Noteflight: Overview of the Music Notation Website and How I Use it

Today I’m sharing my favorite music notation website, Noteflight! It’s a browser-based music notation software where you can make your own compositions, download others’ compositions, and purchase sheet music that you can then play or arrange yourself. I’ve been a member since 2015, and I’ve always really enjoyed it!

Watch the video here!

How I use Noteflight

• School assignments
• Transcriptions
• Arrangements
• Lesson materials

Homepage for returning users

After logging in or creating an account, the homepage shows all of your scores, along with a bunch of different options.

In the sidebar, you can sort by purchased scores, scores shared with you, and favorites. You can also access your dashboard, news, messages, and collections.

In the top bar, there’s Create, My Scores (which is the page you’re on now), Community, Marketplace, a search bar, Help Center, and your profile picture. If you click on your profile picture, a sidebar will pop up giving you more options: profile, account, what’s new, log out, and languages.

Creating a new score

To create a new score, press New Score at the top of the homepage. This will bring up two options: either start from a blank score (you can choose from many different templates or completely change the instruments once you’re editing the score), or upload an XML or midi file.

After choosing how to start, your score will be created and you can start editing it! There are plenty of tutorials on Noteflight’s website and on Youtube, so I won’t go too in-depth on how the features work. If that’s something you’re interested in seeing me do, just let me know in the comments!

A few years ago, I found a life saving graphic of all the Noteflight keyboard shortcuts. Here it is, to make your life easier!

Community

I’ve never used the Noteflight Community, so unfortunately I don’t know all that much about it. They have many different topics and groups!

Marketplace

You can purchase scores in the Marketplace, then download them, edit them, arrange them, and sell your own arrangements in the Marketplace! This is a relatively new feature, and I’m interested in trying it out.

I just purchased a piece of sheet music from the Marketplace, and I was immediately able to edit it just like a score of my own. It’s a very cool feature, and a huge draw to use this website!

Using Noteflight on an iPad/Tablet

Using Noteflight on an iPad or tablet is a basically identical experience to using it on a desktop. Since it’s browser-based, there’s a lot of continuity. 

The only real difference is you can only use your finger to input notes on the on-screen keyboard, unless you have a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse. I was able to use my Bluetooth keyboard to input notes exactly the same way I do on the desktop version, and everything looked the same!