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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
Finale is pretty much the standard on the Mac for notation.
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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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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?
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.
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.
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*
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