music notation software

christiannokes · Post by **christiannokes** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:04 am

i am looking to write songs by using a computer. does anyone here do this? i have a really low budget. what do i need. any pitfalls?

christiannokes · Post by **christiannokes** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:05 am

i'm using a mac g5 dual core without a keyboard. is a keyboard necessary? is midi something i should know more about? thanks

christiannokes · Post by **christiannokes** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:10 am

one more thing- i plan on mousing in all the notes and then subsituting instruments later. i want to be able to play it back and have a choice of the instruments it plays back with too. so i can get an idea of how it will sound with each instrument individually and as a whole.

Kindly Killer · Post by **Kindly Killer** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:14 am

i used finale all thru college but switched to sibelius immediately upon trying it on a lark. g7 has all the basic functionality, can do a typical pop/rock score, and costs about $99. i wouldn't look at anything else

oh, yeah - the reason: sibelius has a much more streamlined workflow. you can do everything comfortably from the keyboard. all the stock shortcuts are very well laid out and make perfect sense as-is. at the time i switched i also liked the stock look of the scores from sibelius' templates, but i have no idea where that is at now, except that if anyone made a really usable bridge to lilypond, i would print everything thru it. as it stands, tho, sibelius is king

Jim_Boulter · Post by **Jim_Boulter** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:53 pm

I'm a Sibelius fan as well. My only problem is that I don't like stripped down versions of anything, and the full version is 5 bills. But a great system to use. I never really gave Finale a good shot, because Professional Composer from MotU was easier when I first tried Finale. I know Finale got better, but I didn't want to change then. Sibelius has replaced PC quite nicely now that I've finally moved to OSX and MotU quit supporting PC.

Kindly Killer · Post by **Kindly Killer** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:32 pm

I know what you mean about stripped down and value, etc. Sibelius is definitely going to recoup their R&D - every week. My sense is that the biggest markets for notation software are edu institutions, where the attitude is, "Who cares what it costs - we have to use up the whole budget." Ironically, they have discounts for students, who can already use it for free on school computers, but nothing for struggling musicians who are acutally making music.

If you write for bigger ensembles or spend the majority of your time making scores in some capacity, there are some big things missing from G7 - e.g. scripting and automatic parts. But G7 is still an okay value IMO. Best value for cheap notation software, anyway. I would think anyone writing for a typical small ensemble would be very happy with it. If your focus is outside of writing or arranging, I doubt most folks would learn the program deep enough to miss anything, anyway.

christiannokes · Post by **christiannokes** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:36 pm

have you tried the sibelius student version. It's like 10 bucks more or something. What's different?

christiannokes · Post by **christiannokes** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:44 pm

..and can you export the individual parts into garageband as seperate tracks?

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music notation software

music notation software

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