The Basics: Notation

Notation applications are few and far between on all platforms:

Palm OS
For Palm devices there is the wonderful NotePad from miniMusic. With four ways to see your songs on screen, it's easy to enter music and edit your ideas. Tools include chords, key signatures, time signatures, tied notes, triplets, inversion, retrograde, MIDI export, and full cut/copy/paste editing.

As a user of NotePad for many years now I can safely say that it is almost certainly the best notation tool available for a PDA.



Windows Mobile / Pocket PC
On this platform I know of only one application that has not been updated for a very long time indeed. MidNote was developed when Microsoft's mobile OS was Pocket PC and hasn't been updated. It does have a number of useful features though:

- Enter music with fully graphical editor
- Each piece can have up to 10 separate tracks.
- Six octave tonal range (or 15 with tricks :-)
- Musical edit functions like transpose and mirror
- Full drum support
- Standard MIDI import and export
- Polyphonic play through integrated MIDI player (GSPlayer, Mimidi or PocketAMP)