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.
LilyPond is a computer program and file format for music engraving. One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand.
Finale is a proprietary music notation software developed and released by MakeMusic for Microsoft Windows and macOS. Finale has been regarded as one of the industry standards for music notation software.
A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and produce high-quality printed results.
Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term music copying is almost equivalent—though music engraving implies a higher degree of skill and quality, usually for publication. The name of the process originates in plate engraving, a widely used technique dating from the late sixteenth century. The term engraving is now used to refer to any high-quality method of drawing music notation, particularly on a computer or by hand.
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.
NoteEdit is a defunct music scorewriter for Linux and other Unix-like computer operating systems. Its official successor is Canorus.
NoteWorthy Composer (NWC) is a proprietary scorewriter application made by NoteWorthy Software. It is a graphical score editor for Microsoft Windows computers, and also works on PCs under Linux with Wine. Version 1 of NWC was released in October 1994, and Version 2 in September 2008.
Mozart the music processor is a proprietary WYSIWYG scorewriter program for Microsoft Windows. It is used to create and edit Western musical notation to create and print sheet music, and to play it via MIDI.
ABC notation is a shorthand form of musical notation for computers. In basic form it uses the letter notation with a–g, A–G, and z, to represent the corresponding notes and rests, with other elements used to place added value on these – sharp, flat, raised or lowered octave, the note length, key, and ornamentation. This form of notation began from a combination of Helmholtz pitch notation and using ASCII characters to imitate standard musical notation 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.
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.
Overture is a music notation (scorewriter) program for Windows and Macintosh platforms, published and developed by Sonic Scores. Visually, the Overture scoring interface resembles Encore, an earlier notation program, on which the same author had previously worked. While Overture is primarily a scorewriter program, its graphic interface also has the ability to allow editing the score's MIDI audio playback data in the manner of sequencer and digital audio workstation (DAW) software. Additionally, it has the ability to play film video footage synchronized to the score playback, and to insert precise time markers into the score.
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.
Musink is a scorewriting computer program for Windows. It is a WYSIWYM editor, with automated music- and page-layout functionality. Two versions of Musink exist: Musink Lite, which is freeware; and Musink Pro, which is not free but contains additional features.
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.
Dorico is a scorewriter software; along with Finale and Sibelius, it is one of the three leading professional-level music notation programs.
Standard Music Font Layout, or SMuFL, is an open standard for music font mapping. The standard was originally developed by Daniel Spreadbury of Steinberg for its scorewriter software Dorico, but is now developed and maintained by the W3C Music Notation Community Group, along with the standard for MusicXML.
