Hi,
This is my first post on here so please go easy on me!
What prompted me to write was a discovery in my loft.. well sort of. Let me explain. Some years ago I purchased a copy of Steinberg Cubase SX 3. I wish I hadn't! In hindsight it was perhaps the wrong tool for the job. My intention was to develop some music score writing skills. As it transpired, after spending some £300 on the software, I was unable to get on with the built in score editor. When I tried to write notes, it placed random rests and notes on the score. When I tried to edit them out I got more rests and notes and was unable to get down anything sensible which drove me nuts. I also purchased a recommended book only to find out that although it covered laying down tracks in great detail, it omitted any mention of the built in score editor.
Frustrated, I finally contacted Steinberg who were singlarly unhelpfull, suggesting only that I should fork out for an uograde, which having got nothing out of the software so far, I was not willing to do. Unfortunately the software was put back in the box and placed into the loft and forgotten - a criminal waste of money!
I did play around with a new freebie piece of software called MuscScore, very much in an early stage of development but I had now lost interest.
Well on having a clearout the other day, I came across the box and decided to install it again and have another go. It was rather old by now though. It took a bit of effort, but I was able to get it to work on Windows 7. It needed an update downloading from Steinberg to make it comaptible with Windows 7, and then another upgrade to the licence key control software, now called eLicenser. The previous installations left the old versions in situ which confused the system as to which version took ownership of the licence. I delete the older two versions from Conrol Pannel and hey prersto! It worked! Of course I still have the same problem with the score editor. Can't make any sense of it!
Anyway, I have also disciovered that you can get music notation software for the iPad. I tried the free iWriteMusic which works OK and I got on with it buty it is limited with no MusicXML support. I have contacted them to find out whether this will be aq future development. I also came across Symphony Pro and Notion and would like to purchase one but don't know which yet. Notion takes a whopping 1.25 (some say 1.7) Gb of space on the iPad which to me is riddiculous for a mobile device. Symphony Pro takes much less but is reported to be buggy although I have seen little about the latest version except one rather arrogant and negative comment from an academic, There are lots of other positive comments but difficult to make out sometimes which version they apply to.
I don't want to pay for something heavyweight again just yet, like maybe Sibelius or Finale. I will probably have a play with the latest the latest version of MuseScore later, but I would like to just ask for opinions on the best software for a relative newbie to get their interest going and maybe some help with the Cubase score editor if it is still worth pursuing?