If you try MuseScore and hate it, then you should move on to one of the other paid options. If you learn it’s quirks and like it, you can do just about everything you’ll ever need and save quite a bit of money (and a don’t think the learning curve is less than Finale or Sibelius, just different). Really, if you’re at all interested in writing music, I think you should start with MuseScore. The Android and iOS apps are a bit misleading, however, since you can’t actually edit music (only view it) on both of the mobile platform apps. I could do most of what I wanted after some trial and error (and Googling).īut the really great part about MuseScore is its cost ( free), its features ( lots), and it’s availability across just about every platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS). MuseScore is what I used to make all my exercises that you can find over on my horn exercises page and it wasn’t always intuitive. Remember, though, that my use case is not necessarily typical! MuseScore has gone through several updates over the past 3 years to make it a bit easier to use and a bit more feature-complete (in my experience, it’s probably around 80-90% of the capability of Finale/Sibelius). If you’re looking to save money, need lots of flexibility and don’t mind a learning curve, there is an open-source free option, called MuseScore that is worth investigating. I don’t know if it will (or even if this is a pro or con) but that is another big difference between the two. They also both offer student and education discounts.Ī point on the Sibelius license: Sibelius has gone to the AdobeCC/Microsoft Office model of a monthly subscription (or a lifetime license) which means that Sibelius, in theory, should be receiving updates and upgrades more often than Finale. ![]() The cost of the Finale full version and Sibelius lifetime license is basically the same ($600). You can buy a lifetime Sibelius license though, which is nice. You’ll want to try them both out, since if (or when) you get the full version, it’s going to cost you! The full version of both costs several hundred dollars, although Sibelius has the option of a monthly subscription if you only need to write music for a month or two. I don’t know enough about the differences to say much more, but basically, the way you enter notes and rests is different for each program, and once you become familiar with the note-entry method, switching to the other software becomes a pain. They both offer free versions (Finale Notepad and Sibelius First) that can be a useful way to see which software suite you prefer. For my use, though, Finale and Sibelius are too expensive to buy the full versions and too limited in the less-expensive versions for me to spend much time on them.ĭon’t get me wrong, these are both great programs, and if you’re serious about composing you should give them both a shot. ![]() They’ve been around a long time and both have stood the test of time. Whenever anyone mentions music notation, the first thought is often either one (or both) of these two programs. If you’ve got a recommendation that I didn’t cover, please let me know in the comments! The Big Two: Finale and Sibelius Since I’ve had a few students express curiosity about writing music, I figured this quick compilation of some of the best music-writing software I could find may be useful. My use case was only writing a single line of music with only a moderate amount of markings (as opposed to a full symphonic score), but I did have some specific requirements (ability to add text to a score, hiding measure lines, etc.) that kept me looking around. My goal was something that was flexible and not too difficult to use. ![]() So I spent a week (or few, it was summer!) looking into different music notation programs. While I was doing this I quickly realized that trying to do it by hand wasn’t going to work – my handwriting is not great, and so writing these exercises out (or making copies of previously-written exercises) was not going to work in the long run. Since I’ve started this website, I’ve been slowly ( very slowly) trying to write down exercises and other materials for my students and other horn players to use.
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