Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge What writiing untensil do you use to compose music?

Something I thought would be cool, would be a music notation software for Android. I'm always getting stuck somewhere with ideas in my head, but no paper to write it down on. :P

A cheep and efficient s/w is Geniesoft's Overture (successor or Cakewalk).
For publishing demanding tasks and additional features, use Encore or Finale. Keep in mind, the more powerful the software, the more expensive and time-demanding it is.
Also, the MIDI equipment you use will make a difference: true samples, polyphony, the resemblance to a real orchestra, and the settings, how to 'position' the instruments in space, and all the fine tunings to 'direct' the 'orchestra' to interpret your composition, are * very time demanding *, but really rewarding, if you are determined to produce a quality result.
If, like me, you do not master the sound potential of an orchestra, a good hw/sw equipment will help you immensely to improve your arrangment skills, provided you will be spending hours for a single bar on quite a few instruments only.
The 'popular' ones within http://www.myspace.com/havenotime/music are created in the 90s with a very low-end equipment (I just have no time to invest on composing anymore...)

good luck
ak

For some odd reason, Sibelius, the cheaper program, is better than Finale, the big program. And why is this? Simplicity. I heard that people have easier time learning Sibelius than Finale, and the funny thing is, I have both the programs, or I did, until my computer caught on fire and my motherborg fried! D:

Funny you should say that. I've been in conversation with a number of developers about producing musical output in Android. Notation is all well and good, but most people needs some sort of audio feedback while they're working on ideas. I put some stuff on my web site about this aspect of it:

http://kevinboone.net/javamidi.html

Android does not make it easy to produce musical output at run-time, sadly.

I doubt there will ever be a Sibellius or Finale (or even Musescore) for Android -- it's just too limited in too many ways. But Tasks like writing a single line of melody, for example, should be straightforward.

Looking into this is on my to-do list, but my to-do list is pretty long

To say that Sibelius is cheaper than Finale, while it may be true, is like saying that falling from the sixth floor is worse than falling from the ninth

iPad is what you need, really. It's set up well for music apps, and Symphony Pro in particular has been a godsend for me.