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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?"
Finale by Coda Software.
www.finalemusic.com
I live and die by it. Albeit on a PC but I they offer a Mac version.
~foooo
http://www.lilypond.org
Check out Finale by Coda. I used the software for scoring music quite some time ago, and it was sufficient for my music theory classes. They have Mac OS versions available. The only downside - it is a commercial product.
Finale is pretty much the standard on the Mac for notation.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
sibelius.com
finale is the other choice, but sibelius is much easier to use and learn - and in my experience is just as powerful. available for mac and windows.
i was a music composition major and ended up using sibelius for nearly everything i wrote - instrumental works, choral, whatever. it does have limited playback features too.
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I've seen recommendations for Finale, which is available for Windows and Mac platforms. Is there any open-source software that also does the same thing, for the Linux/BSD crowd?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
You should definitely check out Harmony Assistant. It's made by Myriad Software (http://www.myriad-online.com/enindex.htm). It's a little rough around the edges, but it does everything.
I switched to it from Sibelius/Finale when they took too long to come out with a mac os x version (and charged too much when they did). Harmony Assistant is only $65, and they provide a reasonably crippled demo.
They also make a plugin (that comes as a free trial with the software) called Virtual Singer that uses Text-to-Speech to give you an approximation of how a vocal piece will sound (kinda scary, but good for hearing what you're doing before you put it in front of a chorus)...
There's also support for a million different kinds of tablature, all the usual staves and so forth. Like I said, it's a little rough around the edges, but a $65 price tag (compared to $600 for sibelius or finale) makes it all worth it.
have you been seen on slash?
I'd check out Myriad's Melody Assistant or it's more powerful and more expensive sibling Harmony Assistant. Melody is $15 shareware and quite powerful.
I can't compare the speed of notation with other programs as I haven't used them much. Its been great for the work I've done, however.
Lime has quite a following.
So does Google.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Finale is a very nice package of software which I cannot live without, but it doesn;t sound like this guy needs that much, and I think I can save him $400. Allegro is just as good, made by the same folks, without some of the advanced functionality (unlimited staves, customized staves, etc.). It also is not supported under OSX, ya' gotta use classic mode.
Funny you should ask, as this showed up in Fink Stable today:
lilypond 1.6.10-2 (GNU Music Typesetter)
LilyPond prints beautiful sheet music. It produces music notation from a description file. It excels at typesetting classical music, but you can also print pop-songs. LilyPond input is plain text. So, you can use your favorite text editor to enter it, you can put it in mail or embed it in an article like this: \key c \minor r8 c16 b c8 g as c16 b c8 d | g,4 Or you can use it to print music from other programs, using one of the numerous input filters. LilyPond output looks beautiful. The font and the layout algorithms were inspired by engraved music, so you can expect that same clear and elegant look from your LilyPond output. And if anything is not to your liking, you can tweak almost everything. [Fink Packages (Stable)]
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
It is OSX Native, and works very well:
http://www.intuem.com/
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Sibelius
Harmony Assistant
Lime Music Notation
This is for the lazy, if you want to read on by all means do so (I may have missed a few). This was a great question because I was looking for the same answer!!! Thanks Ask Slashdot!
Check out
http://www.osxaudio.com and
http://www.macmusic.org
two sites/communities for everything you could possibly want to know about Mac OS X audio software.
Alex.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Logic Audio. I don't know if they have a demo though. Apple owns them now. You might want to check out soundtrack it is supposed to be based on logic and might do the scoring also. It can be difficult to learn logic initially but it is a very powerful program. Make sure you get Logic Audio not Gold or platinum. For now Audio will do what you want and it doesn't cost $600. I think straight audio should be less than $200.
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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.
MusicXML looks like a great notation system, for those of us who like markup languages. However, though it ought not to be too difficult to write some sort of editor and/or printable output generator for it, I haven't yet seen one that's not part of one of the really expensive music suites (like Finale). Does anyone know of an open-source or cheap shareware (or cheap commercial, though preferably with some sort of demo) piece of software that does this?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
lime
You want Lilypond, a Free sheet music program. We just released version 1.8. You write an input file as a text file, then run Lilypond on the input file (similar to programming). Once you learn the format, it's faster than graphical mousing to enter the notes.
http://lilypond.org
Also available from fink. http://fink.sourceforge.net
Lilypond runs on GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOS, and other *nixs. It produces sheet music that looks better than Finale, but it is Free software.
Cheers,
- Graham
Full featured WYSIWYG notation software:
Finale - this is like the Microsoft Office of music notation - seems easy to use at first, really annoying once you try to do more complicated things, but has thousands of features. No other program has as many features as Finale, even though Finale implements many of them quite poorly. Totally unintuitive and not very Mac-like. Unfortunately, Finale files are the standard file format in the industry, so if you're going to be trading sheet music with other composers, you'll need to have Finale. See also their low-end versions, Finale Allegro and PrintMusic - there's nothing at all wrong with these if you don't need the features they leave out - mainly the ability to work with large scores and do part extraction.
Sibelius - intuitive, Mac-like. Easier to use than Finale, though some things take some getting used to. Not quite as powerful. Buggy - not more so than Finale, but in different ways. In theory it can open Finale files - not sure how well it really works.
Low-end WYSIWYG notation software:
Harmony Assistant
Lime Music Notation
Unix (may work on Mac OS X with Apple's X11):
Rosegarden
Text-based (no GUI, but renders nice output):
MusicTeX
Lilypond
Sequencers (may do a little bit of notation):
Intuem
Cubase et. al from Steinberg
Logic Audio
Please feel free to add and re-post. If someone wants to compile prices for all of these, that would be great.
I've used a number of notation programs and I feel I should chime in on the Sibelius vs Finale argument.
Firstly I've dealt with publishers and for the most part they use neither Finale nor Sibelius, but specialized and sometimes inhouse alternatives. IME they are particularly critical of Finale's copy, and feel that it's not up to snuff for publishable work. Sibelius does fare slightly better in their eyes. In side by side tests Sibelius produces nicer copy, at least IMO.
Secondly Sibelius IS easier to learn and use than Finale.
Most importantly, it is a myth in my experience that Sibelius is a less powerful program than Finale. YES, you can set MIDI channels. YES, you can manipulate slurs in extreme ways. Read the manual people. Easy to learn doesn't mean everything is obvious. I've had many discussions with hardcore Finale users, and in every case the features which they felt were unique to Finale are implemented as well or better in Sibelius. (Could be some I'm not familiar with though; any candidates?)
In conclusion I'd say go with Sibelius, sounds like it's more than adequate for your needs, and you'll be happier in the long run.
I'm a composer, and have to say that Sibelius (www.sibelius.com) is my top choice overall. I used Finale (www.finalemusic.com) for years, and only switched because I had to learn Sibelius in order to teach it and absolutely fell in love with it. It's powerful, graceful, not too difficult to use (although, like Finale, more advanced features are a bit more complicated), and VERY importantly, Mac OS X native (I don't use non-native software. Those who haven't been able to update their software within the past 2.5 years don't deserve my business).
.EPS files), with minimal cleanup to do.
What's more, Sibelius is fast becoming a co-industry-standard format along with Finale, so publishers, competitions, other composers, etc. etc., will more than likely be able to access any files you need to send them. It also converts Finale files rather well (when saved as
It's all about the best tool for the job, and as far as the professional music community is concerned, it's either Finale or Sibelius. Both are good, Finale is not OS X native (though they promise to be in version 2004), and Sibelius is excellent, so I chose Sibelius.
A word of warning, however: Sibelius is have some kind of MIDI playback problem with Quicktime MIDI in 10.2.4+ which has not been remedied. Using an external MIDI device clears it up completely, but if you're relying on Quicktime built-in MIDI, stay at 10.2.3 or below (including 10.1.x)...
*plink,plink*
To reign is to serve.
I'm a composer/arranger, and I would be at a loss without Sibelius. I used to use Finale, but I switched over because I was sick of having to reboot to OS 9 to write my music. I haven't looked back since.
It costs $599 full price, but for educational and/or religious organization users the educational price is good, and if you shop around a bit, you can get it even cheaper (I found my copy for $170).
Hope this helps!
-raejae
(btw... anybody know if I can change my username to get rid of the nasty caps? Stupid young me...)
Finale has a pretty steep learning curve compared to other notation software. I have used quite a few of them and found that Igor engraver is one of the best (and easiest to learn).
See more at this link
A quick note....
The "Logic Audio" series is now just called "Logic". It is available in 3 different versions: Logic Platinum, Logic Gold, and Logic Audio (they used to be called Logic Audio Platinum, Logic Audio Gold, and Logic Audio Silver).
You categorize it as a sequencer which may do a little bit of notation - but in fact Logic's score editor is an extremely powerful notation package unto itself. It's leaps beyond any other sequencer package in this area.
As stated in a previous post, it really is a do-all notation app, but the author is looking for a no-nonsense solution, so Logic's learning curve and poor documentation are its main drawbacks - not features.
For all those that are interested. Finale 2004 will be released on October 20th. This will be released as OSX native, and possibly work out some of the bugs inherant with OSX and MIDI.
dreck
Just another note about some of the new things involved with this latest version of Finale. You will be able to save your Finale projects as PDFs. This is quite handy for online publishing of your music, and also frees up the time wasted on transfering the file into a more readilly accessible format. Finale is also allowing you to create scripts for it. Allowing you to save a lot of effort converting multiple files into a new arrangement or transpasition. Another addition, which I am grateful for, using finale almost everyday, is the addition of a cue tool, to help create musical cues for performers. Overall, having taken the tour of Finale 2k4 on Coda's Website , there seems to be many improvements that will help with some of the more complicated tasks that it can do, and streamlining some simple tasks that were overly complex in the program. This looks to be a giant leap for the program.
dreck
While Logic itself can have a bit of a steep learning curve, there are now brilliant books and active, friendly mailing lists available to help you out. And the notation part of the program has always been pretty intuitive. Plus, as an organ player, you might appreciate that Logic has what I feel is the best B3 plug in ever made (Logic comes with a 30 day demo of this, and all its virtual instruments for you to mess around with). And if, down the road, you decide you want to take your notating to the next level and produce/mix/record/arrange/whatever, Logic will be able to take you there.
There are three different versions of Logic,
They differ mostly in how many audio tracks you can arrange with, what DSP effects ship with each one, and other minor stuff like being able to draw automation curves. Feature comparison charts are available. For what you describe, you would need nothing more than Logic Audio, but the upgrade path to Gold and Platinum is clear and affordable should you decide you need more later on.
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