Hi everyone--

I'm looking to purchase a software program for making sheet music. I was curious if any of you had any recommendations...I don't think I need it to have every bell and whistle, but I would want to purchase one that I'm not going to grow out of either. I'd like to be able to put things in both manually and automatically by plugging the keyboard in to the computer. The more user friendly and intuitive-the better.

Try searching the composer's archives. I know I've seen some threads there with exhaustive reviews of the various programs. Finale and Sibelius are two of the programs that get heavy mention/praise. I've used the free version of Finale Notepad and found it fairly intuitive. I don't know if they still offer it free online, but you might look into it and see if it's worth upgrading to the fancier version.

Notepad stopped being free a couple of years back - it's $10. I use SongWriter which is the next Finale product up the chain. It doesn't do absolutely everything I want but it's pretty close. Finale products have their quirks which can be frustrating but everything I've heard says Sibelius does too.

Kathleen - if you are hoping they will transcribe realtime input from a midi keyboard you will be disappointed. Almost everyone who tries gives up. Record it - yes, replay it - sure, transcribe it? Not quite there yet.

I am a long time user of Noteworthy Composer.
It does all you ask, and more, without too steep a learning curve, although real time input is tricky.

A free 30 day evaluation can be found here:
http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/setup/setup_nwc21_demo.exe

The registered version, is around US$49

Slightly off topic, but I am a member of a site called Giveawayoftheday.com
Each day, a full, legal, registered version of various software is made available to members, for a 24 hour download period.
Membership is free, and daily email notifications are sent.

A few weeks back, the giveaway was 'Magic Score'.
Most of the giveaways are of no use to me, but every now and then, the odd gem appears.

You might want to take a look at MuseScore too. It's open source so it's free. It is pretty easy to use and has worked well for me.

This is free (at musescore.org). Just downloaded and installed and started messin'bout with it. Seems to do what it says on the tin....

"..MuseScore is a free cross platform WYSIWYG music notation program, licenced under GNU GPL.
Some highlights:
WYSIWYG, notes are entered on a "virtual note sheet"
Unlimited number of staves
Up to four voices per staff
Easy and fast note entry with mouse, keyboard or MIDI
Integrated sequencer and FluidSynth software synthesizer
Import and export of MusicXML and Standard MIDI Files
Available for Windows, Mac and Linux
Translated in 26 languages
GNU GPL licenced.."

Another vote for NWC. I've been using it for years, and it still does everything I need.

The trial version is very full featured. I think the only thing it lacks is unlimited saves - you only get 7 per piece, or something like that. I bought the full version because I use it so much.

It has a good help function, but if there's ever something you can't figure out just go to the user forum. Somebody there has done it.

It's also good for figuring out what something should sound like. If I'm having trouble with a tricky rhythm I just type it in and listen to it. The playback function is good.

I have Sibelius and love love love it --- it's extremely user friendly. I also tried Finale, but I found that Finale always had me swearing at the computer, while Sibelius just did what I wanted it to in a pretty intuitive way. You can download demo versions of both to see which suits you better.

Sibelius comes in a full version (spendy, but I found a v. good deal on it), or a light version called "Sibelius First" for about $100. Finale comes in a whole series of gradations with different features & different price tags.

One advantage of these big software packages is that they come with music OCR software which allows you to scan scores into the computer instead of needing to enter by hand/keyboard. It takes a bit of fiddling around to make the OCR happy & clean up the occasional glitch, but it's still much faster than entering a whole score by hand.

Have you tried Cakewalk cubase or Fruity loops?

1) I use MuseScore to write and edit
2) then I save it as Midi
3) then I import the MIDI to Garage Band or Reason to have a decent sound
or I can even send the MIDI file to my keyboard

finale was pretty big forawhile...i duno whats out there now...

All these softwares are good for writing music with the mouse and eventually playing it as a MIDI.
However, if you are only interested in making sheet music, there is a (free) software for that.
It's called Lilypond.

Pros :
- Makes awesome sheet music (like this )
- Generates a PDF.
- Free, available for Windows & Linux

Cons :
- You have to write yourself a small "programm", as it's text-based (something like this )
- You'll need some time for getting it under control
- No MIDI playing

This is what I was asking too, and the answer I got was Lilypond. I tried it today, and I found it extremely helpful, but only *if* you have worked with text-based languages before, like Tex, Latex, Texinfo, etc. You can do anything you want with it.

AlexDreamer, there is MIDI playing...just include \midi { } at the end of the file, and you get it.

I will try MuseScore to see how that works.

Oh my gosh tangleweeds - thank you!

I have Finale Allegro, and hadn't realized this (I've only used it to enter stuff by hand.) My teacher from time to time will tell me to copy something into Finale (to rework the bass, or whatever) - and I've had to do it by hand, which is *painful*.

I vaguely remember hearing about the OCR, but apparently it just never clicked in my brain that I had a use for it - duh!

Thanks

(And to the OP - I use Finale. It is quirky. I find the "Help" system fairly complete and useful, but I do get frustrated with it sometimes. I haven't tried anything else, so no basis to compare!)

Recorded a simple song on my FP7.

The Rose as midi

Imported midi into Sibelius.

Here's what Sibelius came up with.

The Rose as pdf

Changed a few settings and got something a little cleaner

The Rose2 as pdf

Dannac,
The pdf you posted are transcriptions from playing an electronic keyboard via midi, or audio out?

Was it real-time transcribed or transcribed from a recording?

And which program did the transcribing based on that playing?

Thank you,
Glen

Dannac, to make that playable you still need to separate LH and RH, and use the grand staf unless you can span 2 octaves with your right hand.

Inlanding
I recorded on a Roland FP7 ... saved as midi to USB thumdrive,
opened in Sibelius.

Studio Joe
lol ... naw cannot span that far .... did not see many more options to choose from to get the hands split, but I may have missed something.

A thread on the Digital forum is similar.
Someone took the same midi file and opened it in "Notation Musician" and got a much nice output.
Also talk of some other programs that may do a better job.

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1489793.html#Post1489793

dannac, I wonder if you might have gotten a better result if you had recorded it into Sibelius straight off? It seems to me the two-step process may have denied you the ability to make a few tests, set the quantize right, etc., before you plunged in to the full version.

Got to love those stretches in the treble clef--- if you're an octopus, or piano-playing conjoined twins who can employ two right hands. All the same, the type is rendered very nicely on the page and I think if you splurge on a proper grand staff and do a few tweaks, you may get a good-looking and actually readable print.