- Overture 2 is a full-featured notation and publishing solution that is easy enough for anyone with a basic grasp of music notation to use.

It takes a wide-bore approach, throwing in about every feature under the sun and making them as easy to get at as a word processor. Dive into its toolbar-driven, WYSIWYG environment and you'll get immediate results - dig a little deeper and you'll uncover more advanced features than you'll ever need.

The workspace is laid out with a row of toolbar icons and a transport control topping a resizable and scalable staff view - the "score" window.

The Score Menu options allow you to tweak the default layout - choose how many "systems" (linked staff groups) per page and how many measures per system, page dimensions and margins, spacing between staves, systems, and "groups" (which are series of systems, say all the woodwinds, or the rhythm section).

Even the spaces between various values of notes can be finely controlled through a library of "allotment tables", which can be useful for giving visual feedback as to the rhythm of a piece. An "engraver" table wraps all of these functions into one dialog box when you're ready to publish.

Everything is point and click. The first group of toolbars offers you the standard selection, cut and paste, copy and erase tools, and gets a lot of work done. You can also select groups of notes or individual notes and scale them smaller or larger - for highlighting passages, or perhaps to notate out or footnote an appogiatura or other ornamentation (often seen in classical guitar or harpsichord notation), without taking up too much space.