Music Notation Software Programs

Music notation software are computer programs that are used to create and print sheet music. Also known as "score writers". You can use the Syntheway Software VST Plug-ins in notation programs that supports VST technology like Sibelius or Finale among others.

Traditional classical music from Western culture is extremely complex and music notation software is a challenging application. The main products have a graphical interface similar to sheet music with staves, notes, beam and the entire set of music symbols represented. Main input methods are: step by step using a set of symbols palette and the mouse, MIDI real time recording, or scanning sheet music.

Some projects represent music in an XML based markup language called "Music Markup Language." However, the representation of music written in such a language is still to be resolved as present internet browsers cannot represent music.

These are used by composers who are used to the score layout more than the typical piano roll. The two best known are Sibelius and Finale. While most DAW's have built in score capability, they don't compare in depth and features as much as these. Notation programs make it easy to see your whole arrangement like you would on a printed score. Some of them have extra features like 'auto arrange' which will take a basic piano arrangement and turn it into a string quartet or a full blown symphony if you like. Although very useful once you get to know the program, most of these suffer from having a huge learning curve. They also suffer from some limitations as far as plug-ins, recording and mixing features. 

File formats

Almost all scorewriters use their own file formats for saving files. Hence, in order to move notation between different scorewriters (or to/from other kinds of music software such as sequencers), most scorewriters can also import or export one or more standard interchange file formats, such as:

• Standard MIDI File: supported by almost all scorewriters. However, as this format was designed for playback (e.g. by sequencers) rather than notation, it only produces approximate results and much notational information is lost in the process

• MusicXML: in recent years has become the standard interchange format for accurate notation

• NIFF: a now-obsolete file format that was supported by a few scorewriters.
   

    

There are also human-readable text-based formats such as Abc notation, LilyPond and ASCII tab. These are easily rendered as speech by screen reading software.

List of Scorewriters: Music Notation Software Programs