Finale Allegro
Finale Allegro is an amazing music scoring program with so many features it boggles the mind. I am using it -- along with the previously-reviewed Transcribe! -- to transcribe blues harp music, which is only a fraction of its capabilities. To be honest, there is a steep learning curve if you've never used a scoring program before, but I found it to be more intuitive than programs which cost many times more. It's like learning to use CAD programs. There is no easy way. You have to trudge through the manual and just try things every time you want to do something.
That said, once you get started, there is so much you can do with this program. There are wizards that help you quickly create a blank sheet with staves. The wizard lets you choose the type of instrument, time signature, key, and font. You then add notes and rests to the staff by choosing from a palette the duration and clicking on the appropriate line or space on the staff. There are also keyboard shortcuts that facilitate this. Each time you add a note you hear the note via a built-in synthesizer. You can play the score you entered via a "play" button. You can change the duration of a note by choosing a different note from the palette and clicking on the note you want to change. You can alter the pitch of a note by dragging it to a different position on the staff or by selecting the note and using the cursor keys. You can add rests, accidentals, and tuplets in a similar manner. You can create chords or add notes to a chord and change its pitch.
Another really nice feature is the ability to import MIDI files which are instantly displayed as a musical score that can be edited. You can also export your score to a MIDI file. And once you are happy with your creation or transcription, you can of course print a hard copy or export to a pdf to distribute to your fellow musicians. One plus is the abilty to automatically create tablatures of your music -- simultaneously, in a separate staff below your main staff. Unfortunately for me, the program doesn't have a built-in harmonica TAB, but it is possible to create a custom TAB (though, I've found it is easier to manually add TABS with the lyrics tool).
All this and much more for $200. And there are lower-priced, limited versions for as low as $9.95. Quite frankly the $200 version is overkill for my purposes. You can try the free demos to see which version is right for you.
Favorite (15)
Chris Gardner
My son uses Finale Notepad. Works wonderfully!
Steve
Anyone considering Finale should also check out Sibelius. These two professional music scoring programs tend to leapfrog each other in features and functionality with each new release. Both programs are popular and have their adherents. I went with Sibelius since several arrangers with whom I exchange scores used and recommended it and I'm happy with it but frankly could have gone either way; they're both very good programs.
Hal Pool
Many people use Finale, the "big" version.
I use Sibelius, which I have found to be superior to Finale over the
years (I switched).
the newest find I'm using now is called Melodyne from Celemony. Check it out.
Finale and Finale Symphony are fine products. I personally don't like Finale.
Travis
I've tried both Finale and Sibelius over the years and found both to be extremely powerful tools. I finally settled on a piece of software called Harmony Assistant from the fine folks over at Myriad Software (www.myriad-online.com). I've found it to be an extremely flexible notation tool for a fraction of the cost associated with the two big boys in notation software. Even better is the fact that the one time purchase gets you free lifetime updates. Worth checking out, in either case.
Kevin
You can also try the open-source software called 'MuseScore". It is certainly not as polished and not as good, but for the asking price of free, it might just fit the bill for a lot of people with more time than money. 80% to 90% of the functionality for 0% of the cost.
Works great in Windows and Linux.
Wikipedia page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuseScore
William
Second for MuseScore. [ http://musescore.org/en/ ]
Jason
Though I've used Finale and Sibelius for years, the open source alternatives are approaching superiority in most regards and soon will be superior in ALL.
The bells and whistles of scoring programs are nice, but the goal here is to print readable music, and this area is where Finale and Sibelius fail miserably. Their output is light-years from the old-school, hand-engraved music of the past. It's a shame that the music publishers are going to fin/sib for their needs because it's changing the readability of sheet music for the worse (though the cost savings to the publisher and the end-user is nice).
Perhaps the most important thing about MuseScore, the still-in-alpha Canorus, and the Linux-only RoseGarden is that they can output to LilyPond. LilyPond is an open source sheet-music print engine and its output is nothing short of breathtaking; by far the loveliest printed music short of hand-engraved scores.
And that, in the end, is what notation programs are for.
Mark
To be honest, the full version of Finale is overkill unless you are a music pro or are doing TONS of really odd 20th century arranging. Allegro is even more than 80% of users need. It is a GREAT family of programs I've been using since 1992
Michael B
Finale's 'Print Music' at $99 will give most people what they need.
Crosius
I feel like a dinosaur - I just write the script files for LilyPond by hand in TextMate.
Rabbit Muse
I use abc for quick transcriptions: http://abc.sourceforge.net/
I agree that Lilypond is good for more complicated transcriptions: http://lilypond.org/web/
There are many Lilypond examples at Mutopia: http://www.mutopiaproject.org/
Lilypond and abc can generate MIDI and PDF files. Both programs use text files for input. I can type faster that I can move notes around with a mouse, your mileage may vary.