Product Review: Forte 6 Music Composition Software

Written by Sal Peralta
Published: June 9, 2015 at 11:34 PM [UTC]

As an amateur violinist, I have often found myself wanting to jot down brief music compositions that I come across for later use. There is a large variety of music notation software available on the market.

A few years ago, I did a product review of one freeware offering that I found a bit clunky. Wanting to upgrade to a more fully functional software, I decided to give Forte 6 a try.

I am not an expert in music theory or composition by any stretch. I found Forte intuitive and very easy to use. It provides playback for a large number of instruments, including the violin and allows the composer to easily combine multiple instrument parts into a complete score.

The first time I used the software I was able to pick my way around well enough to compose this 1 octave c-major scale and play it back as a violin and output it back as a pdf and mp3 in about 10 minutes.

Although Forte does not come bundled with MP3 encoding software, it provides an easy interface to download and install the required codec which will allow you to export files as MP3.

Listen to the MP3 recording here.

In order to export to pdf, the composer needs to install a separate piece of software like Acrobat professional or the free Foxit reader, both of which allow you to output printed documents to pdf rather than to a printer.

Forte also includes hundreds of classical and instrumental scores by composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mendelssohn and Haydn. Most are titled in German.

Purchase price is a little spendy -- $239 for the full version – but if you are looking for good music notation software, this would make a fine choice for anyone from a beginning composer to a professional.

Tweet