Music software company MakeMusic kicked off its NAMM industry trade show presence with a pair of announcements: in February, the company will make an as-yet-untitled iPad viewer app available for its Finale sheet-music users that will let them view print and play electronic sheet music. It also announced an improved 2012 version of its “Finale NotePad.”
Finale is creation software for making printable and playable scores using traditional music notation. The Finale NotePad software is a lighter version of this, letting users experiment and learn how to create scores. Users can write and then hear performed (drawing from 128 sounds) the music they’ve written. The program can also open any Finale-created or MusicXML files and print out sheet music.
The 2012 version of Finale NotePad will add Unicode font support and portions of Finale’s new ScoreManager feature to help manage playback sounds. The program had cost money but the company has decided to make the 2012 version free of charge. It will be released on February 15th.
The new iPad app is on display at MakeMusic’s NAMM booth and lets users open Finale, Finale NotePad and MusicXML files. It cannot be used for music creation but can print and play the files. At present the product is limited to the iPad, but the company will gauge requests for Android and iPhone versions. No price or release date has been announced but it is expected to appear around the same time as Finale NotePad.
