Why is using music notation software necessary? The term writing music means different things to different people. To some, it means writing down lyrics and chord symbols in a way that they can remember without using standard music notation or that they’ve recorded and produced their song in a recorded format, but what if you want to write your music on paper in a way that other musicians can understand using tradition music notation. For this, most songwriters, arrangers, and composers use a music notation program, ensuring that their music can easily be printed as sheet music or formatted for reading on a music device such as a computer or tablet.
Music notation programs come in many flavours and sizes, with different programs having different features. The features in music notation programs probably differ more from program to program than the differences between Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs).
Some music notation programs convert sheet music to video and images or have a more comprehensive selection of music symbols for writing for many different instruments, have better methods for formatting text and page sizes, better control over the look of the score, and finally, support a wide variety of different file format and ways to get music in and out of the notation program. Not to mention, the price of these programs ranges from free to extremely expensive.
I use Sibelius and Noteflight and have played around with Musescore often. While I think Noteflight and Musescore have great features, I tend to use Sibelius as my choice of program because it has some features that I can’t find in other notation programs, such as image conversion, straight-up measurements for text and pages rather than measurements in pixels and points which I’m not as familiar with. Your choice of music notation program boils down to what you wish to do with it.
If you’re looking for special features like the ability to create videos, export your score to images for publishing in textbooks or slide presentations, or share your music assignments as a group in a classroom. While these programs have some basic features, such as the ability to write music in standard notation, the features vary widely. I often use several programs on a single project when creating a video or self-publishing for sale and distribution to online sheet music retailers.
Here is a list of some options for music notation software. Neither my studio nor I endorse these products; I’ve not had any experience with many of them, but here is a list for you to check out and see what works best for your music notation needs.
- Notion6 by PreSonus
- Sibelius
- Musescore
- Noteflight
- Finale
- Forte
- Flat
- Dorico
- MagicScore
One thing to consider is what type of device or computer system you wish to run the music notation program on. I only used Sibelius until I purchased a Chromebook, which couldn’t run Sibelius, so I needed a browser-based music notation program like Noteflight, which was the perfect option for me.
