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A brief history of music notation on computers

Tatiana Gordeeva

Tatiana Gordeeva

Long time member
In 1952, the University of Illinois built ILLIAC I, the first computer at a US educational establishment. Weighing two tons, it could hold a massive 5.12 Kilobytes in memory, with storage of 64 Kb. :eek::geek::eek:

On what type/model of computer did YOU run your first DAW or notation software?
WHEN was it? And what are you using NOW?

www.scoringnotes.com

A brief history of music notation on computers - Scoring Notes

Music engraving dates back before the computer age, but the computer-aided portion of the history spans back a long time, too.
www.scoringnotes.com www.scoringnotes.com
Click to read more...
 
Would have been The Music Box, on my 48K ZX Spectrum, 1985ish. More of a novelty item than a serious tool, it was pretty terrible!

The Music Box - WorldOfSpectrum

Not long after I was lucky enough to become friendly with a music teacher with an Atari ST and Notator (Logic) that we used to borrow during the school holidays, which was much more like it. Also used to mess about with trackers like OctaMed on the Amiga.

After 30-something years, I'm back using Logic Pro (on a hackintosh). Life can be strangely circular sometimes.
 
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Finale 2.69 on a 1992 Mac Centris 650. After 30 years of Finale, I have pretty much switched over completely to Dorico. I also used Notewriter a bunch in grad school to engrave analytical examples.
 
sinkd said:
Finale 2.69 on a 1992 Mac Centris 650. After 30 years of Finale, I have pretty much switched over completely to Dorico. I also used Notewriter a bunch in grad school to engrave analytical examples.
Click to expand...
Hey same here! I mean the Dorico part! :)
 
Faruh Al-Baghdadi said:
It was a PC based on Athlon II with 4GB of ram and 100GB HDD, and all of those for hip hop and dance ejey series 😎💅

I still have nightmares of me using that Athlon II😵
Click to expand...
So it was around 2010-2011 then?

Me too! Before that I worked with paper and pencil :) I started computer notation in 2011 using Notion (nice little software!) on an iPad and then, after overloading it, I moved quickly to PCs and Win7 Pro starting I think with a Core i7 3970 with 64GB RAM using Finale then Sibelius then... :)
 
I honestly don’t remember. It would have been one of the notation programs for the Mac from the late 1980s that could run on a 512ke. Yes, 512kb of RAM. Ah, the days when a 20 MB hard drive seemed immense. I never liked notation programs and still don’t. I trained as a composer and then went off to become a music theorist, which is still my day job.

Today I use Sibelius when I have to, though I’ve dabbled with several others. I only started using a DAW about a decade or so ago, briefly with GarageBand, then Logic 9, and Ableton Live. Live was a mind blowing experience and it fundamentally changed how I thought about music. I then tried Logic X, Studio One, and Bitwig, before settling on Studio One. I left Studio One after Logic developed articulation sets and S1 was having increasing issues with large track counts and long projects. These days I’m on Logic.
 
Hm, must have been around 1990-91 with a never-before/since-heard of MIDI program called Happy Music on an Atari ST. Or was it the Atari 540? Either way, until then I had been using the on-board sequencer of my GEM workstations. I still did for several years after using Studio Vision (great sequencer). Started notating in college on something called Encore. Later all the other usual suspects.

Now I'm on Logic and Notion/Dorico. Not that I notate much right now.
 
Tatiana Gordeeva said:
So it was around 2010-2011 then?

Me too! Before that I worked with paper and pencil :) I started computer notation in 2011 using Notion (nice little software!) on an iPad and then, after overloading it, I moved quickly to PCs and Win7 Pro starting I think with a Core i7 3970 with 64GB RAM using Finale then Sibelius then... :)
Click to expand...
Honestly, I don't even remember what year it was...

Wow, you had quite a machine back then😎
64GB even by today's standards is a decent amount of RAM.
 
jbuhler said:
I honestly don’t remember. It would have been one of the notation programs for the Mac from the late 1980s that could run on a 512ke. Yes, 512kb of RAM.
Click to expand...
Someone told me that they once bought an extra 384 kB of RAM for their machine back then for a whooping CAN$2500 + tax and it even just came in a little brown paper bag!!! Crazy how things have changed!!
 
Tatiana Gordeeva said:
In 1952, the University of Illinois built ILLIAC I, the first computer at a US educational establishment. Weighing two tons, it could hold a massive 5.12 Kilobytes in memory, with storage of 64 Kb. :eek::geek::eek:

On what type/model of computer did YOU run your first DAW or notation software?
WHEN was it? And what are you using NOW?

www.scoringnotes.com

A brief history of music notation on computers - Scoring Notes

Music engraving dates back before the computer age, but the computer-aided portion of the history spans back a long time, too.
www.scoringnotes.com www.scoringnotes.com
Click to expand...

In 1989 I ran into the orchestra conductor’s room because I wanted to write down a musical idea. The band teacher didn’t have any staff paper.

I asked, and the orchestra teacher paused before saying, “Staff paper? STAFF paper? Who uses staff paper anymore?”

Then he pointed to the Macintosh II in his office and told me I’d need to learn how to use it. I spent almost every night in his office after that for the rest of the school year, hiding from the janitor, staying late, learning to notate my music using Finale.

I later worked at Coda/MakeMusic, for 8 years.
 
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