Noteflight

"Not what you should recommend to a begginer, but a really powerfull tool to write on the fly!"

Overall: Since I reached out to this software for the mere purpose of teaching it was a double edge blade on my classes, we had to drop out the use of it for teaching purposes, but instead, I gained a powerful tool to write on my tours and trips around the world, whenever I went without my laptop, once you got the hang out of all the options, the time changes, the bar additions etc it is really wonderful to write, if you come with an Idea and you are over your friends but you NEED to write it down, its trully perfect, then you can export the project via midi or xml and continue your process with another software just fine

Pros: What I like the most is the fact that you can write your sheet music on the fly, and if you happen to have a limited pc/mac/notebook, you wont have to deal with the problem of installing any new software over your already compromised storage size,and since the engine is mostly midi, if you want to just reproduce your what you wrote on a piano or a guitar, it will work just fine.

Cons: The program, for the commercial standard, is too simple, if you want to add vst plugins, it's almost impossible, things like writing up a score for an orchestra makes your browser go really slow unless you have a last generation equipment. So for people who work with heavy instrumentation, it's going to be difficult to work with. Also,when you reach for this kind of software, you want to use with your students, and this software is obviously focused on people who actually knows how to write and read music, a first timer will find all the options confusing,and the toolbar at some point, tiresome.

"So Laggy"

Overall: Entirely dissatisfied. Disgusted. I stuck with this software for a long time because it's easy to use in terms of layout, but the lag is just TOO MUCH.

Pros: It's easy to use & fairly self-explanatory. There are lots of keystroke shortcuts to save time.

Cons: When working on large scores, the entire program freezes up. The playback won't work, editing changes simply don't work, and the computer overheats. Sometimes causes browser crashes. This has happened on multiple computers and internet networks, so it's a problem on Noteflight's end.

"Music Made Easy"

Overall: My overall opinion of this software is very positive. I like being able to access my scores from anywhere with an internet connection, so work and listen on the go.

Pros: I love how easy it is to pull up what you need, and once you get going you can type the notes on your QWERTY keyboard and the corresponding notes will appear. Although I am still learning features and tricks, it makes learning music the way I do (by listening to the playback of the notes and articulations to help with tricky rhythms) easy. With a few exceptions, I have been able to get the general idea of many complicated songs by using this software. I like being able to adjust the tempo and playback speed (which helps when rehearsing what I've written).

Cons: One of my major gripes with Noteflight is that the playback doesn't always play back articulations, slurs and ties the way that they should be. The main reason I use Noteflight is to test out rhythms and music, and to put in slurs and ties, accents and the like to see what they would sound like at performance level. However, the playback usually ignores slurs and ties and re-articulates the notes even when they are meant to be connected. I also don't like how hard it is to switch from writing notes to writing rests, but that may just be because I am using a mouse and keyboard rather than Midi input. I do also wish that the playback was of a higher audio quality with realistic sounding instruments.