MakeMusic Inc. announced on Monday the release of Finale NotePad 2005, a freeware application that allows musicians to create, play back and print out sheet music. It’s based on the company’s music notation software Finale and includes such new features as the ability to create and edit guitar and bass tablature, automatic repositioning of engraver tuplets and Human Playback, which plays back music entered into the software with a computer keyboard.
MakeMusic noted that any music created with NotePad is compatible with the company’s other Finale products. While the software is free, a US$24.95 license fee will add the ability to turn MIDI files into sheet music. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2, a G4 processor, 256MB RAM and 25MB hard drive space.