Friday, October 3, 2008

Startup Noteflight tests music composition online

By Christopher Calnan

A Cambridge entrepreneur is using his experience creating e-commerce website tools to develop software for creating musical scores online.

Joseph Berkovitz, founder and president of Noteflight LLC, last month started beta testing his music online notation software designed to enable composers and musicians to create and share written music via the Internet.

Berkovitz was previously the vice president of engineering at Allurent Inc., a Cambridge company that develops retailer websites. He was also the senior architect at Cambridge-based Art Technology Group Inc., another website developer that was co-founded by Jeet Singh along with Allurent founders Joe Chung and Fumi Matsumoto before the two went on to launch Allurent in 2004.

Berkovitz, who is a composer and pianist, said the general approach to developing music and retailing websites is similar despite the divergent markets. They both focus on usability through design.

“You need to get out of the users’ way so they can get on with their work,” Berkovitz said.

Using Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash and Flex software and a standard web browser, the Noteflight user selects musical notes by clicking on a staff, according to Berkovitz. Each written note is accompanied by an audible note and played together by a cursor scrolling across the score. The finished score can be saved on Noteflight’s servers privately or for public viewing.

But Noteflight, which Berkovitz funded himself, is not playing solo. Competitors include Finale software developed by Minnesota-based MakeMusic Inc. and Sibelius Software Ltd., a London-based company acquired in 2006 by Tewksbury-based Avid Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID) for $23 million.

Although Noteflight hasn’t any paying customers yet, Berkovitz expects to eventually generate revenue through licensing fees from institutions such as schools and subscription fees from users wanting advanced features.

Noteflight is designed for professional composers and musicians, music teachers and students learning about notation, Berkovitz said. He declined to disclose the number of users participating in the beta test.

One of the testers, Ingrid Monson, a professor of African American music at Harvard University, uses Noteflight on her website so students may read the notes of music while they listen, she said.

“For anyone who teaches music,” she said, “it’s a godsend.”