Flat Reviews

This is the third time I’ve tried to leave a review and they keep disappearing before I get a chance to push send ! there is no tutorial to teach you how to use Flat. there are lots of help cards to teach you how to use advanced functions of Flat but nothing how to teach you how to use it in a basic way. first I couldn’t figure out how to put two notes in the same place I found that by mistake. but there is no tutorial on how to do it. there is no help in the community because there seems to be no way to talk to anyone in the community just a way to post music. Every time I get to the end of a bar that I’ve written it adds a new bar with a couple of symbols I don’t recognize and a bunch of rest that I don’t want in the music. I cannot figure out how to get rid of them when you try to delete them it simply deletes everything you wrote and leaves the things that it added without your permission. as a result I cannot make Flat write out a simple drumming exercise so that I can repeat it. I also could not find a way to get it to repeat the notation as most songs repeat the same pattern many times. Attention developers if you want good reviews for your apps you need to show people how to use them !

Let me preface this by saying that this is my favorite music software. It is easy to use and if you know your way around, it will give you what you want.
That said, if you write a piece that is too big(more than about 3 minutes or two instruments), you start experiencing problems.
Let’s talk about my 200 measure Acapella medley. For starters, it takes an average of three tries and 90 seconds to get all of my instruments on screen. It regularly refuses to scroll and leaps back to the beginning of the piece for no reason whatsoever. Playback is consistently scratchy past measure 180 and it is getting hard to put in new notes because Flat apparently does not want to click where I want it to click. Copying and pasting is also becoming an issue, as it sometimes refuses to highlight and sometimes inserts measures smack in the middle of the phrase I was trying to paste.
Long story short, this is a great website and I recommend this to anyone writing music. But emphasis on WEBSITE. The online website only has one of the aforementioned problems (jumping to the beginning).
Please make Flat more phone-friendly. Hugs and kisses.

I like Flat a lot, but sometimes I get frustrated trying to get it to click where I want it to. Sometimes it gets stuck and I have to hit the play music button for a moment to get it to let me select elsewhere on the sheet. It’s also pretty touchy about accidentally deleting parts of my music if I’m not careful. Lastly - and the reason I’m writing this review - it’s lacking at least one important feature that I need: COLOR CODING

I’m transcribing a piece with multiple “voices” and I’m doing it with piano only instead of adding instruments. I would love if I could color-code the four options that are already available in a single instrument, i.e. “voice 1 - treble”, “voice 1 - bass”, “voice 2 - treble”, “voice 2 - bass”

Color-coding would help me keep track of the various elements and figure out which one needs tweaking. Please consider adding it! Otherwise pretty solid app.

Flat includes several bugs that need to be fixed immediately.

1. Flat automatically switches the note to quarter note. For example, when you go to the sections with dynamics, after using a note besides the quarter note, and once you return from the dynamics sections to the note section, Flat will automatically switch to quarter note when I don’t want to use that note. I also forgot to mention that Flat changes the pitch, meaning, if I’m below middle C, and I switch to the dynamics sections and return back, the program would put my pitch above middle C.

2. After I compose and move the screen to different measures, Flat just moves the screen like crazy when editing, though, this is temporary, but it happens every time and needs to be fixed.

3. Loading issues: when I add different instruments, Flat has an error that says something like, it has trouble loading instruments. This should work no matter if you have a strong WiFi connection or not, it’s downloaded into Flat .

4. Flat has audio issues when I move onto another tab. For example, if I switch from that tab to another, and return back to that tab, the audio disappears, and if I play the play button, it takes like, 5 seconds to load, then it plays then the audio comes back on.
Overall, I think Flat really performs well and I’ve done some pretty cool scores, I like the features like the community feed and dynamics, notes, drums, etc.

Ok i get it, but a score cap?!? I would be fine with Flat if there was no score cap, but I understand if you don’t change/remove score cap. (I would give Flat a 4.9 rating if there was no score cap, but at least your better then most). UPDATE: thank you for you response, but I have problems with it. 1. It seems robot-like compared to your other responses. 2. It makes me feel you completely ignore what I said and just skimmed through it and not actually read it. 3. you don’t even assess what I was even talking, there are making me believe you didn’t care what I said. 4. it makes me NOT want to get premium BECAUSE of the preceding reasons.

This is not a top priority message and you can answer it when you have the time, and I just want to point out this possible mistake so that someone further down the line doesn’t get extremely mad over it, thanks! (P.S. your app is still amazing to use)

Flat is great for if you just want to write something out quick. Obviously the phone isn't going to be most ideal method of composing music, but I feel like there are a few things here and there that could use some tweaking. Particularly with the guitar interface. I know I'm probably a minority when it comes to this, but I would like to use this so I can transcribe songs accurately, most of them being rock/metal songs, which are sometimes in different guitar/bass tunings like D standard, Eb standard or drop C, and while you can write in lower notes than what's accessible with standard E, it won't show up on the tablature, which, if you're someone who uses tablature primarily, can be a little inconvenient. So lower tunings for guitars/basses I think would be a welcome addition. Also, many of the guitar techniques that you can write out on Flat won't happen during playback. For example, palm muting doesn't change the guitar sound, it just says that the notes are palm muted, bends and pre bends sometimes won't even appear in the music even after repeated attempts to add them in, and even when they do get added in, the notes will not bend during playback. Letting notes ring also doesn't do anything during playback, it just says to let the notes ring. Otherwise I'd say this is going to be fine for everyone else, which is why I gave it a 4 star rating even if I personally had some problems with it.

I’m a beginner at this (iOS) but I’ve written several songs that I’m quite proud of on Flat. I have noticed several issues and bugs and also some missing aspects. There are functions that don’t seem to do anything at all. Slurs, scoops, fall-offs… they don’t seem to do anything to create jazzy effects (and I was really hoping to write some jazz with these elements). As far as what’s missing… I would love be able to create a nice growl on a trumpet along with something that mimics the effect of a plunger mute. I would also love to see a whammy bar option for the electric guitars.

One more annoying issue than anything… when I export my songs into my files the balance goes way out-of-whack. Either that or the audio playback settings on Flat aren’t correct. Also I don’t notice a lot of change in volume between different dynamics. I hope this brings it to someone’s attention.

I really think it was unnecessary to make it so you have to subscribe to change the playback volume for the instruments, when that feature is free to use on the website version. You probably did that because you realized people could cheat the system and gain access to the reverb option without subscribing, am I right? I'll confess I am one of those people who took advantage of this workaround, and while I see some reasoning in the change made in the newest update, I still feel like there was a better way to go about it.

Other than that I love Flat; there aren't many MIDI programs like this that give you as many options for free as this app does. However, while I will continue to use Flat, I do genuinely feel you should bring back the option to change the playback volume.

Flat is definitely very good for simpler compositions with lyrics and has some nice features such as adding chords above the staff. The one problem I’ve been having is that if I input a half note, it doesn’t seem to let me run 16th or 8th note arpeggios as it rings out, which is extremely common in classical guitar. For that reason it’s just not currently suitable to classical guitar composition which very often has multiple things going on while other notes ring out. Maybe it’s my own ineptitude with technology and I did not find the way to do it, but outright it seems like there isn’t a way. The other thing was small, the keyboard function is good but it would be nice to be able to tap notes into the staff with a stylus as well. Thank you for listening, it’s a great app but doesn’t seem to suit my needs.

Flat is absolutely intuitive. It allows you to create amazing scores for marching, concert or even just garage bands. However, my only complaint comes only into account on the mobile version (as you can do this on your desktop for absolutely free, as well). See, I’m a percussionist, mainly doing marching snare and drum set, and on the mobile app, anytime I hit a certain note to be played, it automatically moves on to the next note. On drum set, especially, players will be hitting multiple instruments on the same notes at the same time. The constant having to move back and forth between notes gets tiring, especially since you can only tap the score to move around in it. Granted, I’m personally too lazy to look around and mess with the settings, mainly cause I don’t want to blow up my scores. Just a more intuitive way to move between notation would be very much preferred. Literally everything else is perfect.

Hi, first off, this is my third review. I’m sorry about my last one, and I’m pleased to hear it was all just a misunderstanding. Flat is amazing! Easy to use, tons of instruments, and overall a bunch of fun.

The reason I’m writing this review is because a lot of people have been saying they don’t get a notification when I reply to their comment. This only happens when I comment from my cell phone. I’ve tested this numerous times among different users. They receive a notification when I comment from my Chromebook, but not my cell phone. I have gotten numerous requests from users in this app to let the this app team know about this, so uhm, hopefully this gets fixed in the next update. My user name in app is “Monsieur Melody (Kirbo)” or “@stay_shnazzy”
Thanks for the amazing app! :D

This tool is really good for most things, but there are a couple problems with it I noticed pretty quickly. 1 - The free version of the alto sax sound is PAINFULLY out of tune. I tried arranging a marching band show, that includes sax features, and had to cut out the part just because of how horrible it sounds. I am not exaggerating at all, if it has a unison with any other part, it will completely ruin it. 2 - copy/pasting is weird. If I want a trumpet/trombone unison part, chances are they will not be playing the same octave. If I copy a part from the trumpet line and paste it to the trombone line, it would be a lot simpler if it just transposed an octave down to the trombone’s practical range instead of being 30 ledger lines above the staff. Either that, or allow moving more than one note at once, like if I select a measure and move it down, it would be simpler than having to select each note and pulling it down. These problems are definitely not deal-breakers, there is a lot of really good stuff with Flat and these problems are kind of niche(I don’t think a lot of people use this for marching band and jazz band pieces). All in all, it’s a good app, it just has a few tiny problems that would make some people’s lives a little easier if they were fixed.

Obviously there's the drawbacks of any mobile version of any app. It's harder to work with because it's a smaller screen, but that's inevitable so I don't really blame you guys for that. My one complaint however is that when I listen to playbacks on my phone, the parts are almost always at the completely incorrect volume or just straight-up not playing when compared to listening to playbacks on my computer. Again, this app works almost perfectly on computer, but there's that really annoying feature on phones. When I don't have access to my computer I like to be able to listen to projects I have in progress, so it's annoying to have to put up with parts that are either too loud or (most often) too quiet. So I'd like to see that fixed or patched or something, but other than that, great app, so you get your well-deserved 4 stars

Don’t get me wrong, absolutely love Flat. You can save up to 15 songs with free version, and you have a decent amount of free instruments. I only have one major issue and one minor issue. When I saw major, I mean larger than the minor one. Starting with the “major” one: coming from a percussionist, I would like to have access to at least one pitched percussion instrument in the free version, like marimba or chimes. If someone that happens to read this has this issue, I find that flute is a somewhat decent substitute, just rewrite a flute part as a mallet piece, because of how close they are. (Maybe add a staccato) Now my minor issue, is the drum rolls on percussion pieces. The rolls sound like someone just hit the drum, and not an actual roll. Now, I don’t know if there is an option for buzz roll or double stroke, but if not, is that something that you could consider adding? All in all, great app. Thank you for listening to my rant. 👋

I’ve been using Flat for over 2 years and it’s extremely convenient. For a while, I had many complaints, but recently there was an update that fixed almost all of these problems. There were only 2 problems that not not fixed, and it’s the fact that you cannot put a tuplet inside of a tuplet, which is hardly a complaint at all, I just found myself needing to put a 5let inside of a half note triplet (I’ve been using Flat to transcribe the WGI show I’m in). And also I can’t do a dotted fivelet that takes up 1 1/2 beats, because this is the main rhythm in the show. Other than that all of my problems were fixed.

However, a massive problem for writing drumline arose, and that’s that every one of the buttons to assign a bass drum note has been mixed up, as in bass 2 is unison and so on. It makes writing pretty difficult.

But other than that, a great update that fixed a lot of problems and made a lot of quality of life changes.

I absolutely like be this program! I have been using it for the past 4 years and it’s amazing that with a free account you can make 15 songs! Don’t get me wrong, I have had to delete a few to make space, but I think that’s a good amount! I would buy the full version online but I don’t have money of my own XD. I totally recommend this program! It’s so easy to use and has most everything you would need to write music! The only flaws I have ever seen are just the audio. Usually use pano for everything so it’s not a big issue for me, but some of the instruments sound very unreal. Recently. Have been making percussion pieces and the instruments don’t have the same feel. What I think would be awesome is if there was a way to put in your own sounds from garage band or something and Ben upload your own recorded sounds! Other than the sound quality, this has been the only program I have ever used! As a matter of fact, even though the sounds could be improved, they are at least better than every other pr gram for have used!

This is an amazing app. It’s free for one thing, which is amazing unlike other software/apps and please do not change that. They have a cheap premium plan that gives you some extra but definitely not necessary features and helps support the devs. I use Flat on the go and the website at home and both are amazing. You have access to all the features no pay walls, it’s laid out logically and easy to find things. If you don’t understand something there is a great help page with simple explanations. I only have two problems. One: The violin synthesizer isn’t the greatest. And 2: Flat gets weird when you have >8 instruments or get too long of a composition. Also some features from the website need to move to Flat (harmonics, line customization, written - in things like corde, and LH pizz for strings). Other then that, this is the best music notation app on Flat Store.

I very highly recommend Flat. I tried 2 other apps before this one and they were both not good because you had to pay for a lot of things and they were very simple, like you couldn’t add chords and it was a lot harder to use. Flat, however, is amazing. They are some things that you can buy (ex. more instruments), but you can do just fine without buying anything. I’m composing for a piano and I really like that they have a piano that you basically play to place the notes because it’s helpful for bringing over what I play on the real piano to the score. I haven’t had experience with composing for any of the other instruments, but I’m sure they’re just as good. Overall, you should definitely get Flat.

Wow, Flat is amazing and the best composing app. If you’re considering getting it, definitely download, it is not a waste of time. I have so much fun writing music.
As a non-piano player, the way you write the notes (using piano keys) were momentarily confusing, but it’s sooo easy to get the hang of. I think every tool is ordered perfectly and conveniently.
You can even write your music and then print it out! It looks professional. It has a watermark but it’s small and out of the way. Couldn’t recommend Flat enough to anybody who wishes to write their own music. You can even section the songs that you’ve written into different folders.
Love Flat. Five stars. Try it out!

this app has been a lifesaver! I was tired of the simple limitations of Noteflight. And when I downloaded Flat for free, and realized it holds up to 15 scores and allows quarter note triplets (both are limitations of Noteflight), I was already extremely happy. Flat is able to keep up with my fast-pace 3 a.m. composing. Super easy to use and has an optional small piano at the bottom of the screen to compose with. The only complaint I’ve ever had about Flat would be after composing four or five pages, Flat sometimes glitches on that score, and it won’t allow you to click and resume composing unless, in advance, you have added about a page of empty measures. An easy fix, but sometimes annoying. Overall, Flat is really good. It has very few downfalls, and most are completely fixable. 10/10