Staccato Spotlight: Noteflight Publishers
Have you ever seen an interactive title for sale and wondered, “How do I create one of those?” The answer is with Noteflight!
When you use Noteflight to publish your interactive score, the buyer gets digital access to the sheet music from any device, and the ability to print it, as with your standard products. But they can also transpose the music in real time, change the size of the notes, alter the playback speed, and add a metronome!
We asked ArrangeMe community members (who are also some of Noteflight’s top sellers!) to tell us about their experience using Noteflight, and to share any advice they had for other self-publishers. Meet them below and read on to learn how they use Noteflight to sell sheet music!
Scott Christmas is an X-ray technologist from Kentucky who primarily writes piano/vocal charts and lead sheets.
You may know Deke Sharon from the Pitch Perfect movies, his book A Cappella Arranging, or our interview with him!
Russell Dobda is an Idaho-based software engineer who arranges a little bit of everything.
Megan Easton is a top-selling a cappella arranger and editor, when she’s not a commercial loan processor in Kentucky!
Tell us why you use Noteflight as an ArrangeMe self-publisher!
Scott: Noteflight an easy-to-use platform that is intuitive and has a great collection of instrument sounds for playback. The ability to publish to 3 different sites automatically when you publish on Noteflight is a big plus, too.
Deke: It’s the best way to get so many a cappella arrangements in people’s hands around the world quickly.
Russell: It's a legal way to arrange my favorite songs and publish the arrangements!
Megan: I think it's a great tool to make arranging legal and accessible (for arrangers, educators, and singers). Almost any song you can think of is available to be arranged and pop a cappella groups that I work with have said it's easy to use and convenient to access.
“Noteflight is an easy-to-use platform that is intuitive and has a great collection of instrument sounds for playback. The ability to publish to 3 different sites automatically when you publish on Noteflight is a big plus, too.”
What is your most successful interactive score?
Russell: “Buena” by Morphine, for baritone saxophone.
Scott: A piano arrangement of the Christmas song “Heirlooms” by Amy Grant.
Megan: “Grenade” by Bruno Mars, for SSATB + solo.
Deke: An SSATB arrangement of “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano.
Russell Dobda plays along to Morphine’s “Buena,” thanks to an interactive score.
Deke Sharon’s arrangement of “Feliz Navidad” is performed here by DCappella.
What is your favorite interactive score and why?
Russell: “Zombie” by Fela Kuti, for small ensemble/jazz combo. It's the most epic!
Scott: My arrangement of the Disney song "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid, because I think I did a pretty good job of creating a faithful rendition that's nice to listen to.
Megan: “Attention” by Charlie Puth. I arrange for voices and am a singer, so for me it's really important that all parts are both fun and singable. I think this arrangement is a lot of fun and intuitive for singing, and is not over-complicated!
What advice do you have for arrangers and composers just getting started with Noteflight?
Megan: I think ear training is an extremely important tool to have in your toolkit, so working on that is super important. Also, I think it's important to listen to arrangements that you love and to take some time to think about why you love them (usually emotional impact) so thinking through what in the score allows that emotional impact to come across from the performers.
Russell: Use a DAW like logic pro or some app to help you put the original recordings in a tempo. This makes transcribing much easier because you can loop measures.
Scott: Spend some time familiarizing yourself with the various tools and functionality of the software so that once you begin composing you don't get distracted trying to figure out how to do things.
Deke: Put everything you have on the site. Once people see your work they’ll want more!
“It’s important to listen to arrangements that you love and to take some time to think about why you love them . . . thinking through what in the score allows that emotional impact to come across.”
What other advice do you have for ArrangeMe self-publishers?
Scott: Publish as much as you can and look for in-demand pieces to arrange. I've published both original works and arrangements, but it's the arrangements that sell the most—by far.
Deke: However odd or unusual your voicing or instrumentation, post it! There’s a group that’s dying for it!
Russell: Pick songs you love so you enjoy the process.
Megan: General advice for ArrangeMe self-publishers would be to just keep putting your work out there. You lose nothing by putting yourself out there on the site, so just keep creating and working and putting it out there for people to see and participate in!
