Noteflight
Contents
Noteflight is an online interactive graphical music-notation editor. Musical notes are entered either by typing pitch names on the computer keyboard (fast), or clicking on the staff lines (slow). Since the program is written in Adobe Flash, MIDI keyboard entry is not possible. However, the program can be used from any operating system which has a web browser that can run Flash.
Detailed instructions for creating music notation using Noteflight are given below for four short notation examples. A useful summary of the keyboard commands are given in this one-page handout:
- Cheat sheet (PDF) of the keyboard commands. (updated version)
All of the instructions below and the keyboard summary are also collected into the following PDF file for printing convenience:
- Single PDF of all tutorial materials on this page.
An advantage of Noteflight over most other notation software is the ability to display interactive musical notation on any webpage without the need for additional plugins, as demonstrated in the example below. Try clicking on the play button located in the top left of the example window. Click on the "noteflight" logo to go to the noteflight webpage for this particular example.
You can post noteflight music on a webpage like this by setting the option in the noteflight editor menus: "Anyone can view this score" found within the sharing tab. Then from the bottom of the sharing tab menu, copy the <object> code and paste it into your webpage. To include the above example on this page, the following code was copy/pasted into the page from the noteflight website:
<object width="725" height="220">
<param name="movie"
value="http://www.noteflight.com/scores/embed">
</param>
<param name="FlashVars"
value="id=727a728b16c697d4c94cb2eb36d5efe96d5c7598&scale=1">
</param>
<embed src="http://www.noteflight.com/scores/embed"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
FlashVars="id=727a728b16c697d4c94cb2eb36d5efe96d5c7598&scale=1"
width="725"
height="220">
</embed>
</object>
Similarly, you can email a link directly to the music, such as Mary Had a Little Lamb by copying the http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/... link in the sharing tab menu, such as:
http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/bfd2fa572ee34edec53e4dff3e57576c3600e77d
Exercises
- Exercise 1: Note Entry and Lyrics
- Basic note and lyric entry.
- Exercise 2: Octaves, Slurs, Fingerings and Text
- A demonstration of how to add fingerings, slurs as well as dealing more with octave transposition during data entry on the computer keyboard.
- Exercise 3: Chords
- A demonstration of how to enter chords.
- Exercise 4: Upper and Lower Voices
- A demonstration of how to place multiple voices onto a single staff.
| Description | Exercise 1 | Exercise 2 | Exercise 3 | Exercise 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instructions: | musescore1.pdf | musescore2.pdf | musescore3.pdf | musescore4.pdf |
| Online result: | ex1 | ex2 | ex3 | ex4 |
| PDF file export: | ex1.pdf | ex2.pdf | ex3.pdf | ex4.pdf |
| MusicXML file export: | ex1.xml | ex2.xml | ex3.xml | ex4.xml |
| MIDI file for listening: | ex1.mid | ex2.mid | ex3.mid | ex4.mid |
| MIDI file for data transfer: | ex1data.mid | ex2data.mid | ex3data.mid | ex4data.mid |
| HE-AAC audio export | ex1.m4a | ex2.m4a | ex3.m4a | ex4.m4a |
- After you create an account on Noteflight enter the above musical exercises in your account.
- Export your music as MusicXML data and load into MuseScore, Finale or another music notation program that can read MusicXML files.
- Load a MusicXML file created in another program into Noteflight.
- Browse through music created/entered by other people on the website by clicking on the "Browse" button at the top of your account's page.
- Go to this page of the Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin, and add it to your favorites: http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/727a728b16c697d4c94cb2eb36d5efe96d5c7598
- Look at the example in the PDF file for additional exercises to get more practice with data entry in Noteflight. Hints for concepts not presented in the above four exercises are give in the PDF file.
Links
- http://www.noteflight.com Noteflight website
- http://www.noteflight.com/info/help Noteflight documentation
- http://feedback.noteflight.com/forums/4962-general Features are added to noteflight by popular demand from users. Each user gets 10 votes to allocate to previously requested features/bug fixes, and they can also create new requests if they assign at least one of their votes to it.