDI file directly from your own composition without the need for any external applications, which may be worth it in itself.

I did however have an issue with importing some MIDIs; One of the samples included, Aha_Take_On_Me.mid would not import; Neither did one of my personal works or one of a few MIDIs I downloaded off the internet. Sometimes it’d give me an ‘Integer out of bounds’ error, but most of the time it’d just not do anything at all. I am not sure if this was due to a malformed MIDI file or if there is an underlying issue with the application that might need to be addressed.

h2. Final Verdict I do wish this was a full-featured MIDI composition application however; With how great this application is, its a shame that this application didn't become a full-service MIDI composition application. While you can do a lot with this application, if I got back into music generation, I'd likely find myself reverting back to some of my old toolkits for support and initial recording than using this application. That said, for what this application is intended for, it does a wonderful job (Except the importing of some MIDIs) and for writing, recording and printing sheet music, is definately a steal while free, and would be worth the $29.95 that is being asked for this version.

Posted by BladedThoth on Saturday, April 14, 2007