The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #21607   Message #728149
Posted By: JohnInKansas
12-Jun-02 - 04:37 AM
Thread Name: Help: Music publishing software suggestions
Subject: RE: Help: Music publishing software suggestions
One of the recent (1 year ago) threads that discussed this subject fairly thouroughly is at Music Annotation Software Question.

The real problem is that there are so many programs around that will do (mostly) what you want - with everyone having a favorite - that it's really hard to shake out a choice and get started.

Without doubt, the premier programs are Finale and Sibelius. I'd give the vote to Sibelius, because it seems to do a better job on tab - but both of these are $600+ programs unless you can get the "student discount."

The little brothers and sisters of these programs will do what you asked for now, and there are more shareware/freeware programs than even mudcat can possibly try.

Many shareware programs are limited to a single melody line. Unfortunately that's true of the Mid2Txt setup, which would otherwise be the ideal solution to "email" music. If you want to send music - any method other than snail mail - MIDIs are small enough to go as email attachments, and ANY decent notation program will make a MIDI from your notation, and will "make" notation from a MIDI. It's not even really necessary for everybody to use the same notation program.

ANY other transmission of a notation program file requires that the person you send a file to must have the same notation program in order to read it - or must at least be able to "import" the file into their "family" version.

John