Noteflight -- Bicycle Built for Two

Bicycle Built for Two

Prior to taking this class, I was already familiar with Noteflight.  I used Noteflight during my undergraduate studies, when I needed a notation program, but wasn't in the music building computer lab or on campus to have access to Sibelius.  Personally, I think that Noteflight is very easy to learn and use for notation purposes, especially if you are writing out one single part or a voice/instrument and piano accompaniment.  I have used Noteflight with students and they find it very user friendly to navigate and input.  I think that the shortcuts on Noteflight are very easy to use and makes the inputting process easier.  For me, because I learned how to use Noteflight before other notation programs, I still find it the fastest and easiest for me, but it's not always the best choice for what I need to accomplish.   For my personal use, I tend to steer away from Noteflight at times because the free version does not extract and print individual parts.  Because of this, I find it difficult and challenging to use Noteflight for any large scale project.  When doing a large scale project, although I find it far more tedious, I tend to use Finale or MuseScore.  Often I use Finale because I am working on a piece to input into SmartMusic for one of my ensembles.

I did find another free notation program that I really like!  Last year, when I was researching different notation program options to use with my 7th grade general music class, I was already to have all of my students create Noteflight accounts until I saw a post in one the Facebook groups for music teachers talking about FLAT.  I asked some questions about their experiences with FLAT and made the decision to use FLAT over Noteflight with my first quarter general music class.  I don't regret the decision at all!  We are a Google based school and FLAT has the capability to link directly with Google accounts, so I opted to go this route because it made creating accounts and logging in very simple.  It also allowed for students to easily share their compositions with both myself and other students.  If you are looking for a possible notation program to use with students, I highly recommend checking out FLAT!  I posted some samples of student projects using FLAT on my Twitter account as well!