by choirguy » Fri Mar 08, 2013 11:32 pm
1. Mouse input isn't going to happen on an iPad...only jailbroken iPads have had a mouse driver, and Apple pretty clearly isn't going there. If you need finger input, I encourage you to do two things. First, drop the customer service folks at Notion an e-mail and request it. I'm sure they log requests and keep them in mind as they make changes to their development roadmap. Second, if you drastically need "finger" composition, you might want to look at iWriteMusic (there's a free version and paid). You should be able to export MIDI from iWriteMusic into Notion.
2. Octave jumps. I'm a Finale user, and learned this fall that I could press 8 to bring a selected group of notes down an octave and 9 to bring notes up an octave, and it is ridiculous how many times I've used that feature since (And I've been using Finale since the early 1990s). So I can see the use of this. My thought: highlight the section, and then along with "Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Clear" you could add the Options of "8va Up, 8va Down, P2 Up, P2 Down" These are probably the most common.
3. You can select a group of notes (double-tap a note, and move the handle...be sure to stay on the same staff line even over various staff systems to select specific notes in the same staff) and then select articulations and add the same articulations to a lot of notes at the same time. By the way, this is the same general way you add slurs and a number of other markings.
Just yesterday, I was playing notes into Notion, where there was a sustained note on the bottom and changing notes above--and the sustained note was tied. When I went back to put in the ties, the program AUTOMATICALLY tied the common note and left the changing notes alone...this is brilliant. I wish Finale did that.
There are all kinds of gems in this program...it's not perfect, but is it ever improving with every release. As I wrote somewhere else on these forums tonight, I can see how people could eventually prefer to compose on their tablet versus their computer (side note: this is one of the rare situations where a 16:10 tablet would make more sense than the 4:3 iPad-other than movie watching, of course)