what is the best notation software

[Jeff4h]

being relatively new Im sure this has been asked, I just wonder what is the most popular notation softwared

[chmara]

The pre-release description and its realization of an operational interface that sequences from notation, has me waiting for Overture 4 -- with a hope that it is well tested in Beta and solid in performance. I hope they eliminate the problems that have only been "fixed" incrementally in other programs, and my use of O3 has shown me they have the background to do it.

[Jeff Turner]

In my opinion there is no best. Each user has different needs, each program has different strengths and weaknesses.

What features are important to you?

It's always best to download the demos and gets some hands on before you purchase.

Jeff

[chambermusic]

If you want to work with software that facillitates professional looking scores and where the majority of the input from its forum is in regards to quality engraving practices then I would suggest Finale. Finale also has excellent playback, but the other notation packages do as well, and Finale has no advantage over any other program as to quality of playback.

David

[JonFairhurst]

Sibelius 4 now supports syncing to video, which is killer if you create notation for film, but doesn't matter at all, if you don't.

So, what features/strengths are most important to you? Once we know your needs, we can give better recommendations.

-JF

[Eric G]

Unless the aforementioned collaboration factor is, well, a factor, I'd suggest this:

1. Download demos of the major packages (Finale, Sibelius, Overture, etc...).

2. Fiddle with them in a variety of ways.

3. Get the one that fits your brain the best.

There are tradeoffs for all the packages, but you're a better judge on which tradeoffs are dealbreakers than anyone else here, for you. I'm pretty sure most of these programs all have demos, yes?

[JonFairhurst]

For me the key was to be able to enter notes as quickly and accurately as possible with as few keystrokes as possible (and no mouse at all, whenever possible). Other requirements were to be able to engrave well, export MIDI and playback MIDI. I didn't need to be able to make perfect/extreme notation for professional publication.

That was back when Sibelius 2 had just been released, and that was what I chose. I'm still happy with Sibelius' keyboard entry model (though I wish it were note-value, then duration rather than the other way around).

Anyway, if power entry is key, look into Sibelius seriously. I don't know that it's still the leader in this respect, but that was my conclusion when I bought Sib 2. (I'm now at Sib3, but haven't yet upgraded to Sib 4.)

-JF

[Ouch that hurts]

Sibelius is great. The new version 4 introduces "dynamic parts" - where the score and parts continuously and automatically update each other, even after you have reformatted the parts. This for me will be an incredible time saver, and one that I've been wishing they could implement for years.

I don't know whether Finale does this?

[chambermusic]

Finale doesn't ahve dynamic parts, yet I think that they will look into this and try to implement it next year. Parts linked to the score may be helpful to some, but could have disadvantages too, if you make major changes to a score, the formating of the part may need some polishing. Furtehrmore, if you use one staff for two instruments (flute ! and Flute 2, for example) there may be tremendous difficulty in linking a part to the proper notes, since engraving standards ask for severasl ways to display two parts in one staff depending upon the nature of the music. Even Sibelius 4 (by their own admission) would be unable to work dynamic parts in these kinds of scores.

I have mixed feelings about the utility of parts linked to scores.

David

[Ouch that hurts]

Finale doesn't ahve dynamic parts, yet I think that they will look into this and try to implement it next year. Parts linked to the score may be helpful to some, but could have disadvantages too, if you make major changes to a score, the formating of the part may need some polishing.

... whereas now, if you make ANY changes to a score, you need to extract the part again from scratch and do ALL the formatting again! "Some polishing" is surely better than this?

I haven't upgraded yet so I can't say how well it works. But put it this way - you still have the facility to extract parts the old way, starting from scratch every time. Nothing's been taken away. Dynamic parts allow you to bypass a lot of that work in the situations that they are appropriate (which I think will be most).

Anyway, you're probably right that Finale will now implement the same thing pretty soon to catch up. That's how these things tend to work.

[Daryl]

Furtehrmore, if you use one staff for two instruments (flute ! and Flute 2, for example) there may be tremendous difficulty in linking a part to the proper notes, since engraving standards ask for severasl ways to display two parts in one staff depending upon the nature of the music. Even Sibelius 4 (by their own admission) would be unable to work dynamic parts in these kinds of scores.

I have mixed feelings about the utility of parts linked to scores.

David

Not quite as difficult as you imagine. There is obviously a separate step involved but it can be done quite easily.

Basically what you do is set up a new "part" containing all the instruments you need in the score, so that your "score" contains both versions of the multi-stave instrument. Sure you have to update both versions on the "official" score when you make changes, but at least the staves can both be seen at once, so this is fairly painless.
FWIW, I have found it to be a huge time saver on projects that have a deadline.

D

[J. Whaley]

I was a solid Finale user for pretty much all of the 90's. I started working with Finale v 2.3!! Over the years the software became really bulky in my opinion, and I always felt like formating was a chore. When I switched to OSX Coda was dragging their feet in a bad way and left me with few options. Since I was already frustrated with Finale and Sibelius offered me a $79 cross -grade I took it. I can get around Sibelius pretty well but I've yet to get to the level I was at in Finale. I really like Sibelius most of the time. Certainly for creating Rhythm charts and lead sheets. But I have never gotten use to the input methods really. I went several years (about 2 or 3) and never had to print any orchestrations, so I never did that in Sibelius. Then a few weeks ago it was string time and I started really learning some stuff in Sibelius. All I can say is I was really frustrated.

To me the note entry is a PITA. I keep ending up with a bunch of extra notes because I forget to take it out of the active mode. Drives me CRAZY. Formatting for parts is great, and some of the key commands and ease of copying etc I love, but I'm seriously thinking of switching back to Finale.

Any other dual user experiences on here? I'd be interested to know what others think.

J-

[newmewzikboy]

I was a big finale user. When I had a chance to crossgrade, I moved to Sibelius for a while, but I ended up moving back to Finale because of the rich publishing features + it was easier in some ways for me to deal with MIDI in Finale than in Sibelius. Also, the plugins (although sibelius plugin development is easier).

Finale still comes up short on MIDI controller editing. That's why I am looking forward to OT4, and plan to xgrade. I primarly use scoring tools for orchestral and chamber music. As nice as Sibelius part extraction may be, it still falls short.

[Ken-P]

I am a Finale user.

As some members already expressed, I too have diffiuclt time using Sibelius, Overture, Igor 's "note-velue-first-then-midi-note" type input. I ended up playing wrong notes and it is pain of the neck to delete them. At least Finale give me a choice, whether I used "Midi-note-first-then-note-value" or "note-value-first-then-midi-note."

I asked the Sibelius developer at NAMM to add this feature. But they actually said that what they had was the best and they would not add this; and if I liked the other way, I should keep using Finale.

That really made me disappointed...
"We will think about it." That was all I wanted to hear.
I have to use Sibelius for some orchestration job, because the clients want the file in Sibelius.

But if I could, I want to use Finale always.

And of course, Finale is still standerd editing tool for publishers. The publishers of my choral music uses Finale...

[Jeff4h]

thanks for all the input, right now I am just doing some real basic arrangements behind background vocal in country and southern gospe. This probably isnt the way to do it but I can usually play a line I like by ear. Then I would just like to be able to print out what I played and go from there, actually the score feature in nuendo may be enough, I just thought as I progress I could probably do better arrangemts even if I still do the first part by ear with a regular program, does anyone else do anything similar or I am totaly going off the wall

[JonFairhurst]

One option is to "play things in by ear" (to a metronome) in a sequencer. Then quantize, and fix the notes that didn't quantize properly. Then export the MIDI into a notation program, such as Sibelius or Finale. Then format and print.

In that case note entry, MIDI playback and such don't matter. It's really about formatting, ease of use and cost. Overture might be a bit light on formatting. I believe that Finale is the most powerful in this regard, but might be a bit heavy to use. Sibelius' "dynamic parts" might be helpful if you publish both a full score and the separate parts.

You might download the demos and focus on the ease/power of formatting of each program.

Best of luck with your choice!

-JF

[Jeff Turner]

You should also be aware that Finale and Sibelius both offer scaled down versions of their notation programs without many of the bells and whistles at a much reduced price. That might be all you need.

Jeff

[chambermusic]

... whereas now, if you make ANY changes to a score, you need to extract the part again from scratch and do ALL the formatting again! "Some polishing" is surely better than this?.


Just to clarify, in Finale, if you make a few small changes in the score, one just remembers to go to the part and make the changes. If the changers are more extensive, one can make the changes in the score and then copy and paste the changes to the part. If the changes are quite large, like adding 30 measures where there were once rests, once can still copy and paste, but then one would really have to look over the reformatting in the part. It is hard to imagine, in Finale, to have to re-extract the parts.

David

[cjsm]

You should also be aware that Finale and Sibelius both offer scaled down versions of their notation programs without many of the bells and whistles at a much reduced price. That might be all you need.

I have PrintMusic, which is the cheap version of Finale. This is last years version before the last Finale update. I don't have the full Finale, but from what I've read elsewhere, and from comparing features at the Printmusic (Finale) websitie, PrintMusic has most of the feature of Finale. When I say most, I mean almost all. For 1/5 the price (or whatever it is), you get something that is amazingly near Finale in power. It is a bargin for the price. Of course the extra power of Finale may be what is needed for some users.

[newmewzikboy]

You don't get Advanced Tools

Special Tool
Notemover Tool
Ossia Tool
Mirror Tool

You dont get Palletes
View
Options
Midi
Layout
Percent View

Limited to 32 staves
No staff sets
No MIDI rhythmic notes values from Keyboard during entry
No sharpeye scanning opening using XML
Limited playback
NO ABILITY TO CREATE PLAYBACK ARTICULATIONS OR TEXT
Standard keysigs
NO COMPLEX RHYTHM DEFINITIONS
No special tonality and scale creations
No special cleffs or ability to define your own
No cross beaming
No special positioning of notes or heads
Limited definition of special noteheads such as X for percussion
No text blocks
No rhyming dictionary
Center alighment only of chords
No custom tabs
Limited collision
No plugins
No implode explode of score
No XML exportimport
Limited graphcs import
Limited font use
No postscript save
Cannot insert staff groups

and more

see

http://downloads.makemusic.com/forms/product_comparisons.pdf

[Tomke]

I think notation programs - most of them anyway - would be better off sticking closer to pure notation. Once you start including options for realistic playback of your notated music then you get close to where you would be better off using a more sequencer-like program with good notation options.

Therefore I suspect that I would like more graphically centered notationprograms; programs that does have some kind of playback option but not much more than, say GM standard. Anything more than that, then I get distracted by trying to set the parameters for good playback instead of doing what I'm there to do: notate.

[Yves]

Anyone using Notion ???

yves

[soulima]

I have used Notion since May of 2005 and totally love it!

[alanb]

My only experience with "notation" is with Cubase's score editor.

While I'm sure that the score editor has many limitations when compared to the big apps, there's one thing in particular that I have tried to do but can't seem to do . . . and that is construct nested tuplets. Can the Finales/Overtures/Sibelii of the world handle this seemingly simple task?

For someone whose transcriptions have not yet extended beyond bass/drums/piano, but will eventually include the panoply of VSL instruments, how necessary/desirable is it to move up to one of the larger notation apps...

...or, to ask it another way, what are the major shortcomings of Cubase's score editor, when compared to the apps being discussed in this thread?

Thanks for your singular and collective input,

[danpowers]

...While I'm sure that the score editor has many limitations when compared to the big apps, there's one thing in particular that I have tried to do but can't seem to do . . . and that is construct nested tuplets. Can the Finales/Overtures/Sibelii of the world handle this seemingly simple task?
Finale can do this. I assume Sibelius can, but I don't use it so I can't say for sure.

[Kleven]

If you're looking for realistic playback from a conventional notation program, there is nothing that even comes close to Notion.

[soulima]

Notion handles complex rhythms very well for the most part. Entering tuplets took me a while to master as its method is a little different. However, once I got the hang of it, it worked well. Since Notion is not based on midi, it can handle 1000 voice polyphony and complex polyrhythms are not generally a problem. In several of my pieces,I have a variety of ratios playing simultaneously(3:2,5:4,9:4,6:3) and Notion handles them fine for the most part.

Sometimes Notion trips over it's own feet. Entering notes after tuplets sometimes causes the program to have a little hemmorage-it can add incorrect rests or it can crash at times. However, I have only had once instance in which I couldn't fix the error myself.

A lot of people don't seem to be impressed with Notion's samples on their web site. I really wasn't either at first. However, those are 'raw' files if you will. No tweaking--just note pure entry.

I am finding that Notion is really easy to tweak the sound and to shape the music. More than any other notation program I have used, I am finding that Notion excels at this. Plus, shaping the music is a decidedly quick process.

Of course to get a nice sound, one also needs to know orchestration and such. This sounds obvious, but I am finding with using Notion the importance of carefully considering instrumentation, voice leading, performance practice and such. If one orchestrates in a muddy fashion--playback will be er... muddy. So in an odd way, Notion has really made me think about these things. I have even cracked my old university textbooks. Kind of bizarre, but I feel this software program has made me a better orchestrator.

Once one gets a hang of this, playback can indeed be quite glorious-- with far less tweaking than I ever thought possible.

I believe one has to think about the purpose of Notion as compared to other such programs. Its purpose really is a little different. I just don't want to spend half of my time writing the music, and the other half of the time fiddling around with it. So, there is a trade off there.

I find I am spending way less time shaping, fiddling and such with Notion. The result is way less time spent on post-compositional stuff and way more time spend on actual composition. I am liking that a lot!