Good morning, all.
Is anyone here familiar with the software product Notion 1.5? It is advertised in the new Opera News, and sounds kind of intriguing:
Wield total control over the music you love and experience the power and nuance of every note in ways never before possible. NOTION offers innovative music software that places the London Symphony Orchestra directly into your hands. Explore and even conduct treasured works with a full, responsive orchestra at your fingertips.
Intriguing!
You can find more information here.
That's a cool site, and a cool product. They've also had a booth set-up at a couple of conferences that past few years.
It's basically an extension of the SmartMusic system that was developed for school programs so that students could practice their music with full accompaniment and in real time. That whole process still boggles my mind - I mean, the program actually 'listens' to the player and follows him/her. SmartMusic started off with just piano accompaniments, but soon expanded to orchestral accompaniments. It's a handy practice tool when it comes time to preparing for Solo and Ensemble festival and other competitions.
As for Notion itself, strangely enough, the one aspect of the program I haven't been too thrilled with is the sound of the program. Yes, they sampled players from the London Symphony Orchestra, but they still sound "sample-y". At least in the composition end of the product. From the way they write about their own product, one would expect that the playback would also be a bit intuitive, but it's not. -However, I do have to say the note entry interface is quite nice, with a very fast learning curve. The sounds are nice, but unless you start to embed all the crescendos and diminuendos, and all the natural "tapering" that real players do, it can sound a bit mechanical. It's good, just misleading in a sense.
Be sure to check out the LSO's own website. There are some great educational tools on the site, and, if I'm remembering correctly, an interactive tour of the orchestra.
