Notation Programs.... anyone using them?

[vintagevibes]

Hey, vintagevibes! I've got a great idea for a reality show: "Notation Scoring Program Swap." It will be modeled on "Wife Swap." Doesn't the name just roll trippingly off the tongue? You and I will switch notation programs for a month (I'm a Finale user), and we'll get a TV crew to follow us around, chronicling our exploits. Oh, the misadventures we'll get into! Oh, the hilarity! Watch out, Kardashians!

 

 

I got all tingly just thinking about it!

[vintagevibes]

 

Okay EB....I think both of those comparison files sounded like total ass! Not only that....it would be so pathetically easy to skew the Finale files to sound better. In fact all you even need to do is up the volume by .5dB or something and it will be perceived as better. I cannot speak for Sib 7 as I have not heard it. I do see it comes with a 40GB sound library. This could be Sibelius Essentials sound library...a "LITE" version of Garritan or some other library. But truth be told, these are barely even good enough for mock ups. At best they are there to make the writing process a tad quicker with basic sounds on tap.

 

 

I don't think of the Sibelius sounds as mock-up quality - I use EWQLSO for that. But they're decent enough to compose with and it's dongle free and portable. Their new sound set is far more complete and higher quality than previous versions or Finale so I consider it a very useful compositional asset even if they are replaced in the final mix. I dump everything into Sonar for final mixing anyway.

[Iamthesky]

 

Seriously, I`m not really concerned with the sounds of these programs. I`m more concerned with printing out my scores and having them look professional.

 

 

I've been kind of wondering about this. Isn't the point of a notation program to write music, not play it?

 

I mean, it's nice if it can play it back to confirm how you think it would sound, but isn't arguing about the playback quality of a notation program kind of like arguing about whether a CD player can record cassette tapes?

[Huh?]

 

I`m more concerned with printing out my scores and having them look professional.

 

 

I can't speak for Finale but I can say that Sibelius has phenomenal looking charts and lot's of nice fonts.....you can get a really traditional look or grab the jazz font for a Real Book/Fake Book look to your scores.

 

I wish I had spent more time with Sibelius. I have had it since Sibelius 4 but have never got to a point anywhere near feeling like I am competent with it. Just basic writing and it takes me a while. I'm just lazy though.

[panthalassa]

Well there are differences. I can have a guitar strapped on while working in Sibelius but I imagine there are situations where a pencil would be easier. Sibelius is quite capable of writing tablature with rhythm on a single staff. (stems rising from fret numbered "noteheads") That's how I always do it. Also I can easily call up tablature for just about any string instrument I'd ever want. I just added Ukulele lessons and it was a snap to tab out songs and instructional materials. And for guitar the library of built in chord and scale diagrams is vast. The other day I created scale diagrams for bass modes in about 15 minutes and it is publisher quality. Of course I know the program well and have templates made with hidden staves that show only the scale diagrams and not the staves. I'm not knocking the immediacy of pencil and paper but I'm amazed often at how many things I can easily do in Sibelius. Plus, of course, I can use play back to hear what I've written which helps with lessons but also is a very quick way to check for mistakes. Check out Sibelius. All software has a learning curve but the tools it provides for teaching are amazing. Some prefer Finale but I'm Sibelius fan.

 

I've seen that single tab-staff feature before in my dealings with Logic Pro, now that you mention it. So thanks for reminding me.

It's funny. I've been doing this full-time for sixteen years, and everything I've ever written - or acquired by other means - has been scanned, so I have a vast library of learning tools in .pdf format. Print it out and we're good to go. I'm quite aware that one day things will get to the point where I can start incorporating some other type of input device. And who knows? Optical character recognition will get even better - to the point where I'll be able to ditch Acrobat Pro (which I nabbed thanks to friends down the street at Adobe), and merge elements of my existing curriculum with notation software. The notations software at that point will be a sort of one-stop publishing house. To a degree, that's already true now. It's just not fast enough - or rather, I do not believe I can adapt to that technology in an efficient way as of yet.

[panthalassa]

Same is true for keyboard work. You can play into a notation program either to a beat, or play out of tempo and assign a beat later (better for rubato playing, or playing multi-note chords really slowly, as you do when inputting full scores).

 

Thanks for the response. Life is easier in that way for keyboard players!

[vintagevibes]

I've seen that single tab-staff feature before in my dealings with Logic Pro, now that you mention it. So thanks for reminding me. It's funny. I've been doing this full-time for sixteen years, and everything I've ever written - or acquired by other means - has been scanned, so I have a vast library of learning tools in .pdf format. Print it out and we're good to go. I'm quite aware that one day things will get to the point where I can start incorporating some other type of input device. And who knows? Optical character recognition will get even better - to the point where I'll be able to ditch Acrobat Pro (which I nabbed thanks to friends down the street at Adobe), and merge elements of my existing curriculum with notation software. The notations software at that point will be a sort of one-stop publishing house. To a degree, that's already true now. It's just not fast enough - or rather, I do not believe I can adapt to that technology in an efficient way as of yet.

 

Another thing for me is that I hate writing worlds or music with pencil and paper. If you like writing and are good at it that may have more appeal to you. For me pencils are a hassle.

[Jon Chappell]

 

Another thing for me is that I hate writing worlds or music with pencil and paper. If you like writing and are good at it that may have more appeal to you. For me pencils are a hassle.

 

 

This I agree with. If you have a lot of lyrics, and your music is going to end up in a notation program anyway (e.g., it must be published or legibly outputted for students, etc.), it behooves you to skip the pencil-and-paper step and go right into the notation program.

 

Writing lyrics really slows you down. I can touch-type about 70 words per minute. So I often take meeting notes by typing them (still looking for a silent keyboard, BTW) b/c you can type so much faster than you can write long-hand. This transfers over to lyrics. It would be excruciatingly slow to try to write out the complete lyrics to, say, "American Pie," given how much more quickly I could input them by typing them (less strain, too!). So if it's some long song with lots of words, I type them first and then copy and paste into the notation program from my favorite word processor.

 

Regarding the onboard sounds. Since Ernest Buckley was the opening poster, and he is more concerned with the notation aspects vs. the playback sounds, I'd like to emphasize that regardless of which library Sibelius or Finale ships with, you can easily swap out, in part or in toto, any single instrument or instrument family. If you're a pianist, you might opt for Ivory II rather than the built-in piano sound. When you get around to it, you can swap out the brass, woodwind, or percussion as budget and time allow.

 

But it is a little off the mark (again, I'm responding to spirit of the needs of EB, the OP) to be arguing about the sounds, which seems to come more from the perspective of people who record with DAWs and deal with the sound--not people looking for professional-level scoring programs (Logic, Cubase, and Sonar do not apply here). You wouldn't base your decision to go with Finale or Sibelius on their sounds. Anyone really concerned with sounds would swap out each and every family with their favorite library.

 

That said, Huh?, I really appreciate your thoughtful post on the subject.

 

Finale and Sibelius are both excellent. Both will do the job. Just like Sonar and Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic. You might prefer one, but any assignment or project can be executed to the yours and your client's complete satisfaction with either. Some of the comments above (lots of fonts, great-looking scores) are not specific to one program over the other, but true of both.

[Ernest Buckley]

I've been kind of wondering about this. Isn't the point of a notation program to write music, not play it? I mean, it's nice if it can play it back to confirm how you think it would sound, but isn't arguing about the playback quality of a notation program kind of like arguing about whether a CD player can record cassette tapes?

 

[vintagevibes]

Another thing I forgot to mention is editing and updating. Fixing a wrong note is easy with pencil and paper but try to add a measure or move verses around and software starts to look really good.

[panthalassa]

Another thing I forgot to mention is editing and updating. Fixing a wrong note is easy with pencil and paper but try to add a measure or move verses around and software starts to look really good.

See, that's just it: Because I use a quality pencil with a good eraser, moving bar lines around is not a big deal - provided I don't press down too hard. I guess my whole point is software is not as flexible as a pencil and staff (or tab) paper - where you can draw additional things out in the margins, etc. At least, not yet, anyway.

 

As to Jon's statement about getting lyrics down faster with a keyboard: No doubt it's faster, but I like sounding out the words as I write them. Perhaps it's because I had a double major - English and Music, with a background in drawing and sketching (during a brief flirtation with architecture) - it was easier with a pen. I remember when I went to Italy to visit relatives, and my father had brought home a prototype Palm Pilot (ah, the perks of coming of age in Silicon Valley. Still have my "Next" T-Shirt...) which I took with me and used as an address book/journal. It was fun, a lot of tap-tap-tap with the stylus, but actually writing things down felt - and still feels - the best.

I'll tell you: The ultimate transcription tool for lyrics is the old handheld recorder, where I can sing into it. These days my recorder boasts a feature called Siri.

[Jon Chappell]

 

As to Jon's statement about getting lyrics down faster with a keyboard: No doubt it's faster, but I like sounding out the words as I write them. Perhaps it's because I had a double major - English and Music, with a background in drawing and sketching (during a brief flirtation with architecture) - it was easier with a pen.

 

 

Different tasks, different tools. Even if I'm writing straight prose--where you'd think the computer would have no equal--I sometimes push myself away from the monitor and use pen & paper. For example, if I'm creating an outline, free-associating, scribbling marginalia, or mixing sketches w/text (like writing a technical article that relies heavily on graphics), I'll use pen and paper. Anything with a mixed-media approach (main text, images, notes to myself, marginalia, arrows, etc.), as you point out, panthalassa, still benefits from pen and paper. I had a writer friend who used graph paper or blank paper rather than lined paper, because it helped him to think more non-linearly. He would write little bubbles everywhere and connect them with arrows. It was an inspiration to see him create like this. He would also use "doodles" to help enhance and editorialize his work.

 

I think it's a gray area to create using a scoring program. It depends how you work.

 

But if you need to score something (that is, the ultimate output medium is a legible/publishable score), you can avoid some redundancy if you can input directly on the computer versus writing it out longhand first. (Nowhere is this more appreciated than in lyrics.) And if your music is going to be re-purposed somehow in the digital domain (transposed, imported as a MIDI file into a DAW, etc.), of course a scoring program offers great efficiency.

 

Your comfort level with scoring programs increases the more facile you are with written music. That's why conductors, concert band leaders, jazz arrangers, and orchestral-instrument players are comfortable with scoring programs. Folks who grow up with rock and roll and playing by ear, or those who like to assemble loops, will go for DAWs first. This crosses over into the creative process, too.

 

A scoring program doesn't make a whole lot of sense if your music is never going to end up as written music (to be published or played by music-reading instrumentalists). You wouldn't create on a scoring program unless you were also going to publish it. Or if you were going to expand out your music into a larger ensemble where it would be difficult to manage without the visual aid of a score.

[vintagevibes]

 

A scoring program doesn't make a whole lot of sense if your music is never going to end up as written music (to be published or played by music-reading instrumentalists). You wouldn't create on a scoring program unless you were also going to publish it. Or if you were going to expand out your music into a larger ensemble where it would be difficult to manage without the visual aid of a score.

 

 

 

Have to disagree here. If you're doing a pop song with strings a notation program is called for. You can do it with pencil and paper but you still have to get it into a computer. The results may never be printed but notation is required. Anything that you want to hear and don't have an orchestra to play requires a notation app. You could use the one in your DAW or you could use a dedicated one but still writing with pencil and paper does not allow you to HEAR or record it. Quite a lot of orchestral music in film and TV is done without real instruments due to budget restraints. Writing on paper is an extra and unnecessary step in this and many other situations.

[Huh?]

 

See, that's just it: Because I use a quality pencil with a good eraser, moving bar lines around is not a big deal - provided I don't press down too hard.

 

 

And when you are all done, with Photoscore Ultimate 7........ you can scan your handwritten chart right into Sibelius.

[Huh?]

 

But it is a little off the mark (again, to be arguing about the sounds, which seems to come more from the perspective of people who record with DAWs and deal with the sound --not people looking for professional-level scoring programs......You wouldn't base your decision to go with Finale or Sibelius on their sounds. Anyone really concerned with sounds would swap out each and every family with their favorite library. That said, Huh? , I really appreciate your thoughtful post on the subject. Finale and Sibelius are both excellent.

 

 

I suppose you are right Jon I had not really thought about it from that perspective. However, it also occurs to me that you are someone very much in the know, finger on the pulse etc etc and by the very nature of what you do, you have access to info and are just plain surrounded by a bunch of "smarts", most of us aren't.

 

The rest of us have to fight our way through marketing tricks etc to find out if a certain software or whatever does what it says it does. I mean look at that Finale comparison of sounds. To my ear, it seems obvious they have deliberately made their examples sound better than the Sibelius examples. Plus the $199 crossgrade they offer to jump ship from Sibelius seems like dirty pool. Right there I am suspicious of them as a company. Just me. But if I were trying to choose.......I'd only have the resources of asking so called pro's and experts on the online forums. Taking questions to the "pro's" on forums is one thing, but just not the same as interacting with composers in person, editors or other experienced professionals etc etc who can steer a person right. Besides, online you never quite can tell sometimes if someone is really telling it straight or they are not quite the expert they say they are.

 

That said.......I think that the quality of the sounds is a fairly big part of the average purchasers concern when buying notation software. Especially at around $600 for the notation program, will the buyer have any left over for a $1000 orchestral library?

 

So yes...they are both great, but if I was writing orchestral scores and was told two softwares were both excellent but one had much more realistic sounding instruments.....I would likely buy that. Unless I had a great library already.

 

As far as apples and oranges, you did notice I said "I can't speak for Finale but I can say that Sibelius has phenomenal looking charts and lot's of nice fonts...." Both excellent programs though. Sibelius (the company) seem a little stuffy....if that makes sense, hoity toity....steep learning curve too. I imagine Finale is difficult to grasp at first also.

 

 

But I do get your point about someone who only wants notation...no sounds per se.....just great looking scores. Just me, but at that price I want whatever extra's I can get.

[Cry Logic]

There are also 2 free (Open Source) scoring progs that might be useful

[panthalassa]

 

And when you are all done, with Photoscore Ultimate 7........ you can scan your handwritten chart right into Sibelius.

 

 

Thank you for the suggestion; OCR has indeed come a long way.

 

However, as I suspected it's not quite there yet. Here's but one review of many I came across:

 

http://emusician.com/software/neuratron_photoscore_ultimate5-5/

 

Still, I'm sure PhotoScore is just what the doctor ordered for some folks who need orchestrations done in that manner. With all these added features, it appears Sibelius is the way to go.

[Ernest Buckley]

Update: after lots of reading about Finale and Sibelius (respective websites & reviews), it seemed both programs were pretty much equal but in the end I decided to go with Finale for the simple and (maybe silly) reason that I knew and respected more of the users.

 

Looking at several weeks/months? of learning this complicated program but I am pretty sure Finale 2012 will deliver what I need and some.

 

Thanks for everyones advice, insights and suggestions.

 

EB

[vintagevibes]

 

Thank you for the suggestion; OCR has indeed come a long way. However, as I suspected it's not quite there yet. Here's but one review of many I came across: http://emusician.com/software/neuratron_photoscore_ultimate5-5/ Still, I'm sure PhotoScore is just what the doctor ordered for some folks who need orchestrations done in that manner. With all these added features, it appears Sibelius is the way to go.

 

 

I tried Photoscore Lite and it drove me crazy. I don't have that much patience.

[The Bard Rocks]

I have spoken with more folks who liked Sibelius better - but there aren't that many that I know who use these programs, heck, not that many who can even read music, come to think of it. Years ago, I used a free version of Finale. It was very easy to use, no learning curve, and produced professional results. Later on, I got free trial versions of each. I no longer use any of them. For my limited purposes, it is just so much quicker to write it down in pen and paper and be done with it. That said, I compose with acoustic stringed instruments and I'd LOVE to be able to play something, push a button, click a mouse, and have the score for it appear magically, looking professional. Dream on.

[A. Einstein]

 

Notation Programs.... anyone using them?.

 

 

hardly, I have all of them, but it is a pain in the arse using them as composer,

 

could be compared with a stenotypist using photoshop for dictation

[rasputin1963]

I always used SIBELIUS. No matter how fancy these notation softwares get, the user still has to do a good deal of conscientious editing to get the sheet music to look right and play right. But they are an amazing boon. What would Mozart or Ravel or Leonard Bernstein have done with such a thing?

[Ernest Buckley]

 

For my limited purposes, it is just so much quicker to write it down in pen and paper and be done with it. That said, I compose with acoustic stringed instruments and I'd LOVE to be able to play something, push a button, click a mouse, and have the score for it appear magically, looking professional. Dream on.

 

 

Yes, pen and paper works for me except I have to write stuff out for other singers and instrumentalists. I have no intention to compose with Finale, I`m using it strictly for notation.

[Goobers]

 

What would Mozart or Ravel or Leonard Bernstein have done with such a thing?

 

 

If it were Leonard Bernstein, he'd probably write a lot more {censored}ty music. He wrote like two good things. The rest sounds like ass.

[Goobers]

 

hardly, I have all of them, but it is a pain in the arse using them as composer, could be compared with a stenotypist using photoshop for dictation

 

 

I think it costs too much to develop these than the potential customer base supports, hence overly cumbersome programs that have yet to be Apple-fied.

 

Take the last update on Finale. First, there's no discount for upgrading early, as there always is ("upgrade now and it's only $99"... not this year). Second, the upgrade looks like they fired all but 1 person in their R&D dept. They're literally advertising one minor new feature for the upgrade, something like "score manager" that lets you do stuff you could already do anyway (change order of staffs, rename things, etc.)