Question

Notion is pretty incredible, in a lot of ways. The 'send to Studio One' (and back) feature is quite powerful.

I've been using Notion for a year, and have grown frustrated with many of the things it handles poorly... things that could be fixed and enhanced, to make Notion a super program, rather than just a decent, or okay, or workable, program. The updates to the program, since I've been using it,  have seemed pretty meager: I would be hard-pressed to say what any of them accomplished.

I have encountered a LOT of frustrations that chew up time, when working with Notion.

I get the feeling PreSonus doesn't want to put more resources into improving Notion. I suppose they consider its market-share too small, compared to the rest of their tools.

Am not keen to post endless suggestions to the wishlist, and hope that some of them get voted on. Seems like a lot of effort, with dubious return.

Can anyone suggest other, more solid and capable notation programs, that could allow for back and forth with Notion, perhaps via MusicXML? Alternately, perhaps there's a more robust notation program available that could be integrated directly with Studio One via Rewire?

Thank you! I don't mean to knock Notion, but it seems to be about 85% of what it could be. That doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon, though I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

Answer 1

The composers I know use Sibelius.  Here's one randomly-chosen review:

https://composerstoolbox.com/2018/11/23/sibelius-music-notation-software-review/

Steven

Answer 2

Hi.  I have previously used Guitar Pro 6 prior to using Notion, which I picked up a few days ago.  I wouldn't say people outside of guitarists use it but Version 7.5 (which I bought the same day as Notion) does have capabilities of writing and scoring parts for the obvious fretboard and drums, but it can also do piano, "orchestra" (strings, woodwind, brass) and a selection of other midi keyboard sounds.  Guitar Pro also exports to midi, MusicXML, and other formats like PDF.  

Answer 3

Thanks for the good suggestions, along with the review link. Will be considering Sibelius, though I'll wait to see if there are any pleasant surprises in store, whenever S1 5 comes out

I've been impressed with Guitar Pro. Just picked it up today. Though I'm not a guitarist, I've found a lot of good versions of popular songs available in .gp4 format. Exports to music xml.

Answer 4

I use Notion for sketching, and Dorico for final output. I could certainly use Dorico for all of that, but I just like working in Notion because I prefer most of the sounds. Unfortunately, it's editing features are VERY limited.

Sib dominates the industry right now, but Dorico is a significantly better program, and was designed by the team that designed Sib back when it was good, before Avid took it over (and dumped the now Dorico team).