Personal Composer is fairly easy to use and is good for composing classical music. It includes dozens of valuable features such as an English-Italian music dictionary and pre-designed score templates. Its many tools include a text editor, a chord-naming feature and automatic part extraction. Unfortunately, this composing application lacks many of the advanced sound-editing and MIDI-integration options offered by competing premium music notation software products. This application also loses appeal due to an outdated interface, almost no educational tools and a lack of easy input options such as a virtual fretboard or keyboard.

This music composing application is far less expensive than other products on the market, so it is well suited to experienced musicians who aren't composing large-scale works. Personal Composer is also ideal for authors who want to use images of their music in a printed text.

Personal Composer is missing some of the newest notation tools such as live performance control for accompaniment, automatic score cleanup and automatic harmonizing. Nevertheless, it has all you need to create a professional orchestral piece, song or lead sheet. You can create up to 128 staves in any composition and use multiple clefs or guitar, percussion and chord symbol notation. As you work, you can hear how your piece sounds by using the playback toolbar, which includes a metronome. You can choose to hear the music in either a piano or a strings voice. If you synchronize this application with a MIDI device, you can use additional sounds and make recordings of your composition.

Many professional musicians teach in addition to performing and composing. Therefore, the best music notation software has features to help you with all three tasks. Personal Composer is good for composing, but it isn't particularly beneficial for teaching because it lacks ear-training lessons and worksheets to teach composition and improvisation. Nevertheless, you can use it to teach some aspects of music theory because you can create and export your own worksheets. You can also share digital files created in this application, and your students or colleagues can open them using the free demo available from the manufacturer.

The most valuable part of Personal Composer is its capability to create and edit traditional sheet music. Begin by using the setup wizard to choose a time signature, key signature and number of staves. Then, you can choose to enter notes in real time with a MIDI keyboard, one-at-a-time using the mouse or sequentially using keyboard controls. You can also create new files by importing MIDI data, but you will have to separate the parts in the music file into voices and staves. This is inconvenient in comparison with competing software that can recognize and separate the parts automatically.

When your notes are ready, you can use editing tools to make your composition complete. Personal Composer includes a transposition tool and has the capability to line lyrics up with notes. You can also track your changes with this application and select and copy or delete any section of music using an arrow tool. You can also add instructions such as accelerando or staccato and input dynamic markings. The playback feature recognizes these, plus any changes you make in the simple built-in sound mixer. You can export your completed Personal Composer project as a WAV, NIFF or MIDI file. You can also print it or export any part of it as a graphic.

Personal Composer is a complicated tool because of its many features, but you can learn to use it within a few hours. If you run into trouble, you can use the help file included in the interface. Help documents are allegedly available for download from the manufacturer's website, but the links to that content are broken. However, you can find useful information on the webpage that lists this application's features.