SHP Forums

Does any of you out here have any experience with score writing software? I'm looking for some.

A long time ago I used Noteworthy Composer, which was so easy to use I often utilized it to make compositions, to test if my college assignments sounded OK, to try out music of which I had it on sheet but had no idea how it was supposed to sound (this was before Youtube)... I lost NWC after a major computer crash. That was four years ago.

I've tried to use others. I couldn't get anything out of Beethoven. Finale is the one university made us use (teacher gave all of us an illegally copied version), which is a lot trickier to use than NWC. Partially because it uses different shortcuts. Plus mine is an old version: 2003 (teacher didn't feel right about copying the most recent version).

MuseScore composer is OK for freeware but it jammed a lot and it wouldn't make triplets.

GiveAway Of The Day recently gave away a special offer valid one day only: Magic Score Note 7. It's been a right pain in the neck: it occasionally jams and the shortcut programming is extremely bad (eg if you want to save your elbow and use the keyboard to enter the notes, you can only stay in the same octave and use hemidemisemiquavers). And of course because it was a special one-time offer I'm not entitled to get updates or help from the makers.

Sooo... question is: are there any decent ones you can easily use as both score-writer and composing tool, preferably with keyboard input?

It has been several years since I last looked at such software. Everything that I looked at had severe usability problems of one sort or another. I don't even know what is currently available. Is Cakewalk still made? A friend of mine does a lot of composing and I have helped him by setting up new PCs fro him. He uses several different tools.

When MI sees this, he'll be able to give you information on what he uses.

Cakewalk is now called Sonar, which is what I use. You can get the Win 3.1 version of Cakewalk for free from Quest Studios (which has keyboard input). There's also another freeware program called Anvil Studio, which I believe Collector links to somewhere in the SCI tools section of Sierra Help Pages. Both can work with music notation and also a piano roll. There's also Music Sculptor/Presto Arranger which has keyboard input as well but no notation or sequencing capability at all. Basically just input.

And here are links:

Sonar
Anvil Studio

I've googled for Music Sculptor/Presto Arranger, but it doesn't seem to exist any more.

I have both if you want them. Also a 16-bit Win 3.1 program. And obviously, Sonar is far from free.

Thanks guys. I've tried it again with Magic Score Note 7, which really spoilt things for me: how on earth can you charge anything that doesn't work? I'll check out Anvil, maybe NWC, and see what else is available.