Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper, although the access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.
Finale is the flagship program of a series of proprietary music notation software developed and released by MakeMusic for the Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems. First released in 1988, version 26 was released in 2018. Finale has been regarded as one of the industry standards for music notation software.
GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed and sold by Apple for macOS, and is part of the iLife software suite, along with iMovie and iDVD. Its music and podcast creation system enables users to create multiple tracks with pre-made MIDI keyboards, pre-made loops, an array of various instrumental effects, and voice recordings.
capella is a musical notation program or scorewriter developed by the German company Capella Software AG, running on Microsoft Windows or corresponding emulators in other operating systems, like Wine on Linux and others on Apple Macintosh. Capella requires to be activated after a trial period of 30 days. The publisher writes the name in lower case letters only. The program was initially created by Hartmut Ring, and is now maintained and developed by Bernd Jungmann.
Guitar Pro is a multitrack editor of guitar and bass tablature and musical scores, possessing a built-in MIDI-editor, a plotter of chords, a player, a metronome and other tools for musicians. It has versions for Windows and Mac OS X and is written by the French company Arobas Music.
Ultimate Guitar, also known as Ultimate-Guitar.com or simply UG, is the largest guitarist community website including guitar and bass guitar tablature, chord sheets, reviews of music and equipment, interviews with notable musicians, online written and video lessons, and forums. It was started on October 9, 1998, by Eugeny Naidenov, a student of the economic faculty of Kaliningrad State University, Russia.
Mozart the music processor is a proprietary WYSIWYG scorewriter program, which runs on computers running Microsoft Windows. It enables the user to create, edit, and print musical notation and listen to it via MIDI.
MusEdit is a scorewriter program for Microsoft Windows, developed by Doug Rogers / Yowza software and first launched in 1997. The current version (4.0.3) was released in 2010.
ABC notation is a shorthand form of musical notation. In basic form it uses the letters A through G, letter notation, to represent the given notes, with other elements used to place added value on these – sharp, flat, the length of the note, key, ornamentation. This form of notation began as an ASCII character set code that could facilitate the sharing of music online and also added a new and simple language for software developers, not unlike other notations designed for ease, such as tablature and solfège. The earlier ABC notation was built on, standardized, and changed to better fit the keyboard and an ASCII character set by Chris Walshaw, with the help and input of others. Originally designed for use with folk and traditional tunes of Western European origin, e.g., English, Irish, Scottish, which are typically single-voice melodies that can be written on a single staff in standard notation, the work of Chris Walshaw and others has opened this up with an increased list of characters and headers in a syntax that can also support metadata for each tune.
Progression, previously stylized as PROGRESSION, is a music creation and performance computer program created by NOTION Music. Created for use on Microsoft Windows and macOS laptops or desktops, Progression focuses on composition for guitar, but can also be used to compose for keyboards, bass, and drums. As of April 2019, Progression is no longer available for sale in the PreSonus online store, nor via dealers worldwide.
Notion, previously stylized as NOTION, is a computer software program for music composition and performance, created by NOTION Music of Greensboro, North Carolina, now owned by PreSonus. It is available for Microsoft Windows, macOS and iOS.
MuseScore is a scorewriter for Windows, macOS, and Linux supporting a wide variety of file formats and input methods. It is released as free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. MuseScore is accompanied by a freemium mobile score viewer and playback app, and an online score sharing platform.
JFugue is an open source programming library that allows one to program music in the Java programming language without the complexities of MIDI. It was first released in 2002 by David Koelle. The current version, JFugue 5.0, was released in March 2015. Brian Eubanks has described JFugue as "useful for applications that need a quick and easy way to play music or to generate MIDI files." JFugue is free software released under the Apache License.
Tablature is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.
This is a comparison of music notation programs.
MusicEase is a proprietary WYSIWYG scorewriter created by Gary Rader and produced by MusicEase Software. It enables computers using Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X to produce musical notation and listen to them in MIDI.
MagicScore is a music notation and composition software product for PCs running Microsoft Windows. Versions of the product sell under the names Maestro Composer, Maestro Notation, and Maestro Notation for MS Word. Two free products in the same product line are offered under the names Maestro Performer and Maestro Online.
Forte is a music notation program developed by the German company Lugert Verlag, located in Handorf. Its name is derived from the dynamic marking of forte. The program is available in both German and English.
