Sonic Scores (previously known as Geniesoft), has been a music software company since the year 2000. On June 16, 2022, Sonic Scores purchased the Passport Music Software assets and trademarks. Sonic Scores plans to update Encore and Master Tracks Pro software to today’s standards while adding a few critically needed features. The purchase was made because of the many requests from customers who were unable to move forward with their years of work. Don Williams, the founder of Sonic Scores, was the original creator of Passport’s software products and was an early pioneer in the music software industry. He was the creator of Master Tracks Pro, Encore, Overture, and with Tracy Collins created Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra sample library. Below is a brief description of the history of his involvement with the Passport Music Software products.

Don’s first program, The Music Shop was written for the Commodore 64 computer and published by Broderbund Software in 1984. Later that year Passport Designs contacted Don and asked him to write a more advanced version, using MIDI, instead of the Commodore’s three internal voices. Now realize that MIDI was just one year old and Passport was one of the pioneers in this new technology. They were looking for products that would use MIDI. Shortly afterwards, Passport published The Music Shop for MIDI and then asked Don to write Master Tracks Pro. MTP was written on the Macintosh computer and was released in 1987. It was the first commercial music program to represent MIDI data graphically that could be edited with a mouse. This visionary approach won the Music Program of the Year Gold Record.

While taking a short break from programming, Don moved to Florida to coach some of the top junior tennis players in the world at Rick Macci tennis academy. During his off time he decided to write a program that displayed Master Tracks Pro data as notation. Don sent his alpha prototype to Dave Kusek at Passport Designs and the rest is history. Dave was euphoric and he convinced Don that this was going to be “the next big thing” in music software. Two years later in 1989, the program was released as Encore, which became a best seller, as it was one of the first notation programs to work on a Macintosh.

Several years later Opcode systems asked Don to write Overture as a compliment to their award winning sequencer, Vision. Overture was released in 1994, again winning several awards and was a best seller.

Don plans to keep Passport Music software running as a separate entity while reviving both Encore and Master Tracks Pro along with working on his other projects at Sonic Scores.