Noteflight for Student Composing

One of my favorite times of year in the studio is when we get to dig into composing. And it's a favorite of a lot of students too! The Young Composers Project has been a summer highlight in the studio since 2013. In that time, in addition to composing & recording hundreds of student pieces, these students have also had great success learning to do professional looking notation using noteflight.com. 

Now I know that there are other music notation programs that may be more comprehensive in certain ways, but let me tell you why I've chosen Noteflight for student compositions.

• Noteflight is user-friendly & has a very intuitive interface. The site is incredibly easy for today's tech savvy kids to use both on desktop and mobile devices. I've had students as young as 4 participate in Young Composers who are able to type out their music with just a little bit of teacher guidance. And as students progress into needing to use more notating tools or expression indicators, Noteflight provides an easy learning curve to add those in.

• Web-based software. This means parents don't have to download anything else, or worry about available space on their device. No apps, no software downloads. For the Young Composers project we use the studio's account, but it is very easy for students who wish to continue composing pieces on their own to set up their own accounts at home and keep writing - and many do! 

•  It's free - sort of. A basic account is free & allows you to work on up to 10 scores at once. For most students working on a home account, this is plenty of wiggle room. When they finish a piece, they can export the score to save a pdf or print it, and then remove the working score from their account to create space to start new pieces. For teachers & composers interested in more features, Noteflight does offer both teacher accounts & subscriptions for a small monthly or bundled annual fee. 

I did not receive anything from Noteflight for this review. I'm just sharing with piano teacher & piano parent followers who may have a young composer in their studio or home that they would like to support & help grow in notating their musical creations.