QuickScore Elite II Reviewer's Comments

QuickScore Elite II version 10 is the maestro of music notation software and our "TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award" product. This software package accommodates the novice and the professional musician alike. The program uses a window system that contains all of the tools necessary to compose a brilliant piece of music.

QuickScore impressed us with its editing capabilities—they surpass any other product on the market today. Icon palettes display the editing tools needed to delete, add or move notes or entire staffs with ease. You can even adjust stem height to separate voices.

Ease of Use:
After a day of reviewing the tutorial and experimenting with the software, we felt comfortable enough to create a few jingles of our own; you will be a pro in no time.

Palettes, including the toolbar palette and the object type palette and the excellent editing tools, make music composition manageable and allow you to visualize what you’re doing.

Feature Set:
QuickScore Elite II is stacked with features that make music notation quick and easy. The main composing screen consists of the editors and tools you will need to compose your masterpiece.

Three editors—the controller editor, the score editor and the piano roll editor—appear as three separate windows, making it easy to click between the three while composing your music. Additional smaller windows, at the bottom of the screen, help in the notation process and include a track sheet, a mixer, an event list, a song editor and a comments window.

Through QuickScore you can notate guitar and percussion as well as other MIDI files or music created using a microphone. The guitar feature will create a chord out of any selected note so you can play the correct chord along with any other instrument.

The drag and drop abilities of this program make music notation a breeze—simply select the duration of the note and click the editing pencil on the appropriate line. Unfortunately, there are very few computer keyboard shortcut commands to assist with the process.

QuickScore Elite II is able to accept up to 16 MIDI channels at once. This means you can input 16 different instruments at the same time and the program will notate each instrument separately.

Ease of Installation:
We found no problems with the installation process.

Input/Output Capabilities:
QuickScore will accept MIDI type 0, 1 and 2 music files, including MIDI guitar. The software will notate the music and create chords for each note or once per measure.

QuickScore is capable of saving and recording your music files in a number of formats, including WAV and MP3. You can save scores in TIFF, BMP and Windows Enhanced Metafile files. Then import your scores into popular graphics and word processing programs, like Microsoft Word and Corel Draw to add graphics and other enhancements to your final score to give it some flare or include your personalized logo.

QuickScore will export MIDI type 0 and type 1 music files to another computer, instrument, MP3 player or any other electronic device that is MIDI compatible.

One downside to the QuickScore input capabilities is the software does not notate the input in real-time. This means you must first record the music and then once you decide to keep the score the notes appear on the screen.

Editing:
The editing features of QuickScore Elite are top-notch with an erase icon that makes individual deletions quick and effortless. Palettes make replacing notes a cinch and simply select a note or group of notes to bring up an edit menu with over 50 editing options that allow you to tweak and adjust your tune.

This program can punch record so you can replace just a few notes or an entire staff with a different recording.

Help/Support:
QuickScore Elite includes a comprehensive tutorial that covers many features of the program, more specific information is available through an online manual and FAQs page.

Customer service is available by phone and email.

Summary:
QuickScore Elite II is a great buy for anyone looking for music notation software, whether you write music professionally or as a hobby. With tons of user-friendly features and an editing section that can’t be beat, this software will have you writing your own melodies in days.

A complete list of features and side-by-side comparisons are available on the Music Notation Software Review HomePage.

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