BlackInMind, 06.01.2011
I was about to give this three stars...
...and then the program crashed on me. Upon reopening it, I found the "inspector" tool to be completely buggy and useless. Anyway, here is what I would have
had to say prior to this happening:
First of all, I'm a professional guitar teacher for the past 7 years. Through the years, I've used several different tab/score editing programs to notate lessons for students, and I'm always on the lookout for new programs. For the most part these days I use Sibelius, but while that looks the best, it also is the most time consuming to get to look right. Also, I'm a mac user, so I'm unable to use PowerTab. So given the circumstances, a program like Reflow appeals to me. Simple edit features and the ability to open PowerTab files? Sign me up! But wait...
As soon as I downloaded it, I figured I'd see what one of my Guitar Pro files looked like. The first thing I noticed was that all the slur/legato markings were missing. No good. Also, all the right hand tapping markings were missing. Double no good (I specialize in a lot of tapping techniques and frequent these in my lessons). Upon further inspection, I noticed that there is no way to notate right hand tapping, slap or pop techniques, and clicking on the "legato" and "palm mute" buttons appears to do nothing. I'm also a 7 string player, so I wanted to see if I had the ability to notate for 7 string. It does allow you to add/remove strings from the tab staff via the inspector, however it appears to do nothing in the actual notation window. Finally, in trying to flip the stem direction for the rhythm notation so that it goes down instead of up, I found that there is no way to preset this, and if I want to change it, I have to do it for *every note grouping individually* Ugh. Last but not least, clicking on the link to the help forums from within the program brought me to a 404 page. Granted I was able to find the actual page through my own searching, but I shouldn't have had to do that.
Well, despite these glaring omissions, I will say that playback is good, and if all you're using it for is opening and reading scores, it does a fine job of that (just don't expect to be able to tell if anything should be hammered on/pulled off or tapped). But, if you're like me and are expecting to do serious score notation, or trying to notate for 7(+) stringed instruments, I'd suggest looking elsewhere, for the time being at least. Perhaps if/when these issues are addressed in future updates this will be a fine notation program for both casual tab readers and professional use alike.
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