Noteflight is the first music notation software that I have ever used. My initial reaction to Noteflight was that it was not intuitive. I had to watch the help videos two times before I felt comfortabl e enough to try copying Bicycle Built for Two. My main frustration with the interface was that I felt like I had to sift through tons of information before I was able to find out about what I was struggling with. My first problem was with the tempo text at the top of the page. I felt that I should have been able to click somewhere on the top left page to type the text, as in a Microsoft document. When I discovered that I had to go to a tab on the right hand side of the screen (the score tab) before I was able to click on the top left blank part of the page, I was frustrated when I wasn't able to type the text the first time, since the software only gave me one chance to type before I had to go back to the tab to "tell" the software what to do with it (again). Once I figured out that I had to use the tabs for almost every detail except for the notes themselves, I felt more comfortable. The first eight measures took me almost an hour to figure out. Once I was through copying the first eight measures of the piece, I was less frustrated with the software and I was able to go through the rest of the piece fairly quickly. I felt reasonably competent with the software by the time I was done copying the piece. A shortcut that I found useful was to use shift+note name to notate a chord.
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I too found that I wanted to use N like Microsoft Word, and consequently, struggled. I felt like I had to do everything in the program "backwards" to get it to work. By the end of the assignment, I had finally started to figure it out.
ReplyDeleteThere is almost always a "start up" cost when learning a new technology. You often feel you could do the job faster "by hand." But, as you discovered, once you spend some time with the technology, you get better at using it, and then your whole work flow is enhanced.
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