Harmony Assistant can aid you when you are composing or playing music. Likewise, it lets you print the resulting music scores. Logically, it requires at least basic knowledge of music theory. Good news there is plenty of help available. In this regard, the tool comes with detailed help documentation and shows contextual tips when you hover the mouse over an element. Besides, it is a great idea to watch the tutorial videos available online.
Using the application is almost like working on paper. In this respect, you can make any type of annotations on the sheet. So, in addition to the full range of notes, it is also possible to add symbols, clefs and signatures. Similarly, the tool can perform chord grid calculations as well generate harmony accompaniments and rhythm patterns. Also, you can enable full-page editing to have a clearer view of what you are doing.
I am glad that Harmony Assistant supports actually playing the notes, which serves to monitor what you are doing. Needless to say, this is big help specially when you are not an experienced composer. So, music students are likely to find this feature most useful. It is also quite convenient that the app supports connecting a MIDI instrument and automatically generate notation for the music being played.
In general, Harmony Assistant may be what you are looking for if you are an experienced composer or a student. The app is full of features and you can even add others as it supports using a scripting language. Luckily, there is a trial version you can use without time limits; however, it does not allow saving, printing or exporting scores. Although Harmony Assistant seems to be quite stable, it is my duty to say that it did crash once when I was trying it. You may also want to know that there is a similar cheaper product, called Melody Assistant, which comes from the same developer and has most of Harmony Assistant’s basic features.
v9.6 [Mar 28, 2011]
- The "syringe" tool actions on rests have been extended. It's now possible to inject a dot or an ornament to a rest.
- Positioning of line between notehead and text in "rule text" ornament has been improved
- MusicXML Import: chord tags are now processed as staff-related chord line..
- Parameter curve editing: better display of curves usage status in the pop-up menu
- Better display of the target when inserting tempo changes: rests are now taken into account.
- New replacement patterns have been added in header and footer editFixes:
- Possible crash when a note that is involved in a slur or a special beam was replaced by a new note.
- Problem with accented characters in document template names.
- When editing lyrics text with a non-100% scale, some graphic updates were not properly performed
- In some scores that included complex tempo changes and a note with a negative delay, playing could go out of sync.
- Fixed parameter curve editing on a staff other than the first one.
- Harmony Assistant: Closing a split area of the score window while playing could produce a crash.
- Fixed display of some shape-note heads when scale is not 100%
- Minor fix in ABC export.
- MacOS: fixed access to alternate palette icons
