Musescore -Free music composition & notation software

[fogfighter]

Hi everyone.

While looking for software for creating music I stumbled upon Musescore and immediately fell in love. It allows the user to enter the notes in a music sheet and then the program plays the music and if desired creates a playable music-file.

Of course the main problem is to really do good, or even acceptable music. So far I've been reusing old piano pieces from when I was a kid.

Anyway, the software is offering much more power than I will ever need. So far I'm struggling with Twinkle, twinkle, little star

the link is:

http://musescore.org/

[Erwin_Br]

Looks great! I've played the guitar when I was young, but I'm afraid I lost most of my note reading knowledge since then.

[fogfighter]

Looks great! I've played the guitar when I was young, but I'm afraid I lost most of my note reading knowledge since then.

You can download playable note sheets form the community. Apparently the software supports guitars too.

[Trumgottist]

It's not really meant for making music, but primarily for notating it. If your main goal is to create music with a computer (as opposed to notating it for live performance later), you're probably better off with a sequencer. Notation software can only take you so far.

That doesn't mean it can't be useful for making music on a computer too. I use Finale - a professional program of the same kind (the Photoshop equivalent of music notation software if you will) - a lot, and the end credits of Frasse is even played completely by Finale. I also find it helpful when writing music, as I tend to think in a score, so it's an approach that suits me. But when it comes to making something audible, Garageband is far superior and has a lot more options. The purpose of music notation software is after all to allow us to create good looking scores that musicians then can use to make music happen.

[fogfighter]

Thanks for the good advice Trumgottist. The garageband seems like an interesting program. It seems to be for the MacOS though. Is there similar programs for Windows?

[Trumgottist]

Yes, Garageband is made by Apple as a selling point for Mac OS X. There's nothing quite the same for Windows, but sequencers such as Cubase have had "lite" versions. (I'm not up to date on those.) And if you're only dealing with recorded audio, there's Audacity of course. There probably exists some free sequencer as well, but I'm not familiar with those.

(As I have a professional notation program and Garageband, I'm pretty happy with what I've got, so I haven't been investigating alternatives for a long time now. I've been considering upgrading from Garageband to Logic, but once again that's made by Apple and Mac only, and the comparable programs are very expensive.)

[PhillineDon87]

This is great. It's my first time to see Musescore. This will help entering the notes in a music sheet and it will paly the music. Sounds cool.

 If Twinkle, twinkle, little star is hard, try happy birthday. It's much easier!