Music Composition Software

What are some good software that you use for writing music?

Preferably freeware, but if you use some expensive shit, sell it to me, whats so great about it?

i've heard of finale and stuff but have never worked with it. It is just like a more professional type of guitar pro?

What've you got?

...lol


...do you know how to read music?



(real music, not tabs)

finale is fine despite some annoying interface and playback bugs that STILL pop up (playback isn't hugely necessary though if you're just trying to write)

but works well for scoring at large.

but yeah, you gotta know how to read music lol

edit: by fine i mean largely great, you can do most things you'd ever need to to score and write and etc, etc. you can do TABs too, without having to read music, but it's easier to just write music if you can read it.

I didnt realize that mentioning guitar pro implied that I don't read music. Which I do. Real music, not just tab. ....lol? amidoingitrite?

So is finale pretty much the industry's standard or are there other ones that are pretty much up there with it?

I wasn't criticizing you for not reading music, and I didn't know if you did or didn't, which is why I included it at all. Sorry brah.

And yeah it's pretty much the standard as far as I can tell.

Isn't this same thread already on the first page?

Sibelius is more of a 'standard', but either that or Finale will do fine.

Finale is more of a standard than Sibelius in most universities, at least in the US

Oh, okay.

I've not used either since high school to be fair, but last time I did Sibelius seemed like it was the more professional solution.

If there's such thing as "the standard", Finale is probably the one over Sibelius. It does offer more options than you'll probably ever need, and it's pretty user friendly, I'll say. Of course there are certain graphic notations that you'll probably have to either create yourself or forget about altogether, but you can definitely do all the regular/standard things.

You do need to have some general idea of how to read/write standard music notation, but my 12 year stepson uses it without a great background in music, and I would say he gets by.

It does have some playback problems since it's not meant to be an audio sequencing software. It's mainly software intended for score editing with a playback option that will definitely get "jammed" when attempting to play certain passages with many articulation/technique/dynamics/tempo/etc. marks.

All in all it is probably the best option you can find.

I prefer Sibelius to Finale, although Sib 5 has some issues with overlapping things on the page (if you have rehearsal marks, chord changes, and 1st/2nd endings, it's a bit of a mess that you need to sort out) but Sib 6 is supposed to be pretty awesome.

Both Sibelius and Finale have a pretty steep learning curve, but worth investing the time with.

sibelius 6 fixes every problem i ever had with finale 2009, which i used for a couple of years. now i forget what they even were.

Sibelius is definitely the standard in the UK, but I've heard that Finale is the standard in the US. I've used both, and am far more comfortable with Sibelius.

I've only heard of Finale on the internet, so Sibelius is definitely the standard here.

Finale is the standard here at Berklee, but Sibelius is so much better it's ridiculous.

I use Finale.


So, for those who have used both, what are the features of Sibelius that make it ridiculously better?




My own issues with Finale are due to the fact that I only use it intensely a couple of times per year and it can sometimes be really tough to figure out how to do something beyond the norm. For example, I did a large arrangement and needed to add one staff above the violin 1 part for a couple of solo players, just for a few measures, and then go back to normal. I needed it to look good in the score and also come out the way I wanted in the part after extraction. I never did figure it out completely, and the Hueueueueueueuge manual was no help.

I keep using Finale because generally I can use it just fine, and upgrading it on occasion is really cheap when you already own it.

Sibelius is the standard in Australia. I don't actually know anyone who uses Finale. Could be because my university teaches with Sibelius, though.

Lilypond is free.

But unless markup languages give you a hard on, you're not going to like it.

I've only heard of Sibelius being used up here. It's the only one I've used and I like it.

We used Finale at my uni, although I'm not quite sure why they did over Sibelius, it seems really un-user friendly and most of my lecturers used Sibelius(I still use Finale though).