NOTION Music has developed an award-winning line of applications designed to streamline the process of creating, editing and notating music. True to form, the new NOTION for iPad harnesses the popular tablet’s touch-screen capabilities for an impressive end-user experience. The 24-fret interactive guitar fingerboard makes it easy to transcribe nearly anything you’d play on your instrument to tab or music notation. The interactive keyboard makes scoring charts and orchestral pieces manageable, and is complemented by samples from the London Symphony Orchestra (recorded at Abbey Road Studios). NOTION for iPad includes plenty of great sounds, with in-app purchases available to round out your library. The app also excels in its ability to either import or share common notation file formats as well as MIDI files.

–Doug Doppler