MusicJOT 4+

Its getting better but

I was staying away from this app for awhile to let it get its bearings together, and honestly I was just frustrated with all the crashes and difficulty using it. But I came back to it today after about a year of not bothering with it to see what updates have been made since when I did contact customer support they got back to me very quickly and resolved one my issues with the app. For one it runs much smoother than before, and I'm having less issues writing the notes and getting them in the system correctly. But unfortunately about part way through a new project it crashed and scrambled the notes once I opened it back up and basically ruined my project. It does have a lot of potential, I really want to like it, but for now I'm not completely sold on it or the price I paid for it. Thankfully it looks like it has a dedicated team working on it.

Great new tool for composers

This app is a great new tool for composers. Anyone serious about having a tool easier to use than the big, expensive palette-driven desktop packages and one you can use on a train or plane should consider this app. This is not a toy, it is a full-featured composing tool for mobile users. The handwriting is magic and although it makes some mistakes, the developers appear extremely committed to continual updates. The interface is clean and easy to understand. The tutorials are clever and explanatory. I have contacted them with questions already and they have been very responsive. All the updates appear to be free. I don’t like getting lured into an app by a cheap price only to find that I have to spend more money just to get the thing doing something useful. Their approach seems more honest to me. I especially like the layers feature, which I’ve never seen before. When you’ve got lots of expressions and dynamics and slurs, it is easier to enter new stuff when you can hide all of that and just see the notes. I also think the palette (non-handwriting) aspect of the app is very well done. Dragging pitches up/down and durations left/right is super easy. They even have a little interval indicator when dragging pitches which is pretty cool. So you can drag a bunch of notes up and you can see how far (intervallic distance) you dragged before you even let go. Never seen that before. They’ve got the right approach to a monstrously difficult genre.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the wonderful review! No, definitely NOT a toy - but simple to use like a toy!

Amazing music notation software

My review is from the perspective of a novice scholar of music notation. I've played guitar for many decades, but virtually always by rote. I recently made up my mind to return to learning music theory through books designed for guitarists. It then occurred to me that it would be nice to have an app for my iPad that enabled and simplified writing musical notation to preserve ideas born during my practice sessions. I found MusicJOT, which greatly exceeded my expectations in that not only can the app turn my chicken scratch notes into professional looking musical notation, but it will play the lines back to me immediately. So even a beginner can benefit from this software. Of course MusicJOT is loaded with tools that are presently beyond my training in music theory to use, but I look forward to learning how to use them effectively as I progress. For those who are already fully fluent in musical notation, this software offers limitless opportunities to realize your ideas in a publishable format. In sum, I highly recommend this product for beginning music theory students, particularly for class assignments, and for advanced musicians alike. This app is by far more the most sophisticated and powerful program I own.

Developer Response ,

Thanks so much for the great review. Don't be afraid to dive into the Transformation Editor - it is loads of fun, and you can experiment like crazy without fear of messing up your score - all the changes are made to a copy of your score, so when you are ready to leave the editor, you'll be asked if you want to save them all or not. It's intensely cool! Check out the tutorials just for that feature on our website.