VBRhapsody (or VBR) for short is a powerful music composition and editing tool. Using VBR you can enter, edit and print musical scores usung standard musical notation. You can also play your scores on a MIDI instrument and additionally, you can use a MIDI instrument to help enter musical data.

VBR was originally written for the Acorn Archimedes in RiscBASIC. This version for the PC is written in VisualBasic.net (hence the name VBRhapsody)

To get you started using VBR as quickly as possible, this topic will tell you how to do the following tasks:
1. load and play an existing score
2. create a new score
3. add notes to an existing score
4. add a new stave to an existing score
5. save a score
You may find that a few of the menu items have changed since this manual was written but these changes should not cause any problems.

Now you have some idea what VBRhapsody can do and how you use it, it is time to discuss the philosophy behind the program, how it actually works and what its limitations are.
Design philosophy
The fundamental idea was to create a program that would do for musical notation what the word processor does for text; after all, a musical score is very similar to a text document in a number of ways.

It is useful to know a little about how VBR stores the musical data.
Firstly, all the notes and symbols in one vertical 'slot' are collected together and are played simultaneously. It follows that if you have triplets playing in one part against duplets in another, the second and third triplets must be in a different 'slot' from the second duplet. In the example below, only the first bar will play correctly.

VBR is a MDI (Multiple Document Interface) program. This means that you can load several scores into VBR at the same time. In addition, it is possible to have multiple views of the same score open at the same time, perhaps showing different formatting - and it is possible to edit any score within any window. With such a lot of possible windows open at the same time it is all too easy to loose a score by clicking on the wrong 'close' icon.

Limitations:
* Printing is limited to the first 2 pages of a score only.

The license of this software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this music composer software.