Notion: Music Notation and Tab 4+

Great at composing, fails with midi import

I am giving this app 3 stars due to an ongoing problem that the creators of the app acknowledged as a problem in Oct 2012, but have yet to fix. First the positives.
As far a composing music, this app is great; an easy to use interface and intuitive controls make for a very small learning curve. It is perfect for band students who want to hear a piece of music before playing it (part of my reason for getting this app). Add accidentals and other music nomenclature is a snap.
My biggest problem with this app is the bug in importing midi files. I have a collection of midi files that I created years ago on PC that I would like to port over to this app. All of the instrument tracks import fine. The drum track comes in as a piano track (regardless of the track number or instrument designation) and cannot be easily fixed. The only way I have found is to convert the track to a drum track in the app and then move each note one by one to the proper drum sound (pad). This is a huge painstaking process, and one I'm not willing to do over and over again. If they could fix this issue, I would give this app 5 stars in a heartbeat. Since they have known about this problem for a while now and have yet to address it, it kinda makes me think they will not be addressing it. If this is a feature you will need, save you money and don't buy this app.

Having a Blast

Notion has a high fun to frustration ratio. For instance, I like the way my editing stays in the measure I am working on. I have worked with programs where, when you remove a note, notes in every measure shift toward the beginning of the piece to fill in the gap; totally altering the look of the piece. None of that here. Of course you can enter too many notes into a measure, but then Notion highlights the extra beats so the notes are easy to spot and correct. Nice touch.
I'm sure that Notion has a limit as to how many parts it can handle, but I haven't hit it. The included pieces sound wonderful. I am beginning to understand how certain orchestration sounds are achieved. The ability to mute or solo an instrument and the high quality sound are a great help. It is a wonderful learning tool.
I find the stylus entry to be very natural. I can grab the root note of a triad and move it up an octave to achieve the first inversion and hear how it alters the piece. I can drag the whole triad from the tonic to the dominate and quickly return it, if I don't like the effect. Notion encourages experimentation.
There are some weakness: I haven't figured out how to change the name of a piece, for instance. Also, I can notate a acciacatura, but not an appoggiatura. That puzzles me since they are so close in function.
Notion is so good that the criticism that best characterizes it is that it is not perfect.

Usable but glitchy and unintuitive

I did manage to hack out a (very) simple score with this app but it took literally hours! The “undo” function represented by the counter clockwise symbol sometimes fails to erase the highlighted note or chord. The “redo” function, which I assume is the clockwise symbol, never worked! I frequently resorted to cutting the measure contents and reinstalling the notes one by one. Also, it’s unclear how to edit a note in the body of the song without backing up from the end or cutting an entire measure. I wanted to write for guitar and the interactive fretboard is a nice feature but it still rings out like a piano even after a guitar is selected. Not a big problem. The notes work but it would be nice if it sounded like the instrument I selected. Perhaps I missed something. That said, printing the resulting page was a snap! I also appreciate the ability to save to iCloud as well as to the device. If I need to do a more complex piece of music, I don’t know how long it would take! If this has the ability to use the built in mic to transpose the notes it hears, I could not get that feature operational. This really has the potential to be an extremely useful tool for someone like myself who has some basic music education but is a bit sketchy on writing music. Unfortunately the quirky “undo” feature as well as the less than intuitive interface could use some work!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the feedback. Couple of answers that might help...

'Undo' rolls back the last user action, rather than erase anything selected. 'Redo' then only works if you have 'undone' something.

By default the app downloads with just the piano sample sound to save space on your device - it is then up to you to download additional sounds from the the Sounds menu. If a sound has not been downloaded, then the piano will sound by default.

Notion cannot analyse audio via the microphone - however it does support MIDI input (with a MIDI instrument either connected via a USB cable and the Apple Camera connector kit, or via wireless connection with a MIDI Bluetooth enabled instruemnt)
And there are various other methods of entering notes, from the onscreen fretboard/keyboard/drumpad, to tapping in with a finger (akin to how a mouse would work) to the optional handwriting recognition (an in-app purchase)

Please do join our new Facebook user group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/PreSonusNotionUsers/