MaestroNote Join the beta Free · Mac, iPad, and iPhone · TestFlight beta
A music studio for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Annotate with Apple Pencil, mark the themes and cadences of every piece, and write your own music by hand.
We’ll email you when a beta spot opens and on launch day. That’s it.
The three modes
The score full screen, with your fingerings on their own layer.
Mark a passage, say what it is, and follow it through the piece.
Write by hand on blank staves.
Who it’s for
Prepare this week’s piece with your fingerings and walk into analysis class with the themes already marked.
Fingering, chords, and figured bass on separate layers: show the one each lesson needs and hide the rest.
Read full screen and jot down a breath or a bowing without leaving the score.
Write by hand on staff paper, without wrestling a notation editor.
MaestroNote opens the score full screen. On iPad, your finger turns pages and zooms, and Apple Pencil writes without switching modes. One tap brings back the controls when you need them.
Fingering, chords, figured bass, or whatever you need, each on its own layer. Show and hide them separately.
Cover a page number, a printed fingering, or a smudge from the scan. The original PDF stays untouched.
Rotate, crop margins, and reorder the pages of a scan. Your annotations stay where they belong.
On Mac and iPhone, Play is for reading: ink is for iPad with Apple Pencil.
Draw a box around a passage and say what it is: a motif, a theme, a cadence. MaestroNote saves it as material and takes you to every place it appears, even across systems and pages.
A material has a name, a type, and its own notes. Each passage keeps its details: bars, instruments, key, what changes this time.
This theme develops that one; this section contrasts with the other. Relate materials without merging them, even across pieces.
Search your whole library for “ostinato” and jump straight to the passage, whichever piece it’s in.
On iPad and Mac, put the exposition next to the recapitulation, or next to another piece in your library. Each side turns its pages and zooms on its own.
You do the analysis. MaestroNote doesn’t recognize music automatically: it saves, organizes, and finds what you mark.
Create a score of 1 to 32 pages, ruled for single staves, piano, voice and piano, short score, or orchestra on A3, or on blank or dotted paper. If it runs short, add pages from its settings, up to 32. Write with Apple Pencil as you would on paper, with a fountain pen too: a right-handed nib that opens as you press. No notes to drag around, no editor correcting you.
The desk
Pieces rarely start as a score. They start as four bars you don’t want to lose. New Idea opens a single staff, ready to write, and the paper grows only when the idea asks for it: a staff at a time, then a page at a time. Each project keeps its sketches on a desk, wherever you put them.
Theme 1 variant
Theme · Variant 1 Variant of Theme
Trio 3 sketches
Duplicate as Variant copies a sketch with its ink and lays the copy beside the original, joined by a line, so you can try another ending without losing the first. Drop one sketch on another to stack them.
An idea you jot down outside a project waits in Loose Ideas until you move it to one or start a new project with it. On iPhone and iPad, open a blank one from the app icon, from Shortcuts, or by telling Siri “New idea in MaestroNote”.
Single staves, piano, voice and piano, or short score. On piano paper an idea starts as one braced system and grows a system at a time. Once a sketch has ink, Continue on Other Paper opens a blank one beside it, say to take a melody to short score.
When it’s time to write the piece out clean, New Score on the desk creates a score that belongs to the project, on orchestra paper if you need it. Add it to your library when you want to play it.
On iPad you write with Apple Pencil. On iPhone you write with your finger, in a lens that magnifies the staff and moves along it as you go. On Mac you can arrange the desk and read your sketches, but not write them.
Your library
No surprises
If you’re after something like Dorico or MuseScore, this isn’t it. Here, music is written by hand.
It doesn’t recognize the notes in a PDF or find motifs on its own. The ear and the judgment are yours.
It doesn’t use AI. Your scores and annotations stay on your devices and in your iCloud.
Exporting a score with your annotations is postponed, with no date. For now, your work lives in the app.
FAQ
Nothing. MaestroNote is free.
Mac with macOS 14 or later, and iPad and iPhone with iPadOS or iOS 17 or later.
To write on iPad, yes. On iPhone, you write ideas in Compose with your finger. Without an Apple Pencil you can still read, organize your library, and mark passages in Analyze.
Yes, through your iCloud account: library, scores, ink, and analysis. It isn’t instant, and it isn’t for sharing with other people.
Not from the app yet; both are on the way. In the meantime, import any PDF from Files or the Finder.
When the beta confirms your work travels safely between devices. Join the list and we’ll tell you that day.
A note from the author
I built MaestroNote to improve a composer’s day-to-day. No frills: it’s a music notebook on steroids.
— Jonathan, creator of MaestroNote
TestFlight beta
Free for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. We’ll email you when a beta spot opens and on launch day. That’s it.