Opinions On Current Music Writing Software

[SonorusAurelius]

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?

 

 

 

[SonorusAurelius]

Is there not a Cubase score sheet tutorial anywhere? I really struggled to find one.

[SonorusAurelius]

Thank you. It is for a later version but I did have a look. Unfortunately it does not mention the score editor anywhere. Thanks for pointing it out though.

[SonorusAurelius]

Ps I guess must have mistyped something the other day as following that link today I did another search and I have found a couple of tutorials today.

[SonorusAurelius]

Yes, it is where I downloaded the Cubase software update from some time ago. The eLicencer update is elsewhere but I have all the SX3 software bits that I can get hold of and working fine on Windows 7. I don't know whether it was because at the time I was focussed on the technical detail of getting the Cubase software up and running but I totally missed the documentation link further down the page. I have now downloaded the ZIP file and am reading through the contents. Thanks for pointing that link out again tunesmithth. Looking at it though, I still get the impression that its the wrong tool for the job. I beleive I was looking for a score editor that would allow me to write musical score, let me hear what it sounds like and edit it and save to common file formats such as MusicXML. Cubase seems to be geared towards the full process of music production allowing instruments, MIDI and voice to be recorded and mixed, but would it be fair to say that the score editor is a secondary function allowing sheet music to be generated from the inputted data rather than inputed from scrath in the first place? The videos I saw also seem to support this as although very helpful, they seemed to be primarily discussing tidying up the music sheets generated from the already inputted data. I'm not really interested in the production and post production stuff, just writing and editing musical score. I will experiment with it a little more though.

[SonorusAurelius]

I don't deal with this type of thing at all, but I do recall seeing various conversations on the site over the years. Does something like this do you any good?

http://musescore.org/

Yes, It does and thanks for mentioning it. I downloaded the most up to date version and spent an hour or so experimenting, which actually turned out to be quite productive. The program seems to be much improved since I last used it a few years ago when it was stil a 0.x version. In fact, I got on pretty well with it and find it most adequate for what I need at present so I will probably stick with it for now. I dare say that the results could be imported via MIDI or MusicXML format into Cubase for further production work if need be as a future option.

Thank you very much for taking the time.