Flat Provides an Excellent Tool for Composing and Sharing Music
Musicians normally dread being flat, but in this case the term takes on new meaning. Flat - Music notation is flat-out easy to use. If you want to create your own score with minimal hassle, this is the tool to use. Let's take a look at what it has to offer the veteran or budding musician.
To use Flat, all you have to do is sign in with your email, Google, or Facebook account and then tap the plus sign to start composing.
Type in your working title (you can easily change this later), choose your instrument or instruments, and an empty score will appear before you.
Tap the keys on the piano, and you'll be composing your very own song. Change from quarter notes to other lengths with a simple tap, and access accidentals and other derivatives by long-pressing a note on the musical staff.
As long as you know the piano keyboard, Flat is drop-dead simple for basic compositions. Anybody with a working knowledge of music can get started writing their own scores.
To make the most of the app, though, you should have a strong background in music theory and composition. That's where Flat really shines.
The easiest way to compose music
It's just a matter of a few taps to start accessing more advanced musical notation. You can add crescendos, decrescendos, fortissimos, and much more to your composition with simple taps. You can also add additional staffs to your composition, type in lyrics, and collaborate with others.
Flat is built for sharing and collaboration, allowing you not only to work with others on your composition, but also to find inspiration in what others have already done. Simply search the public library of scores, by title or user, and you can find hundreds of songs ready for you to draw from.
The only drawback I've found in Flat is that printing your composition is less than intuitive. The Share icon, accessed by collapsing the keyboard, only offers you the choice of posting your score to Twitter, Facebook, Google, or copying a link to it. If you want to print off your music, you'll have to access the Share icon, get a link to your score, and print it from the web view.
Hopefully the developers will add more sharing options, including the ability to print directly from the app and share via Messages, in the future. For now, though, Flat is still a wonderful utility for creating music, since it is easy to use and allows for great collaborative work on your compositions.
If you want a musical notation tool that's as simple or as advanced as your needs require, Flat is definitely a terrific choice. It offers a comprehensive feature set, but remains simple and intuitive to use (except when it comes time to print your score.)
Finding inspiration in the music of others
Easily search for scores others have shared so you can find inspiration to jump start your own composition.
Sharing and printing your score
You can collaborate with others in Flat, and they can access your score either in-app or on the web. You have to visit the score's website to print it.
Advanced composition features
Adding advanced notation is simple, since you just have to change menus and tap on your notation.
Notating a song in Flat - easy as playing the piano
Composing and notating is easy in Flat; just play the piano, and your notes are automatically recorded in proper musical notation.