While I have been a beta tester of Notion for years, the very kind folks at PreSonus have been asking me to review Notion Mobile for some time, and I have been avoiding writing that review. It is the summer, I am not teaching (though I do have several part-time jobs), so I no longer have the excuse that I’m too busy. “Busy” is true, combined with teaching (elementary for the past four years), creating ukulele content (going on seven years), and being a husband/parent.
In truth, my use of technology in music education changed the moment I left secondary teaching. As many readers know, I had a fulfilling sixteen years as a high school choral director, followed by six very hard years of teaching middle school choir in a situation where students had to take music, and there was no general music option. That is where I found the ukulele, in the process developing the skills that allowed me to teach at the elementary level and unknowingly at the time, via distance education during COVID.
My use of music technology used to be in every part of my position as a secondary music education: it was my music folder, my accompanist, my attendance taker, an assessment tool, and so more. Many of those tools were for my use rather than the for the direct use of my students, on devices which I purchased myself for my own use (not provided by the district).
At the elementary level, my use of technology is different. A large central screen is even MORE important; video content for recorder and ukulele content is what I spend most of my time creating, and even though my students (K-5) have devices, it is a hassle to have them bring those devices to class. Although I do have a 4th & 5th grade extra-curricular choir for part of the year (January through April), and I still use technology for choir—it just isn’t the same.
So how does this relate to Notion Mobile? Well, I’m getting there.
In my “prior life” as a secondary educator, much of my time was spent in Finale, then Notion, creating accompaniments and rehearsal tracks from existing printed repertoire; many times scanning scores and cleaning them up. I still do a little of this work—but it is limited to some arranging for the high schools when they want to do a piece with an ensemble, or for my own elementary choir.
My main use of music notation these days is to create ukulele resources that I share or sell. You can see an example of one of those scores below:
When I talk about technology in music education, the truth is that there has been nothing “earth-shatteringly” new in many years. The first decade of the 2000s was mind-numbing in the number of new technologies that were appearing that could be used in music education classrooms—which had not changed in 50 years. Since then, some products have disappeared, some are currently disappearing, and others now have multiple competitors. As an example, there was a time when there was one “green note – red note” rehearsal/performance option: SmartMusic. If I remember correctly, SmartMusic’s intellectual rights expired allowing anyone to develop similar programs—and now there are quite a few programs to choose from.
Additionally, there has been a lot of acquisition—while the individual companies still exist, many have been “umbrellaed” (my own term) under other companies. In the big scheme of things, a dozen or less companies own most of the technology music educators use today—including MuseScore which used to be free (to users…and still is) and independent!
The biggest change over the past years was the all-out win of the Chromebook over the iPad. I’m still an iPad user, and it is my main tool (Notion Mobile is a part of my workflow). But many schools (including mine) do not have money to buy subscriptions for online services, and we’re left scrambling to see what we can find for free. Don’t get me wrong—the Chromebook has come a long way, and GoGuardian (a way to help students use devices appropriately) is far above anything Apple has to offer—but the iPad still remains an overall better tool for creation.
These days, on the iPad, there are a lot of notation choices…Notion Mobile, Dorico, Sibelius, Symphony Pro, StaffPad, and more—and many of them are excellent. Flat recently released a new app, and of course, there is NoteFlight, too. Remember that I teach students in grades K-5, none who are 13, and there is no funding for online subscriptions—so I am very limited in what technology experiences I can bring to my students—notation or otherwise.
And let’s be honest—many of the programs, including Notion Mobile and Dorico, are too complicated for my students to use. If you use the free versions of those programs, you’ll want to start doing so in middle school or high school.
So, I’m back to writing a review, not based on what the programs can do for my students—but for what I use them for: occasional arranging and ukulele tablature. Please raise your hand in the audience if this also applies to you… … … no one? That’s what I thought!
If you haven’t yet downloaded Notion Mobile, you should—the core program is free, and add-ons, such as handwriting recognition and additional sounds, are not free. If you are an iPad user and you bought the old Notion sounds, you can “restore your purchase.” But Notion Mobile isn’t “just” for iPad, it is also for Android (via Google or Amazon), Windows, Mac, and Chromebook, if your Chromebook runs Android apps.
If you were an existing Notion user, Notion Mobile is going to take some getting used to—and perhaps the greatest disappointment is that “old” Notion was easy to learn and use, such as pressing “Q” changed the length of your note to a Quarter Note. On Notion Mobile, that’s now a “4” if you use a keypad. So, there are new key functions to learn (if you use a keyboard). However, the core app is free, so there’s no cost to start that learning process. Otherwise, most of the features that existed in the “old” Notion for iPad seem to exist in my testing, with one exception—the app does not read non-system fonts that have been imported, which makes sense as it is a universal app. The file storage is also different and to be honest, I don’t have a complete understanding of it…files used to store in iCloud, and now store on the device. What was great about iCloud is that you could go to your Mac, open the file on Notion for the Mac, and pick up where you left off on your iPad. That doesn’t seem possible at the moment.
As it comes to my workflow, Notion Mobile is still the best option of all the programs for writing ukulele tablature. Again—I know that isn’t in huge demand—but it matters to me. I will say that Dorico does pretty well, too—though it takes some juggling to get Dorico to do what Notion does naturally. If you don’t know the history of Notion, it started as a program where the owner wanted scores to sound good. At the time, that was achieved, though Notion has always had other limitations. As a music educator, I rarely run into those, but I know they exist, and you can literally compose music in circles in Finale (I once put a school song as the rosette of a custom ukulele via Finale). When Notion was next acquired, the new leadership (before PreSonus, before Fender) wanted a notation program that was also good for guitarists—and Notion Mobile still holds true to that legacy…it is still guitar and ukulele friendly. For some time, Chris Swaffer, based in the United Kingdom has been the project manager for Notion and Notion Mobile, and he has overseen all of the recent changes to the program (along with his team). Yes, there are some people that are unhappy with the changes. Change is hard. But I think the program is going the right direction becoming multi-platform and leaving some of the old ”look” and “function” of previous versions of Notion.
With the on-screen ukulele fretboard (which appears when you add ukulele as an instrument), and the ukulele chord library, I can arrange for ukulele quickly and literally anywhere, and I can also use the tools that exist to convert arrangements for “standard” GCEA ukulele (soprano, concert, tenor)) to baritone DGBE ukulele. And that’s all because of Notion Mobile’s guitar-friendly DNA. Again, Dorico can do this too…but Notion Mobile does it for free and in a much easier way.
Are there problems with Notion Mobile? Sure.
- Sometimes I cannot Notion to tie a note to another note, then have to close the song, come back into it, and then it works (ties are a choice on one of the palettes).
- The “move to the next note/chord” buttons are either on the top of the screen or on your keyboard (lower right), so when I compose, I have to move to the top of the screen or the bottom of my attached keyboard (this is true on my Chromebook as well, which has a touchscreen). I need those arrows somewhere near the onscreen fretboard.
- When I’m entering chords, the “chord selection box” often moves right over the music that I need to see to choose the chords, so I have to exit the tool and come back to it again.
- The bottom line of a composition doesn’t naturally stretch across the page in many situations, so you have to create another measure, force the extra measure to the next page, then add a final ending to the bottom of the previous page—and then try to remember not to print the last page when you generate a PDF.
- If I remember correctly, baritone ukulele still does not have an existing audio set to match its pitches, nor does low G GCEA ukulele.
- And most importantly, when I go to edit a chord, I can’t just edit a single note…the moment I change a note in a chord, the existing chord disappears, and then I have to renter the whole chord.
Thankfully, this is for an instrument with four strings, so it isn’t a lot of work—but they are issues I wish I didn’t have to deal with. I’ll make a video demonstrating all of these things and link it below.
As you read that last paragraph, it may seem that Notion Mobile is flawed. It is. But I can and do “get stuff done” faster and easier with Notion Mobile than with other programs even with its flaws. I can get faster in Dorico, which has the closest tools that I would need, but I am sure that I would never be as fast as I am with Notion. I am 100% sure that if you use Notion Mobile, you’ll have things that aren’t perfect for your workflow, particularly if you are coming from the previous version of the Mobile app. I know of one person who jailbroke their iPad just so they could install a previous version of Notion Mobile.
Ultimately, all of my issues will be addressed in time, and Notion does remain easier to use than any other Notation software. I don’t do a lot with handwriting (I bought that add-on years ago), and when I have used it, it is hit or miss. It is a nice option to have, but it is not how I prefer to enter music into a notation program. Honestly, if that is your preferred format—see StaffPad (StaffPad still doesn’t compose for guitar or ukulele, so my use of it is very limited). The other thing I would like to see is an easy way to share a file from Notion on my iPad to Notion on my Chromebook. I haven’t figured out an easy way to do that yet without exporting to Google Drive. I would also like to see Notion add Boomwhacker color notes and notes with letter names inside them, as I am an elementary teacher and these would be useful from time to time.
In summary, Notion Mobile completely changed the look and interface of Notion on the iPad, opening the door to other platforms, for free (add-ons are extra), continuing some of the previous flaws of Notion, requiring users to learn new keystrokes, and breaking the iCloud continuity of Notion on iPad to Notion on Mac. Notion is my go-to notion application on my iPad, which I mainly use for occasional orchestration, piano accompaniment, or ukulele tablature. Some of Notion’s flaws do get in my way from time to time, but I can still interact with Notion and create decent looking and sounding (playback) scores faster than I can with any other notation program. The core app is free, and the add-ons are affordable. I recommend downloading it and using it—even with the new keystrokes, I don’t know of a notation application that is easier to use.
If you made it this far in the written review, thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great day. I’m off to record a short video showing some of my current challenges with Notion (that video should be inserted above) and then to go make some more ukulele content!
June 2023
Technology in Music Education 