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Music Software for Mac OS X?
tengwar writes "I'm an organist, and I sometimes have to prepare sheet music. I'd also like to do a bit of composition. I'm looking for music software for the Mac centered around standard notation. Playback would be nice, but it's not as important as a user interface that doesn't get in the way of plonking down notes on a stave fast enough for me to remember what I was trying to do. If possible I'd like something that will allow me to add the words for voice parts for hymns. Any advice?"
I second that. I've been a Melody Assistant user since version 3. Melody is the low-end version of Harmony, and it's only $15.
What is MusiXTeX?
MusiXTeX is a set of TeX macros and fonts to typeset polyphonic or orchestral music. It is still in progress and updated.
Usually TeX source files are typeset as texts with some control sequences. But MusiXTeX source files are filled with macros to type musical marks, and they look so complicated that many people hesitate at a glance. MusiXTeX is not so easy, that's true. But once you master it, you can produce scores no less quality than the ones on market.
Anyway, the website is here and it would seem that there is a large archive of classics and standard peices to download as well. I even think that there is a nice WYSIWYG editor someplace for it, but I'm too lazy to search.
I don't believe the OS X version is shipping for another month....
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
I'm not a music person, but I've got a lot of friends that are, and they all swear by Finale. The mac version, too. It seems pretty descent for what you are talking about, too. If I remember correctly, it runs pretty well on older systems (it's all MIDI, I think) so you don't need anything too great. In fact, my college's Finale stations were all Beige G3s, and no one complained.
Finale is great. Sibelius is great. Their price point, however, leaves much to be desired. Finale does have watered-down versions of their software. Allegro has most of the features of Finale, but is still pricey at ~$200. Finale also offers NotePad as a free download from their website, but as I have personally found out, it is very crippled, not intuitive, and generally uncustomizable.
I would recommend over all these other apps Finale's PrintMusic. PrintMusic offers many of the features of Finale and Allegro, has professional quality output just like Finale, but at a much lower price of $70. Four-part chorale notation and lyrics are a snap, and easily accomodates three-stave-per-system organ notation. All the functionality for what you need, without leaving you with that freshly cornholed feeling after shelling out the dough for Finale or Sibelius.
I was also amused/appalled that in more than one place, you can click a button/command, and get a dialogue saying that "this feature has not yet been implemented." Mind telling me what the interface for it is doing there, then?
Igor feels to me like early beta-level software, and a beta version of something that should have been released a couple years ago at that (of course, I've only used it in Windows XP, so maybe it's better on Mac... but where's the OS X version??).
To reign is to serve.