Software for reading notation ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ausrock
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ausrock

ausrock

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OK, this may be a dumb question but as I don't normally involve the puter with music production I am at a loss for an answer...........

Does anyone know of software that will let you enter notation, and that will then interpret that notation and play it back via your soundcard, etc.

I hope I have explained myself clearly.

:cool:
 
Notation wise, there are pretty much only two real alternatives out there... Sibelius and Finale. Finale is the big industry standard, but Sibelius quickly gained a lot of loyalty and a few publishing companies use Sibelius as their engraving prep tool.

Sibelius has a great UI, IMHO, and when it first came it, one of it's major characteristics was superiority in playback compared to Finale. (Though I believe Finale has made strides in this lately...I'm not totally sure.)

Garritan Personal Orchestra comes with a scoring program called Overture (from GenieSoft, who acquired it from Cakewalk a while while WHILE back), and while I hear it's good, it's far from an industry standard. Still, not a bad deal for 250 bucks...a decent sounding orchestral library and notation.
 
Actually almost all recording/sequencing apps allow you to do this, as far as I know.

Sibelius and Finale are designed for making good scores to print out. If you just want to enter melodies and such and have them played back by a MIDI synth, there's no need to fork out several hundred dollars for these tools, they will be total overkill.

However, if your needs are to make scores that you can print and distribute to a bunch of musicians, Sibelius and Finale are the way to go.
 
Thanks guys. Alchuck, you are close to the mark as I only want it for occasional use, not for full on score production.

:cool:
 
While most any sequencer does have notation built in, most of them are junk once you start getting into complex musical pieces. This is truly where Sibelius and Finale shine, they allow you to do just about anything that's possible with standard musical notation and then export it as a MIDI file (or files). Of course, they also allow printing of scores as previously mentioned.

However, for casual use I would at least give the built-in stuff a try. I mean, it is free, you might as well see if it's powerful enough for your needs.
 
All my recording and mixing is done away from the PC which only gets used for final mixdown and CD burning so I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to software packages but I have a friend who is into thar stuff so I'll check it out with him.

My sight reading skills disappeared well before computers were the norm and I have some basic irish jigs that I want to get my head around.....hence copying the notation into software and have the PC play it for me...........kind of a learning tool.

Anyways, thanks again for the suggestions, etc.

:cool:
 
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