BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com, and here we are with Notion, a music notation software similar to Finale that you can use to compose music for your band and orchestra or yourself playing piano. My name is Bill Holland and we’re looking at a basic way to set up a piano. So, I’m going to go in, select a plain staff, and select a keyboard. Click add. You’ll notice we have treble and bass here, and here we go.

To assign quarter notes, I hit Q and I can just go through and create a simple scale or arpeggio. You’ll notice it’s not letting me assign anything right now because there’s no time signature or key signature assigned. If I go over here, I can pick 4/4 time and we’re going. You can also choose 3/4 time, 2/4 time, or 9/8 time. Other complicated times are also in here, and I’m sure you can make your own custom ones; I have not tried yet though.

For key signatures, I hit shift-K, and I get all my key signatures here. I can dump in my B-flat signature on either side of the time signature and hit Q again. I get a quarter note or a quarter rest. You’ll see if I hit Q, either time it brings me a quarter note or a quarter rest. If I hit S for 16th note, I get my 16th notes so I can create a faster progression. I’m just going to some simple stuff using F...

[BILL HOLLAND CREATING A SCORE USING NOTION]

...and play that back.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

Now, what I can also do is go over here and add dynamics. Let’s say I want to start off soft and jump over to being loud with a forte later on. Think of the forte and piano here as being like velocity in a MIDI sequencer if that’s what you’re used to.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

You can also do this using a crescendo.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

Notice that my forte goes away. I can also select, using a variety of key commands and pre-assigned settings in the expression section here, I can add trills, which I really won’t get into with the piano. I can add articulations, so if I want to make a staccato note for example, I can add a staccato.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

I can also add accents of different types.

[BILL HOLLAND EDITING THEN PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

Now, if I go back over here, you’ll notice I can change tempo marking. I can actually assign my tempos. If I pick andante, you’ll notice the metronome is set to 66 normally. That’s standard andante time. Play it back.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

Let’s say I don’t want my andante to be that exact speed though. I want it to be a little bit quicker. I can type in 80 here, and I can go over. Well, I didn’t seem to like that so let’s switch it up and try 70.

[BILL HOLLAND EDITING A SCORE USING NOTION]

Hit stop and play.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

If I want to slow this way down, I can go over to largo.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]

Remember, tempo, when you’re talking piano or orchestration, you’re thinking metronome clicks so you’re not necessarily thinking BPM. It’s different than using a sequencer. For those of you familiar with scoring, this shouldn’t be anything new at all. Notice also there are settings for strings, winds, percussion, and specific keyboard ones. We can actually have a pedal down setting, and pedal up.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING BACK A SCORE USING NOTION]