..because I sure can't.
 
It is really buggy, and for me it crashes constantly, and has been since I bought it a few days ago. I tried firing it up tonight to work on some parts for a brass quartet. I couldn't get more than 15 bars into the trumpet part, when Overture 5 would just up and crash. Had that happen 3 times in 20 mins. I got so frustrated with it, tonight, I finally uninstalled it, and bought Notion 6 (which I've been demoing for a week).
 
Notion 6 got my parts in and done in an hour - no crashes, no bugs, no fuss. 
 
I really like the design ideas of Overture 5, and the deal we were offered of $50 is generous and appreciated. But I had nothing but stress trying to use it, and it got to the point that I was very reluctant to fire it up because I knew my workflow would be interrupted by multiple crashes for various reasons. Don at Sonic Scores is very responsive to problems, and aggressive in dealing with them -- and that is also appreciated -- but I just can't work when every key stroke or mouse click could bring the program down. It's way too distracting. Am I the only one experiencing this with Overture 5?
 
 
 

I was having problems with Overture 5 and decided to give Notion 6 a shot....well it opens up but the instruments are unavailable and I get no sound. Sometimes it sees my midi controller and sometimes it doesn't. Headaches !!!! I set up my interface in the preference section but still no dice....

I assume you downloaded the separate instrument files for Notion? It comes as a entire set of extra downloads from the main program file...? 
 
I know that I was having issues with Studio One 3 not entirely shutting down properly and releasing my midi interface (among other things), and I tried to run both the Notion 6 demo and Studio One demo together to see if I could test their integration. I noticed that Notion 6 wouldn't release my midi interface so Studio One could use it...By any chance do you have Studio One running on your system as well? 
 
 
 

I used Overture 5 to successfully transcribe three Piano pieces.  Two of them used real-time MIDI recording and the Garritan ARIA VST, followed by clean-up in the data editor.  The third transcription used step-entry with the built-in GM piano.
 
While learning and testing the software, I have experienced an occasional "is Shutting down" crash, but some of it could be attributed to me clicking somewhere that the program didn't expect.  The software is definitely not bug free, but I really like the real-time recording and piano roll style editing.  I would definitely recommend using the Auto-Save feature, which was enabled and set to every minute by default on my system.
 
After working with Overture for a few days, I opened Notion 6 and made several attempts at real-time recording with very poor results.
 
-- Ron

Amicus----no I didn't know about downloading the sound files....found them and am downloading them now, Thank you very much !! and Yes I do have a artist program installed, but not running. 

SquireBum
I used Overture 5 to successfully transcribe three Piano pieces.  Two of them used real-time MIDI recording and the Garritan ARIA VST, followed by clean-up in the data editor.  The third transcription used step-entry with the built-in GM piano.
 
While learning and testing the software, I have experienced an occasional "is Shutting down" crash, but some of it could be attributed to me clicking somewhere that the program didn't expect.  The software is definitely not bug free, but I really like the real-time recording and piano roll style editing.  I would definitely recommend using the Auto-Save feature, which was enabled and set to every minute by default on my system.
 
After working with Overture for a few days, I opened Notion 6 and made several attempts at real-time recording with very poor results.
 
-- Ron

Yeah, I was impressed with all of the design and interface features of Overture, and how they were implemented. It is, hands down, the fastest and easiest notation software I've ever used when it comes to note entry and overall score creation (and I've used most of them, including Sibelius, Finale, etc). Don has great ideas in regards to intuitive interface and workflow. I really wish it was stable and I could work with it.
 
But that whole "Overture 5 is shutting down" routine was really getting to me. Nothing worse than being in the middle of a great creative moment, and suddenly your software is crashing to the desktop and you have to reopen it and pick up where you left off. To its credit, Overture 5 starts right up again, and thanks to the autosave you've usually lost only a minute or two of work. But still...
 
And to be honest, you clicking somewhere the program didn't expect is hardly a good reason for it to crash. That, to my mind, is the very definition of a bug. And for me it makes Overture very frustrating to use -- especially because I think the program has a ton of potential. It's a great design. 
 
Fortunately in my case, step recording via midi interface is my preferred notation input method, and I find Notion very good that. One major detail I do prefer about Notion vs Overture: in Notion, when you hover over a note you want to apply a marking or notation element to, the entire note area is a target, making it easier and faster to apply those markings. With Overture, you have to be really precise - if you want to apply staccato markings to a note, you need to put your cursor crosshairs right in the note head, otherwise the marking could be applied to the space around the note - which does nothing and looks strange. This makes for finicky work and takes more time. Notion identifies the note you want to use the moment your mouse pointer is anywhere near it, and I find it way easier and faster to apply markings or ornamentations that way.
 
I also really like that Notion is setup right out of the box with decent sounding instruments with multiple articulations. This actually caught me off guard the first time: I applied a pizzicato marking to a contrabass line I was working on, and on playback, the bass notes were suddenly playing pizz samples - automatically.  
 

djwayne
Amicus----no I didn't know about downloading the sound files....found them and am downloading them now, Thank you very much !! and Yes I do have a artist program installed, but not running. 

I find that if Studio One has been running on my system at all, I need to reboot my computer or it won't release the midi keyboard (sometimes also my MCU), and it even seems to prevent Sonar from accessing the audio drivers. 
 
That may be just a quirk of my own system, and maybe I need to reinstall Studio One, or something. But I do find that Studio One plays a bit of havoc with other software. 

well I downloaded all the instrument files but they won't open up in Notion. Notion says it doesn't recognize them.
I don't know what to do now.

I had constant crashes until I set up my audio device to my RME ASIO.  It would crash if I looked at it funny.  Then very rare.
 
But I do still have had crashes by "clicking somewhere I shouldn't"  especially with the erase tool.  Also have issues where if I use a smaller page size, the bounding rectangles of the "systems" overlap and you can't adjust spacing etc.  
 
 

I contacted Sweetwater support and they looked at the problem and said that Explore was corrupting my files, so I tried re-downloading with Chrome and it seems to be working now,,,,I'm still in the process but Notion is reading the files now like it's supposed to.