Notion runs on Windows XP and 2000 or Mac OS X, and requires 1.5GB of disk space to install. This means that for £400 you get a world-class orchestra playing in a world-famous studio, so you'd better make sure your musical ideas are up to scratch! The samples are an important part of the product and deserve careful consideration - I'll describe them later, but for now suffice it to say that the sound files are presented in Virtuosoworks' proprietary format and cannot be exported to other players. Virtuosoworks took a similar approach with Notion, but what sets their program apart from the competition is the fact that its samples were specially commissioned and recorded by members of the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. Notion's easy-to-use Score Setup window.It's not uncommon to find orchestral samples bundled with notation programs - Sibelius and Finale both offer an extensive range of third-party samples (created by Garritan, Sonic Implants and Native Instruments) to play back their scores. Virtuosoworks now operate from their HQ in North Carolina and sell Notion via a Swedish distribution company, making this a truly international effort! Enter The LSO The project was fully realised when the family trio decamped to India and spent 18 months assembling a programming team to complete the software.
In 1998, he joined forces with his daughter and her husband to found the Virtuosoworks software company, with a view to developing a new notation program capable of orchestral playback. Eighteen years ago, Jarrett designed Musicprinter Plus, an MS-DOS program which combined score publishing with MIDI playback.
However, it's his parallel career as a software developer which concerns us here. Jarrett's works have been performed by more than 50 major orchestras he has also attained a diploma in conducting and taught at the Berklee College of Music. Jack Jarrett faced this problem younger than most - he began composing at the tender age of nine and first heard his music played by an orchestra when he was 16. Though the education programmes run by some UK orchestras have made them more accessible to the public, you're unlikely to get them to play your piece unless you're a name composer and therefore (presumably) well past the experimentation stage!ĭr. That's easy enough if you're in a band with a few mates, but when it comes to checking out your ideas with an 80-piece symphony orchestra - well, you're in trouble.
This of course assumes that you have musicians on hand to demonstrate your musical ideas.
Traditionally, novice composers have overcome this problem by trial and error once a piece of music has been played, basic errors (writing notes that fall outside an instrument's range), miscalculations (dynamic imbalances between ensembles) and other blunders can be identified and, hopefully, eradicated. All compositions sound great in the mind, but when played by real musicians they can sometimes turn out to be a horrible travesty of what was originally imagined. One of the main difficulties of writing music is predicting how it will sound in real life. Ever wondered how your composition would sound played by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios? Virtuosoworks' notation package gives you the opportunity to find out.