Aria Maestosa for Windows

User Reviews

• Intuitive and easy-to-use music composition software

  veg-eeJune 12, 2014

  Pros

  The biggest draw for me is the layout: tracks are stacked atop each other. This way, one can clearly see and compare them. Changing the size, or order, of tracks is as easy as holding down the mouse button and dragging! There's also a universal Zoom, but it's rather awkward, as it only makes notes appear more elongated/shorter, as opposed to bigger/smaller. The second draw is how light the program footprint is! The installation file is a meager 6.5 MB, with a sleek performance to match. Aria also features some neat time-savers, which I think are absent even from some higher-end music software: Shift+up/down arrows move highlighted note(s) by an octave; Shift+right/left arrows move note(s) by a bar; Ctrl+right/left arrows change note duration, etc. Other features are a few clicks away, and most can be applied to individual notes or a group. Additionally, there're welcome bells and whistles: notes appear darker/lighter in color as you change their volume, etc.

  Cons

  First off, the version on download.com (1.4.7) is old. Check developer's website for the newest version, with many added features and bug fixes. Most remaining bugs and missing features concern the scoring and printing functions, so you're better off with a dedicated "scorewriter". I mainly use the Piano Roll, and about the only feature I'm missing is *any* Redo + plenty more Undo. While the plethora of native instruments are mostly of decent quality, they can sometimes sound weird and 'artificial': e.g. a note just a half-step apart may suddenly sound a very different pitch, even timbre (decreasing the volume of the offending note usually softens the effect). So, it'd be nice if Aria could host third-party VSTs (virtual instruments). Finally, the efficacy of controls (pan, reverb...) could be improved.

  Summary

  Aria Maestosa is a surprisingly intuitive and potent software which I enthusiastically recommend if you're new to music composition or unsure whether to go the "notation software" or "digital audio workstation" route (Aria is an elegant fuse of both), especially that full-blown, commercial versions of either cost 100s. Who knows, you may stick with Aria (like myself!) or make a it a staple of your production pipeline for its track visibility and ease of use, then tweak the results in a more advanced software. A word: In an email exchange in which the developer of Aria helpfully answered some questions I had, she mentioned not having enough time to update the software. What a pity, because as good as Aria stands, I do think it has more potential. Thankfully, the code is out there. I'm just an aspiring musician, not a coder, but I urge musicians who double as coders (or vice-versa) to support this remarkable software.

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• Aria Maestosa is not responding!?!

  PARRISHNELSONFebruary 10, 2013

  Pros

  It's a well thought out interface that should make music-making simpler, (without a million tools you'd never need,)

  Cons

  but it has some sort of bug? (the reason may have something to do with playback of songs while editing them; something peculiar with the previous version... also searching for files should begin in the last directory used with application Properties.)

  Summary

  maybe it's me!?

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