Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge Finale's Hyperscribe vs Sibelius' ?

Assuming no latency caused by your machine. How good are these at creating accurate midi data from a digital piano? There are many articles comparing Finale to Sibelius but literally the only feature I care about is how well it can record midi data from playing my PX5S.

I use Finale since 1998 or so, but I've never tried the hyperscribe, to be honest... I'm just too used/fast/whatever with the speedy entry.

Generally speaking, if I have to transcribe something from my piano to Finale/midi, I use Cubase instead (which I know equally well). The thing with Cubase, that I KNOW, is that you can set the quantize sensetivity, thus with no triplets of quaplets, of 5teplts and so on...

I'm guessing that the same can happen with both Sibelius and Finale, but I'm not entirely sure on how you'd be able to record at the same time both hands. Even with split keyboard, you'd have to have a fairly simple piece of music for it to work... :-/

This is really disappointing to hear. With all the wondrous tech advances over the last few decades I would have expected that this be a rather simple feat.

I'm having the same disappointing result with a slightly related issue. I've been looking for a midi file site out there that faithfully reproduces the music in midi format that one can see in the original sheet music. Most midi files playback reasonably well but the music notation is all contorted so that the notes are distributed differently between the two staffs than you would see in the actual normal sheet music. With all the technology you would think these files could faithfully follow the written score. This is really disappointing because the opportunity as a good learning or composing tool is not being fully taken advantage of.

I use Finale. The MIDI data created by Finale's Hyperscribe is accurate in the sense that start and stop times and velocity values are faithfully recorded. This does not mean that the score that Finale produces from this data will look as you might hope or expect.

The problem is that the relationship between what a performer plays and the written score is much more complex than many of us imagine. A human being does not keep a metronomic beat, or play every note written with the same value exactly the same length.

If you simply wish to record, playback and mix MIDI data, any sequencer will do. If you wish to create good, readable notation, the most efficient way is to learn to use MIDI step time input in a score writing program. I would start with MuseScore, since it is free.


There is very little information in a MIDI file about how the music should appear on a printed page. If you see a score derived from a MIDI file, the way it is notated will depend very much on the program that was used to read the file.

OK, so the next alternative which is very time costly but seems to be the only choice is to get a program that allows me to input note for note from the sheet music and which can play back that sheet music just as I have entered it, with additional features to slow down and loop sections for practice. Am I right is saying this is the only alternative because of the deficiencies in midi files?

Can you recommend the best program for doing this.

It's not a deficiency of anything.

Say you're playing a work that spreads across the keyboard. How can you tell the software to know which hand plays what?

Your viable alternative (which is what I'm also doing) is to get a sequencer (for example google for reaper) and record your midi track there. It will be in a single track, BUT you will be able to tell which notes are to which hand, very quickly in the piano roll, and thus separate them into 2 midi channels ( = 2 staves).

Alternatively if you can, play each hand individually and end your suffering!

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Both Finale and Sibelius can input notes rather quickly and can be played back. Musescore (free) also does that.

Start with the free software MuseScore and see how you get on with it. It will play back what you input and there is a growing library of pieces that users have contributed. Check out the sheet music on their site: there may already be some pieces that you play, or want to play.