From PC Chronicles, March 1999

Autoscore: Music Straight From Playing to Monitor

By Earl Dean

So, now that you have that new computer and a gift certificate for a computer program what are you going to buy? If you are into music there is one clear choice. Autoscore is a program that allows you to sing or play an instrument into an microphone and have the notes appear automatically onto the computer screen for print, edit or just to hear how your composition sounds.

Imagine the possibilities: No longer do you have to know to play an instrument, if you can sing in the bathroom you can compose music! How about not having to spend hours of time writing scores, just compose and then print them straight to your printer. This ability to write and print scores makes it one of the hottest programs in this year's market. My seven-year-old daughter took to the program just as though she had been working with it for years. What a great way to stimulate interest in the arts by having them create their own music!

One of the nice features of Autoscore is the help menus explaining everything from how to count the notes or measures to explaining how to write music for drums, something I had no clue about until I took a few minutes to read the help text. I came away saying Oh! That's how they did it! I can do that! Another great feature is its ability to quantize the notes by having the program pick the length of the note or the closest sound to it. If you can't reach a note, it will find it for you.

Installation was quick and easy. I was very impressed with how swiftly I was able to "interpret" for myself how to control this program and begin writing music with minimal manual study. Highly enjoyable and helpful for a novice composer is the feature that allow you to click and drag a note up and down or back and forth across the staff while listening to the sound until its proper position is decided. Being able to copy and paste entire measures, etc., really expedites creating a song from a single measure or two. The voices of the available instruments were very impressive. In practically no time I had composed a beautiful orchestral piece that I could hardly believe I had done in only a few fun-packed moments. It printed out with hardly any effort and it had the look and feel of a professional job. For anyone who would like to step up to a more advanced, Pro Version (with Cakewalk Home Studio version 3.0) was even more fun. I highly recommend Autoscore to any novice musician or composer.

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