I've been using Noteworthy Composer (paid-for version) for a long time now and like it, but gave this a try out of interest. After several hours, my impression is that the output looks nicer than Noteworthy's, and has a slightly more extensive range of notes/symbols, but Noteworthy is much quicker and easier to use. So use this to make something look nice (vary font sizes and styles, adjust positioning/shape of notes, slurs etc), but use Noteworthy for day-to-day stuff.

I think I accidentally did not activate the previous offering of this and it expired in the unactivated form ... would not run . So this update allowed me to take care of that. Always double check that you have completely finished the activation process and check the help--> about window.... because once the 24 hr period expires you cannot complete it after that ... opportunity missed.

With the separate activate.exe method, be sure to "setup-install" , do not start it after the install, do run activate.exe , then start it and check the "help-->about" to see that it is registered. This general formula applies the virtually all GOTD offerings that use a seperate activation(.exe) file and I have never had a problem. There seem to be at least a half dozen different activation - key input routines with GOTD offerings and this particular one works reliably for me. Once you have seen the different activate methods and worked thru them installations usually go fine unless there is a conflict between your specific OS and the app. For instance I have XP 64 and a few apps wouldn't run , one did after an update to the download file.

I have noticed that using the recent offering of Outpost Security that I get multiple permission dialogs during a setup that I never had to repeatedly bother with using just Avast .. so there may occassionally be an issue with re-addressing your firewall permissions.

I have been trying all evening to activate this. Keeps saying "failed to connect - try later" I have tried without and with program running, restarting pc, running as admin., moving activate into program folder, reloading package, changing default browsers. Normally, I do not have a problem with GAOTD programs. If this didn't appear to be an interesting program, I would not go to this much trouble. (running Win7-64 Ultimate)

#45: When I check registration, "OK" is greyed out and "Buy Now" and "Cancel" are not. It is really looking like it is not really registered, else "Buy Now" should be grey and "OK" should not be. Otherwise the developers have a very poor sense of interface design. Which may be true, I haven't been able to get it to do much yet.

@41 Click service, then settings and then devices tab to set midi input and output. Just run activate and it should show licensed to giveawayoftheday. No serial needed.

i put up a little clip of the program playing the entertainer though youtube messed up the sound a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TlUsN2PSgs

it would let those unfamiliar with this kind of program see what it looks like in playback. If you are not musical you could learn from seeing the notes turn red on the score and built in keyboard as it plays.
clicking windows then tools then playing lets you adjust playback speed on a slider control at the bottom. That would let you see more clearly which notes on the keyboard go with which notes on the score.
You can also use your mouse to play it and it shows the letters of the notes you play.
You could teach yourself piano with this.

This is useful software for those who know something about music but may not have the dexterity to actually play well. I've used it a bit before from previous the previous giveaway. Like using accounting software relies upon the user knowing something of accounting, this software requires the user knows something about music. But all one really needs is a basic understanding of music. And even if you can't play anything, it's fun just to watch the animation of the sheet music as the midi is playing.

@ #4 the sound font from the website works i tried it.

at #32 you got something different and fairly unique for here. In a long time of coming nearly everday haven't ever seen a midi-recording software offered. I think its a shame that because it is not Sibelius or Sonar you rip it to shreds and lots of people who would have got a lot of pleasure may be put off. It is NOT crippled its just not the flagship version from the company. It records, edits and plays back polyphonic multi instrument midi. Unless you are a professional its all that you need. Thanks to MagicScore and GAOTD.

I find most still requiring registration after install are due to the newbie types, sorry anybody who feels a bit behind others but to help there needs to be a reminder to avoid avoidable issue and stop some excessive problem numbers with registrations and I would state it as a header area to all future GA-OTD, I think some people RUN the software sometimes by a check box STRAIGHT after installing it to check it out and then to comment and some haven't been activated by this time requires maybe key gather and input or the activate wrapper must be run, which who reads READ-ME files? PROFESSIONALS "TO ALL NEWBIES" They really do because it is known to contain any critical data, so best advice if you can't read the read me don't expect to know much? This puts extra and repeated work on us who care to chase around what you did so it's not a bad experience leading to poorly represented reviews or rants, this is not a professional look either computers need patience and some cognitive helpers. Thanks.

Installed. Activate said it was activated and took me to the GOTD activated page. But when I go to the registration page it shows GiveAwayOfThe Day as the registered user but the serial number field is blank and it says that I need to enter a serial number.

When it first started it opened a window showing input and output devices. My MIDI interface was not currently connected and the input device window was blank with no options in the drop down list. I attached the MIDI but nothing changed. I shut it down, tried to activate, and restarted, but the input selection window didn't reopen and I can't find any preferences option in the tools to open it again. Unless I find a way to get to the MIDI it is worthless to me.

So I both need to get MIDI access and get past the activation/registration problem or it gets uninstalled.

Installed clean on Vista Home Premium, though like several others, I too am reluctant to invest my time in testing a software that is not properly activated, because although the name in the registration field is 'Giveawayoftheday', the serial key is missing, and the message 'If you want to use all opportunites of "Magic Score", you have to register' is written in boldface.

DG Software, are you going to address this issue which has been raised by several of us now?

I will download this happily; I did download it last time it was offered but that computer crashed. In the meantime, though, I found a very nice musical notation program called "Melody Assistant" -- google it, you'll find it. The freeware version does cripple a couple of things but nothing I wasn't able to get around -- at the time, I was singing bass in a barbershop group and wanted to isolate the bass line -- and with a bit of finessing I was able to print out my bass line and burn it to a CD. Thanks, GOTD (and thanks for the recent repeat of LeaderTask)!

@MikeM #33 Refer to my comment # 15: - inserting tabs och chords is not possible in this version. (At least I have not found any way to do it)

@gordon #31: What you missed is that in the readme.txt it says to "run the activation program Activate.exe" to register your copy. Normally you need to do that while the program-to-be-registered is not running.

I'm a long term Noteworthy Composer user, and this certainly has a few more bells and whistles than Noteworthy, but I recently discovered the open source freeware MuseScore, and have been recommending it to my students, especially as the school I work in has recently gone all Mac, but most of the students are still PC at home, and it's available for all three major platforms.  MuseScore seems to do stuff that only the top end version of MagicScore does (such as transposing individual instrument parts -- necessary if you're arranging for brass, woodwinds, etc), so, sorry folks, but I don't think I'll bother giving this one a try.

Win 7 x64 bit:

every time i load it up, it crashes >:0@

Activation problems? I activated twice: with open program first and then with closed and was successful.

For amateurs like me MagicScore Note 7 is worth trying. Thanks to our russian friends and GOTD. Songs can be stored as MIDI-files or in native sfd-format which jugding from filesize allows to store much more information or in Karaoke format. Please try out examples in sub-folder "demofiles".

Just found a description of MagicScore Note 7.125 at
http://www.brothersoft.com/magicscore-note-441125.html:
Edit by Brothersoft: MagicScore Note is wonderful basic music notation and music writing software, offering the advanced capabilities for music schools, students. teachers and music lovers.

The basic features of the MagicScore Note version are as follows:
* Automatic control of a correctness of input information.
* High functionality of editing (copying, insert, deleting, transposition separated notes and selected blocks of notes).
* Addition the notes through the virtual piano.
* Capability of binding to all units of score the comments, references and other units of design.
* Regulation of volume, Balance and effects for each racetrack (score instrument).
* Reading from the file of the MIDI and Karaoke format, and record the information in the MIDI and Karaoke format.
* Play of the input notes separately on instruments, and on the whole orchestra.
* Printing of score with preliminary Review of the printed information.
* Drag & Drop support.
* Undo, Redo operations
* Options of the printing blank staff notation
* Print notes of the MIDI format files

Does anyone know if this also does guitar TABs (versus just notation)?

Thanks,

Mike

I have left a couple of messages today (& I am sorry I did not leave my qualifiers) I am a computer technician (31 years) professional musician for over 50 yrs). I have a number of midi & musical score products that are very professional - and as #27 said - it can't be Christmas everyday - so, hopefully my harsh critique early, will not affect tomorrow's offerings - and hopefully the companies that are offering will understand that crippled test programs don't endear themselves to GAOTD diehard's like myself - who wait each day to open their computers to see something diff & unique. Thanks for today - but today not in my Top Ten Blog.
Regards
Thom

Where can the activation key be found?
Normally, it's provided in the read me ext. or e-mailed to us.
Neither appears to be true in case, all we seem to have is the 30-day free trail....or did I miss something?

the program activator isn´t working ;tried without firewall too,so...
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Activate.exe
Application Version: 0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 4d8099b4
Fault Module Name: Activate.exe
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4d8099b4
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00004f67
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
??????????????

It would be a great idea if the company that offered the software had one of their experts keep an eye on these comments and answer the questions .That way the answers given by the other posters would not be nessessary as a lot of times the answers are wrong or incomplete.
I would thing this would be to the advantage of the software company as it would prevent a lot of wrong answers which may turn a lot of people off to the offering..A lot of people read the reviews to determine if they will get the software and several wrong answers in this forum may stop them from even trying it..If you are offering your product it would be best for you to answer the questions we have and prevent wrong info from being posted here and giving us the wrong idea about your software.....Just an idea Pat

Manual "MagicScore 7" in English, German, French and Russian as PDF and DOC: http://www.musicaleditor.com/download/doc/

There's music in it!

For the “musician“ this (perhaps) may be quite an useful tool. For people (like myself) who love to listen to music very much but are unmusical for the rest, however, – and that (IMHO) will be the big majority – such a program is of little use. Therefore, I think that this product will make a rather small circle really “happy“. But even a small circle needs to be served. And justifiably so!

As a “music-peasant“, I am not able to judge this product, – I'd better leave that to those with more knowledge on that matter – and thus I am not in the position to give any thumbs here, neither up nor down.

Finally, I wish all those, who see something useful in today's offer, a lot of pleasure and fun in using it! And for the big majority which (like myself) returns empty-handed today, the following counts: Christmas comes but once a year! No reason to grumble, maybe tomorrow there will be something useful again!

Have a nice day!

I am not a musician -- unfortunately, I don't seem to have any musical talent. So could one of you musically-talented and computer literate guys out there tell us non-musicians how this might be useful to US?

I don't want to miss the chance of downloading something that might be either useful or fun, but on the other hand, if there is no way the average Joe can find a way to use it, I'd rather not clutter up my already rather over-burdened registry.

It really isn't clear from this listing just what good it could be to all of us who can't play a note, and cannot even read them, let alone actually COMPOSE something. I'd LIKE to find that it could be useful to people such as I, who are better writing words, than penning something someone else could actually PLAY.

The respondent who wrote #18 (dimon) hit it on the head: I've used several types of notation software (including Finale, Sibelius, Encore products) and find the open source software MuseScore most accommodating. The full version is available free and legal (under Creative Commons licensing) at the link http://musescore.org/ and there's wonderful tech support (I asked a question and got a response within two hours) as well as frequent updates and one can learn to use it simply by watching a ten part series on YouTube. You can import/export MIDI and PDF files of your work in addition to the proprietary file type .mcsz and can open other related files cross platform (available for PC, Mac, and Linux).
I dig GAOtD and have gotten many goodies here both directly and indirectly from counsel gleaned from the comments- and it feels good now to be able to repay the favor in a small way.

Very simple. If you haven't got it, and you are into making music, install it. If you've got the higher versions, fine. I was only just thinking about their software recently, so am pleased it's being offered again, it's not installed on this computor.

Also, there is a degee of portability. I can't remember the details, but I have transferred the programme between systems. It's worked with at least one prior GOTD install, hasn't worked with another.

I haven't really used it beyond exploratory investigation of its feature set, but, on the basis of that, I think it's worth having.

Sibelius and Finale are flagship products, and expensive. But, even there, the full version of MagicScore is worth having as an interesting alternative, if not a comprehensive substitute. Also, there are reports that many find Finale to be overwhelming. So, newcomers should assess their needs and research the relevant variables.

That's all, folks! 0:-)

I'm a rather amateur musician, so have not used this type of software before. It LOOKS beautiful; i wonder if some of our composer-'members' can tell us how MagicScoreNote stacks up against other similar programs. I've also left a suggestion that the 0.6mb pdf manual be included in the download, along with some quick-and-easy how-to demonstration examples. That'd be helpful, don't you think? The program installed and activated flawlessly, though i never actually received any serial #, so i can't tell if i'm fully "registered". This seems to me a small flaw in the installation procedure.

I had my wife look at this one as she is a music teacher and uses Finale Notepad and Finale Songwriter daily preparing arrangements, compositions and transcriptions. She took a look at their website descriptions and thinks their $19.95 price is fair for this Note 7 version but it is nowhere near the professional quality of Finale. Their website claims toptenreview first place gold award but it looks like they got a third place bronze award. Which is certainly very good but no cigar as advertised and the review was for their $99 Mastero 7 version not the Note 7 version offered today. She thinks this would be great software for the hobbyist but not the best choice for more serious professional musicians and believes that it would have been much better had they offered their Mastero 7 version to GAOTD. Her comments are based only on a review of the website descriptions/screenshots and toptenreview comments as she does not want me to download this GAOTD for her. Just thought I would pass her comments along. Thanks GOTD and DG Software.

I am not a musician, but this programme is great fun! I have just spent a couple of hours playing about with various midi files and everything seems to work perfectly.

Schubert would have loved it - everything finished on time!

Agree with #17. Unless this has changed from the last offering (and it hasn't), this crippled version is not nearly as good as its open-sourced competitor.

@#8 Tarak. There are plenty of demo files. Look in C:\Program\MagicScore Music Software\MagicScore Note 7.x\DemoFiles

The free alternative - MuseScore (http://musescore.org/) runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS, has more friendly input interface and it's an opensource!

What a beautiful piece of software, it's a delight to the eye and a pleasure to use, and it’s less than $20. It easily imported a MID file and converted it to a score, that was easy to edit and play. It would be great if all software companies had as much pride in their product as this one does, absolutely loved it.

(Addedum to #10) Forgot to mention that the program according to the help file also records input from a midi device.

Very good program, makes it easy to "compose" if you know music notation. Can also be used for training and learning music notation and reading. Very good documentation. Plays, saves and prints midi files. Recommended! On the negative side: It seems not possible to insert lyrics, chords or tabulature. I guess this is found in a paid version.

It would be nice if this site still used its Publisher link as a link to previous offerings by the same software publisher, when applicable. It can be helpful to see comments from prior postings as these sometimes tell of any issues with the software.

Here's a link to the last time this software was offered:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/magicscore-note-7/

The version offered today is 7.285 (previous 7.084.

For those looking for a key, there is no key. Once you install the software, close it, and run the Activation. When you open the software and click About, you will see that it is Licensed to Giveawayoftheday. If you had the previous version, you may not need to run Activate as was my case.

Unfortunately, the website has a poor description of features and no comparison against their regular products. ("Note" seems to be a deliberately super-cut-down version of 3 other superior editions they sell).

There is also no ability to import other data formats, and no comment on compatibility with other programs or even their own music scanning software.

I think this product has potential, but there is clearly a lack of interest in supporting this specific version of their Notation Suite.

Loaded,ran setup and then activated with no problems on Win 7 32 bit. Many samples are included in the Magicscore directory. Works with the existing sound card and speakers. I then connected my MIDI keyboard, Magicscore detected it. I selected one of the included samples and it worked. Then I selected one my MIDI files and it loaded and displayed the score and played it on my MIDI keyboard. It also reads from your MIDI keyboard to the Magicscore software. I have only used it for a short time this morning but it looks like the real deal. If you want to listen to MIDI's, write music or modify your existing MIDI files download this giveaway and give it a try. FYI I have dual monitors and the program opens in my left monitor (number 2) for some reason, my right monitor is number one, not a big deal. The homepage has more information about the software. Looks like a winner. Thanks GOTD and DG Software.

Regards,
Rich

installed fine on vista premium.

messed around with it and created a interesting song.With a bit of tinkering I 'll be able to make mozart and beethoven look like chumps.

Thanks,its been good so far and I'll say its worth the download.

This was offered in July 2010. Both setup files are exactly the same size. Has anything changed?

Easy to install - seems to work fine - definitely needs a sample file and maybe video tutorial.

Installed OK on Win 7. Imported one of the example midi files on the hard disk (C:\Windows\Media\onestop.mid). It made a complete mess out of it. The music was unrecognizable. Uninstalled.

Even after running Activate.exe, the program consistently comes up as an unregistered 30-day trial, although the Help->About box says "Licensed to Giveawayoftheday" (on WinXP Pro, running as administrator).

Is anyone else having this problem?

Good Sofware Thanx,
How About Kahlown screen capture Next Time ;)

It installed fine then i ran the activation file. it said it was sucessful. I clicked help on the main page of the program and clicked registration and there is no serial key and it sais i need to register to use all componunts of the program. How do i use the activation file properly and how do i get the key?

This is an excellent software. Installed XP sp3 no problems.
The demo files are in the same directory as the install.
It can use "sound fonts"!
Download free Sound font files, used the help and it worked excellent.

Some music I had to start with GS and then switch back to Sound font to play or else it played silent. The Chorium Sound font on their website doesn't seem to work either.

Still, get this while you can. I will keep it.

MagicScore is a reputed software. Version 7 was offered last year (GOTD 8 July 2010.
Is there any change with this one ? Need to know : Does this version compare to Maestro, Classic, or School version ? The comparison grid on developer's site doesn't seem updated, with some version 6 still mentioned instead of 7, see http://www.musicaleditor.com/compare-music-notation-software.html.
To sum up : reputed software, thanks to GOTD, but more details would be appreciated about this version

The decription above doesn't tell much.

The Homepage doesn't tell about functions of "MagicScore Note" or differences to other variants. They tell it costs $19.95 compared to the best variant MagicScore Maestro 7.x for $79.95. It seams to be a very restricted special version for GOTD-users sort of appetizer.

As prizes for MagicScore Score(MIDI) To WAV Converter (2.01 MB) and MagicScore Virtual Piano (4.4 MB) perhaps they are free to use.

Sorry, no time left at this hour!

I played a file and the sound stopped working.

Win7 64bit


Also, it says I should register ($19.95) for "all opportunities"