The PreSonus Notion 6 Music Composition and Performance Environment is a professional level notation, arrangement and playback engine offering DAW integration and cutting-edge tools for songwriters, composers, arrangers, educators and students.
The playback facilities in Notion 6 are difficult to beat: make use of public domain samples recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, Neil Zaza, Victor Wooten and Roy Wooten, recorded by top engineers in world-class studios. Virtual instruments are also covered out of the box and can be expanded at any time by purchasing specific instruments from the ever-growing PreSonus Marketplace. Of course 3rd party virtual instruments can also be used within the software.
Scores created in Notion 6 can easily be sent between PC, Mac or Tablets/iPads. This situation is reversible for those composing out and about on tablets and iPads – the same native 64-bit application is available on all these systems, and files can be transferred between them with no issue.
Notion 6 caters for many forms of writing and composing – interactive fretboards, keyboards and drum pads can be utilised to input your notes, and are customisable to your needs. The new Powered by MyScript technology allows for writing directly into the score if you prefer a more hands-on approach to composition. If you don’t have a touchscreen, use a Lightning cable to connect an iOS device to your Mac or Windows computer and use the iOS device as a graphics tablet, enabled by Duet Display software.
For those interested in composing to picture, Notion 6 is more than ready to step in. Fully integrated timecode, hit points, frame rate and start times are all included, and Notion 6 is the only major scoring program that handles video natively on 64-bit Windows.
Notion will integrate with most major DAWs seamlessly, but with version 6 collaboration with PreSonus Studio One is almost invisible. Audio, notes, tracks, VST and score data can all be fired between the programs with ease as they run side-by-side.
The final scores produced by Notion are polished and at a professional level. Export PDFs for printing or deliver fully mixed WAV or MP3 files of the entire performance or individual parts as needed.
The main features of the PreSonus Notion 6 Music Composition and Performance Environment include:
System Requirements:
I bought this software for my wife, so she could notate the many songs she has written but keeps stored in her musically gifted head!
Prior to selecting this one, I trawled though reviews of various musical notation software packages, and ended up buying it based on it being rated as one of the best in terms of content and value for money on a couple of websites.
It works perfectly on our touch-screen laptop - and despite the reviews saying it wasn't the most user friendly (to start with at least) she seems to have got to grips with it very quickly. The ultra-user friendly ones seemed to have the caveat that they had less functionality.
In summary - I thought this was very good value (there are some VERY expensive products out there, but this seems to do everything my wife needs it to, and more besides), easy to set up (box just contains a product key/licence # to be used when downloading the software), and my wife tells me she is very happy with it!
Hopefully soon she will have transcribed all her songs, and managed to farm them out to various superstars to record, and I can retire and become a kept man...
My cunning plan will be complete.