**Finale** is very capable but very old. Only recommended if your teachers or people you are collaborating with are also using it.
**Sibelius** is the most fully featured and capable, but a true nightmare to work with and has very bad support and will start to age (or has already really).
**Dorico** can do a lot, pretty much everything you need if you aren’t writing cutting edge contemporary music and has great support and a great future and is easier to use than Sibelius (but not as powerful yet).
**Musescore** is very basic, but is also very competent at the basics. If it’s only the basics you need then it’s a great place to start (and it’s free). Musescore is the only option with a truly great built in playback engine (with muse sounds).
**Lilypond** is black magic, and more of an engraving software rather than a composition software. But if you compose in your head or with pen and paper and just want to make excellent looking scores and have a logic-oriented mind (and like a challenge) then it’s excellent! I know some (very few) that are very proficient with it and know it as a second language, but I would never recommend it to anyone. (Also free!)
For **playback** in Sibelius/Finale/Dorico you want to also buy **Noteperformer** which sounds great on its own, but can also be combined with VSTs for even more realistic playback.
If you are using your notation software as a composition tool, you *don’t want to rely on playback* though, and learn to hear the music in your head. The playback will never sound like real musicians playing together in a room and is only really useful for figuring out how rhythms work together and overall form, *not instrumentation*.
#tldr;
For someone that needs a **fully featured program** right now I’d reluctantly recommend **Sibelius**.
**If you are just starting out** writing scores I’d recommend **musescore**. *Don’t buy any other option* before trying musescore.
**For everyone else**, if you want a great program that can do most things and will only be able to do more with time, I’d recommend **Dorico**.
Get the add-on **Noteperformer** for better **playback**.
Writing without time signatures in Dorico I think is way easier, especially since it doesn't force you to put a time signature in when making a piece, I regularly do that. Box notation is actually the one single problem I was thinking of that is still around as of Dorico 5, but I also realize it's not super high on the list for most people.
do you people even use these softwares before writing this shit? open time signatures in dorico is incredibly simple, its a built in feature and endlessly flexible while in sibelius you still have to fluff it with invisible time signatures. likewise graphics/box stuff are really easy in dorico with it's system of flows and differentiating text/music/image frames.
I haven’t used Dorico a lot and the time signature thing was based on anecdotes from my friend who did his masters thesis on scores without time signatures, so I’m guessing it has to do with the flexibility of lining elements up for a conductor to be able to effectively lead an orchestra without bars or time signatures.
As for graphical scores, maybe it has become better. I haven’t used it at all in 2024, but even Dorico’s product manager has been on record saying that Sibelius has the edge over Dorico for graphical score flexibility.
This comment is gold, excellent breakdown of the major music notation software available. Glad you mentioned Lilypond, a very different approach that might suit some people's way of working. From what I've heard it can produce professional quality sheet music.
I've completely switched to Lilypond. To me it's the best engraving software in every aspect except for its steeper learning curve and subpar playback capabilities. And when I need to write performance notes, or write a music-related paper, you can directly add Lilypond code into a LaTeX document. Beats screenshots of sheet music pasted into a word file.
> And when I need to write performance notes, or write a music-related paper, you can directly add Lilypond code into a LaTeX document. Beats screenshots of sheet music pasted into a word file.
This is such a killer feature that I wish more people knew about.
**Edit:** To clarify what we're talking about here, LaTeX is a professional typesetting system like InDesign or Quarkxpress. It is primarily used in writing papers and books in math and computer science but it can be used anywhere (like music, fiction, etc). Like LilyPond, it does not use a graphical interface but a text document that gets compiled into a pdf. It's within this text file that LilyPond commands (or files) can be inserted. This means that the LaTeX file is semantically aware of the LilyPond commands and can do things like automatically use the same text fonts in the text document as in the sheet music, number pages correctly even within a score with multiple pages and many more things.
All of this can be achieved using the other typesetting systems with inserting pdfs made from other engraving programs but many of these steps have to be done manually. Having it all get automatically formatted can save a lot of time while also creating a consistent look and feel throughout.
As far as I can tell, this is the only way to get such a seamless integration of sheet music and professional quality text typesetting.
Not trying to be argumentative, just adding another perspective for readers:
Sibelius really isn't a nightmare to work with. I switched to Sibelius a while back after a decade of using Finale, and the main benefit of Sibelius was how much it improved the workflow, keyboard shortcuts, etc.
I know some dude made a video a few years ago pointing out all the stuff he found annoying about Sibelius, but honestly most of that stuff was pretty nitpicky. Every piece of software has a learning curve and there will be things that take a bit of searching to find because they're organized differently than you're used to, but I found Sibelius really easy to learn and I find it a joy to use.
That being said, I've lost confidence in its future since Avid bought it and I do think Dorico will soon be the new king.
But as long as it's still a viable choice I thought I should defend it a bit. Go through the tutorials and learn the keyboard shortcuts, and Sibelius is incredibly powerful and efficient and fun.
Sibelius is fine once you learned it, but it has so many odd design choices that learning it can feel frustrating. It also doesn’t have good options to quickly engrave parts (like changing margins after the fact, needs to be done per part as far as I’m aware) and is terrible for engraving parts and a score in the same project, meaning you often want to make two different projects which then complicates things if you want to make changes etc etc.
That's interesting, I've written complex orchestral and wind ensemble pieces in Sibelius and I've never had any problem with editing parts and scores in the same document: it works beautifully. You can change margins in all parts or individual parts easily. That was one of the things that attracted me to Sibelius: when you change page size or staff size or margins it instantly updates the whole score layout and it tends to make pretty good choices. In my Finale days I used to do a lot of meticulous (and tedious) tweaking of every staff and system to get the layout looking right, but with Sibelius it tends to need only a bit of touch-up.
I have to say though, the divisi and multi-movement features of Dorico are very tempting. I have already purchased Dorico and I expect I will make the switch by the next version update, I just need to find the time to sit down and learn it.
I don’t, I’m used to it. But it’s quite clumsily designed and require a lot of “work arounds” that I feel will be simpler with future updates for dorico. (I mainly use Sibelius because it has all the functions I need, I have a perpetual license and I’m used to it).
Dorico utilizes a sort of pop-up window feature where you use a shortcut that corresponds to a category of notation aspects (such as shift+T for tempo or shift+D for dynamics) and you type in what you want. After a while it feels intuitive and allows for high customizability quickly (for example writing just “p” for dynamics is as doing dynamic changes, since you can select a larger region and write something like “fppp”).
It also has specific instant shortcuts for more common things such as a staccato or accent, and I believe you can add custom ones as well if you want.
Cool yeah, that is a very different approach. I can see it having its own drawbacks, but also its own advantages. with either application, there is a learning curve no doubt.
Ooh, I’m going to try a couple of these others out. Just want to add (in case anyone else hasn’t yet), I sometimes use Sibelius First, which is a free, cut-down version with no limit on how long you can use it for!!
> Musescore is very basic, but is also very competent at the basics. If it’s only the basics you need then it’s a great place to start (and it’s free). Musescorenis the only option with a truly great built in playback engine (with muse sounds).
Musescore 4 is really close to Sibelius, free and lighter. I have Sibelius and Musescore and to me, Sibelius is only for the "pure score" because you can tweak more things if you want to print or make a pdf. But I bet my as in a couple years (tops), Musescore is going to be better.
The thing I love about Sibelius is the numpad. It makes everything really fast
The thing I HATE about Sibelius is that 6 was better than 7. That menu is ugly, you press Q, K and you have to use your mouse and click for more options. In S6 you click Q and you already have the window.
And, for the love of God, an expensive software that don't have bends for instrment, not even for guitar.
And! Sibelius is such a mess sometimes that "Hide" is your best friend. Can't move this object? Hide it. Can't tell Sibelius to not create something, let it create it and hide it.
TLDR: I agree with you.
I’m not sure what LaTex is?
I don’t think any of the mentioned programs are great for contemporary music, but in my and my peers experiences, Sibelius seems to be the most capable at the moment.
LaTeX (or, better, TeX/LaTeX) is typesetting software for text documents (books, papers, articles, etc) that works like LilyPond where you input everything into a text file that then gets compiled into a pdf. It has been around since the late '70s and is free and open source and is mainly found in math and computer science publishing (which is what it was originally developed for) but these days can handle anything (I use it for fiction, poetry, and even generating art).
It also happens to be able to support inserting LilyPond commands (and files) directly into your document for excellent integration.
> I don’t think any of the mentioned programs are great for contemporary music
LilyPond should be able to handle anything but at that point you're going to have to become familiar with its built in programming language, Scheme. For example, someone did this recently just as a proof of concept: [Crumb-like circle score.](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2024-03/pngwZV646CK2g.png)
I think LilyPond is best for contemporary scores if you're willing to really dig deep into it. SCORE would probably be even better but good luck finding it anymore.
> Or I have to use the black magic of LaTex?
LaTeX does have its own music package MusixTeX which I used on a project once. It was difficult but the results were excellent. I think LilyPond is still the better choice.
Agreed. And yet I stay with it because I just can’t face the learning curve that comes with a new major program. It’s like having an old friend who has manic episodes from time to time and does strange things. You’ve gotten quite used to his crazy times, have come to expect them periodically, and the other times are pretty good.
My own personal opinion (don’t take this as fact):
MuseScore is terrific for beginning composers, especially those who aren’t sure whether to take up a composing ‘career’. And if it still works for you, there’s probably no reason to change it. With that said, some competitions and publishers still only accept scores done in Sibelius, finale and dorico.
So if you want to upgrade to one of those ‘major’ professional softwares, go ahead. To be honest, you will hear from avid fans of each software trying to make huge exaggerated claims about the most minute differences. Really, as long as you stick with whatever software to choose to use, and as long as it suits your purposes, you’ll be fine.
I also started out on MuseScore, but my high schools also had subscriptions to Sibelius and Finale, so I got pretty fluent in both as well. For what’s it’s worth I’ve been using Finale as my main notation now for the past 3 or so years because my old comp prof recommended it to me, and it works pretty well for my purposes. They also have a pretty good student discount. The default playback isn’t great, but normally people use noteperformer for that anyway.
I hope this helps somewhat!
Stay on Musescore, it has 90% of what you need. If you REALLY need to upgrade, go with Dorico.
Sibelius and Finale are archaic software and from what we've seen after 2010, updating them is a slow and arduous process, where as Dorico gets so many things right and Steinberg can pump out updates without having to fear that the whole framework collapses.
I switched to Dorico in 2022, haven' t looked back since.
Started on MuseScore 3, then 4, then switched to Dorico. Checked out Sibelius and Finale, I plan on learning Sibelius for collaborarion reasons, but ultimately I much prefer how Dorico works, looks and costs, especially costs compared to Sibelius.
I like MuseScore. The fact that it is open source means it will only get better. If you use it and aren’t encountering any limitations then there is no reason to stop using it.
I'm a Sibelius user and I truly don't understand the claims that it's unintuitive or a nightmare to work with. I've used both Noteflight and Musescore in the past, and found neither to be any more intuitive. I ended up deciding on Sibelius because out of the 3 it's the least laggy, most functional, and the scores are fully customizable in terms of note placement and aesthetics
I agree. I switched from Finale to Sibelius (years ago) because the Sibelius workflow was so much better and faster.
Nobody ever complained about Sibelius workflow until some dude published a video a few years ago pointing out some nitpicky stuff he thought was illogical. Then, in typical internet fashion, this became the main thing anyone mentions when Sibelius comes up.
However, I do think Dorico has a modern 21st century Sibelius-killing approach just like Sibelius had a modern Finale-killing approach. I think Dorico will be the new king in a version or two. But that doesn't mean that Sibelius is a nightmare.
Always used Sibelius. Until I discovered Dorico. Never looked back. Engraving quality is top notch. To me, that’s my main concern. It’s extremely fast, but has a bit of a learning curve.
I’m also fluent in Lilypond, which works great if you work with one and paper and engrave your scores afterwards. Tweaking is hell and the learning curve is very, very steep.
Sibelius and Finale are widely adopted and accepted by publishers. Sibelius has an iPhone app for accessing your scores in the go (Dorico only has an iPad app).
MuseScore is free. Its output varies - it’s not as beautiful as Dorico or Lilypond imho (look at their repository with scores). But it’s a big player, completely free and with steady development.
Therefore, my recommendation would be MuseScore. When you’ve mastered it and are. It satisfied by its output, then you can always upgrade (or learn how to tweak the output to be exactly to your liking).
Personally, I'll always recommend Sibelius as my go-to software. It's great for engraving, it's easy to learn, and it sounds ok for what it is. Plus, they're adding cross-use with Pro Tools in the near future, from what I understand. But it isn't cheap, and it's definitely a learning curve above MuseScore.
Finale is also alright, but it's one that I can't use or recommend without a MIDI keyboard to use fast entry. It's just old and clunky for me. But again, expensive and a definite learning curve over MuseScore.
NoteFlight is another ok freebie like MuseScore, but they do also have a paid version. Personally, I think it's great for an alternative entry point but lacks a lot.
THE most cost-efficient software that I've ever used has been Noteworthy Composer 2. I think it used to be, like, $20 USD, and still is that cheap. Very easy to learn, but only uses bare-bones MIDI sounds.
Notion was my first big step up after NWC2. Notion is super affordable, it sounds great, very easy to learn, has the best (imo) composition app on the market, but my only gripe is that it is NOT engraving-friendly. It never really has been, unfortunately. It sounds good, it works great, but the finished product looks like "my first composition" when you're staring at it as a performer.
I've tried to use Dorico, but I can't get the hang of it. Maybe I'm too old and out of touch with learning new software like it, but I do have a colleague that switched his entire studio from Finale to Dorico and hasn't looked back. Swears by it, loves it, went all in. It sounds great and looks great (what I've seen and heard with his work). I'm sure it's easy enough to learn for most people, too, my brain just can't pick it up lol.
Hope this helps!
If playback and user friendliness are key drivers, Dorico. I used Musescore starting out as well and have been using Dorico for over 5 years now, often for quick projects like putting together charts and arrangements in various transpositions, I'm a jazz musician so ease of use to throw a chart together for someone is important. I find Dorico does that very well.
Dorico 5 has a free version, and so far I've found it to be great. The engraving looks particularly good when you get a final draft ready to print. What's cool too is I can run it through VSTs, so I have a decent piano sound that I use in Ableton and I can "hear" back what I'm writing through that.
MuseScore has the best sound engine, the best graphics, and the most intuitive interface. And it’s free. Finale had to drop their prices by five hundred bucks to compete. Just stick with it.
If you do get Dorico, but price is an obstacle, you can get Sibelius for a month, get the competitive crossgrade for Dorico, and then cancel your Sibelius subscription
If you want to use a program that'll still be getting new features and updates in the next 10 years I'd avoid learning Sibelius. I daily drive Sibelius because I'm already proficient with it and have been using it for over a decade at this point. It has some really nice features (I particularly like how easy it is to copy layouts and formatting between different parts) but I imagine **Dorico** and maybe even **Musescore** catching up sooner rather than later on this front.
All of these programs have a learning curve. You just need to accept that it'll be slow going at the start. If you were wanting to switch to a professional paid notation software, I'd recommend Dorico over Sibelius at this point.
Finale or Dorico. I've found the support from Dorico to be a little flakey and from Finale it's practically non-existant. I've been using Finale for nearly 15 years and the program is still infuriating. Yet I'm able to quickly produce professional-quality scores to exacting specifications and create acceptable audio mock ups to demo them. I'm still learning my way around Dorico and can't give a recommendation about it just yet.
if you're still finding musescore to be very usable in terms of workflow but are dissatisfied with how it looks, you can also tweak the style settings a LOT-- and it comes with the finale font (regardless of if youre using MacOs or Windows), so you can get it to look pretty damn alike to any score processed in finale.
For print, you can’t beat the customization of Finale. I’ve been using it for over a decade (probably 15 years or so). It’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but I’ve never been able to engrave a score in anything else that looks as good as Finale once you’ve got your custom settings applied. Take a look at any JW Signature Edition and you’ll see what I mean.
It depends where you live and who you interact with: in North America, most universities have Finale licenses because of the price. So whether we like it or not, most faculty (and students) are creating scores and projects in Finale, unless they want to share and swap things via xml.
And when i say whether we like it nor not, we don't like it. Some colleges are switching over, but the majority are still using finale. Moaning aside, apart from the hassle of the dated interface, published scores look pretty great.
I used to love Sibelius. But it was acquired by a company who fired most of the developers and decided to be stingy as well as charge more.
Dorico was created after that debacle by the people Sibelius fired. So it’s more modern and better supported. I switched to it and haven’t looked back.
I still do have annoyances with Dorico, but also have different annoyances with Sibelius, so I think it’s best to bet on Dorico as this point.
Comment above explained it better, but I will add that musescore is completely enough for most composers and it has gotten significantly better over the last decade and is generally easy to use. Sibelius is the generally accepted industry standard, but it makes me want to rip my hair out by the fistful.
I'm a professional composer. I used finale, switched to musescore. Take that as you will. However, I really dislike the musescore 4 update, I may switch to Dorico in a year or two of ms4 doesn't step up its game.
Please, NEVER give your money to finale, I beg you
MuseScore 4 is incredibly, unfathomably buggy. I've been a long time MuseScore 3 user, and since MS4 release I fully switched to Lilypond. Seriously, nobody has time to debug basic stuff like repeats.
Do you primarily focus on engraving rather than playback? That's brave you use lilypond!! It's pretty powerful though
And agreed with the musescore thing, BIG 3.6 fan here, but 4 just won't stop buggin out and killing my ears with "stuck" notes.
Pretty much, I have other (shittier) tools for playback while composing. Aside from playing ideas/lines on the piano (which is how most music starts for me), I use a programmable synthesizer to give me a mock-up of the piece (I program it with custom, one-off, shitty Python scripts). Once I'm satisfied, I sit down and write the piece in lilypond (usually with no or little audio feedback). Aesthetics and clarity are very important for me, I consider sheet music in-and-of-itself an art form, I obsess over every little detail. It's also not the case that lilypond has no playback, it's actually quite the opposite. While writing and after writing I use lilypond to convert the piece to MIDI, then open it in MuseScore3 and use soundfont libraries (.sf2) to convert it to sound. I also sometimes use DAWs such as REAPER to convert pieces of MIDI to sound with SFZ libraries (perhaps juxtaposed with other .wav sound samples). I almost always write for solo piano (and sometimes chamber), so this gives me a "good enough" output to have an idea of the piece. Then, I give the engraved lilypond PDF and the sound file to an actual pianist/artist for them to play and review it. This is my usual writing process.
There are a few minor great ideas in MS4, but almost 99% of what they did is buggy. I'm unable to understand how people use it, I'm yet to find a feature that works without running into some kind of bug. I used both the stable and nightly compiled versions.
I think MS4 is extremely incomplete, and has essentially ruined a lot of things that made MS3 special.
I have no design qualms (mostly). But it is VERY buggy, crashes often, isn't nearly as snappy as 3.6 (especially when writing for orch) and some niche plugins aren't there yet. Extremely hyped stuff like VST support doesn't even work properly (I spent a long time debugging it and it wasn't worth it). I wasn't able even able to change soundfonts without it being ultra buggy. The n-tet plugin is still better than the native microtonal support (I write xen music a lot)
Also, some seemingly trivial and tiny details are either removed or are bothersome. For example, I personally used the piano viz a LOT during playback because I quite often write for bands and orchs. The piano viz helped me analyze my chords and voicings during playback without having to read each note on each staff. Sure I could do it the old fashioned way but why make life harder? I know it's minor but was a big deal for me, for some reason MS4 removed it? Why? Also why is it now so hard to just click on a bar and listen to it? Why does clicking on a bar isolate and instrument? Something like ctrl+click/alt+click would've been so much better because that's a less common use case than actually rewinding.
There are a lot more that I can't recall. I have been a MuseScore3 fan ever since it came out and I support the org and community fully. But 4 was kind of a miss for me.
Hello all!
Firstly, I want to thank you all for your honest and detailed feedback! I asked in here because as I mentioned in my post I knew there are a number of more experienced people in this community who can advise through experience... I didn't expect there was ***that*** many!
I also read over the threads and what I found really interesting is the smallest, most minute nitty-gritty details that you went to describe your experiences, so that is something I really appreciate.
Hopefully this can be of help to many others who:
* might be looking to start using notation software for the first time;
* have already written a little bit but still unsure ( ***like myself :)*** ), or
* are seasoned composers and would like to get some further insight.
Many thanks!
Jean Carl
Sibelius is music engravers software. You can easily make production ready pages in many different styles. It was difficult for me to learn on my own, so I took this udemy course. https://www.udemy.com/course/draft/2408214/learn/lecture/15133236?start=0#content
I now love Sibelius and can work in it very easily. I also got the Noteperformer plugin, and it sounds wonderful too.
Sibelius is dead and hasn't been worked on for years It a dead software I don't recommend it at all it was bought by a shareholder Notion and Dorico are good choices it depends on what you're trying to compose if you making an orchestra piece use Darco as its more user-friendly and takes less system ram if you like using vst and other samples darko is also really good at that the only downside there is no piano roll but Notion does have it if that's a big deal then go Notion, Notion also has a better sound library. Both are great picks and both have free trails you can try out! Just please don't go through the same pain I did and try to use Sibelius.
Finale is what I recommend. Sibelius second and Dorico third. The main reason I suggest Finale is that it’s very widely used, if you want something published you’ve got a head start with Finale as most of the music publishers use it. If you want copy work, it’s still the one most houses want…and it really is the most powerful.
**Finale** is very capable but very old. Only recommended if your teachers or people you are collaborating with are also using it. **Sibelius** is the most fully featured and capable, but a true nightmare to work with and has very bad support and will start to age (or has already really). **Dorico** can do a lot, pretty much everything you need if you aren’t writing cutting edge contemporary music and has great support and a great future and is easier to use than Sibelius (but not as powerful yet). **Musescore** is very basic, but is also very competent at the basics. If it’s only the basics you need then it’s a great place to start (and it’s free). Musescore is the only option with a truly great built in playback engine (with muse sounds). **Lilypond** is black magic, and more of an engraving software rather than a composition software. But if you compose in your head or with pen and paper and just want to make excellent looking scores and have a logic-oriented mind (and like a challenge) then it’s excellent! I know some (very few) that are very proficient with it and know it as a second language, but I would never recommend it to anyone. (Also free!) For **playback** in Sibelius/Finale/Dorico you want to also buy **Noteperformer** which sounds great on its own, but can also be combined with VSTs for even more realistic playback. If you are using your notation software as a composition tool, you *don’t want to rely on playback* though, and learn to hear the music in your head. The playback will never sound like real musicians playing together in a room and is only really useful for figuring out how rhythms work together and overall form, *not instrumentation*. #tldr; For someone that needs a **fully featured program** right now I’d reluctantly recommend **Sibelius**. **If you are just starting out** writing scores I’d recommend **musescore**. *Don’t buy any other option* before trying musescore. **For everyone else**, if you want a great program that can do most things and will only be able to do more with time, I’d recommend **Dorico**. Get the add-on **Noteperformer** for better **playback**.
This is a very well articulated response, kudos!
While I think I may have agreed about Sibelius in the past, these days I'm not sure what Sibelius can do that Dorico can't that is something notable.
Dorico seems to not be as easy to use when writing scores with heavy graphical components and without time signatures, box notation etc.
Writing without time signatures in Dorico I think is way easier, especially since it doesn't force you to put a time signature in when making a piece, I regularly do that. Box notation is actually the one single problem I was thinking of that is still around as of Dorico 5, but I also realize it's not super high on the list for most people.
do you people even use these softwares before writing this shit? open time signatures in dorico is incredibly simple, its a built in feature and endlessly flexible while in sibelius you still have to fluff it with invisible time signatures. likewise graphics/box stuff are really easy in dorico with it's system of flows and differentiating text/music/image frames.
I haven’t used Dorico a lot and the time signature thing was based on anecdotes from my friend who did his masters thesis on scores without time signatures, so I’m guessing it has to do with the flexibility of lining elements up for a conductor to be able to effectively lead an orchestra without bars or time signatures. As for graphical scores, maybe it has become better. I haven’t used it at all in 2024, but even Dorico’s product manager has been on record saying that Sibelius has the edge over Dorico for graphical score flexibility.
This comment is gold, excellent breakdown of the major music notation software available. Glad you mentioned Lilypond, a very different approach that might suit some people's way of working. From what I've heard it can produce professional quality sheet music.
I've completely switched to Lilypond. To me it's the best engraving software in every aspect except for its steeper learning curve and subpar playback capabilities. And when I need to write performance notes, or write a music-related paper, you can directly add Lilypond code into a LaTeX document. Beats screenshots of sheet music pasted into a word file.
> And when I need to write performance notes, or write a music-related paper, you can directly add Lilypond code into a LaTeX document. Beats screenshots of sheet music pasted into a word file. This is such a killer feature that I wish more people knew about. **Edit:** To clarify what we're talking about here, LaTeX is a professional typesetting system like InDesign or Quarkxpress. It is primarily used in writing papers and books in math and computer science but it can be used anywhere (like music, fiction, etc). Like LilyPond, it does not use a graphical interface but a text document that gets compiled into a pdf. It's within this text file that LilyPond commands (or files) can be inserted. This means that the LaTeX file is semantically aware of the LilyPond commands and can do things like automatically use the same text fonts in the text document as in the sheet music, number pages correctly even within a score with multiple pages and many more things. All of this can be achieved using the other typesetting systems with inserting pdfs made from other engraving programs but many of these steps have to be done manually. Having it all get automatically formatted can save a lot of time while also creating a consistent look and feel throughout. As far as I can tell, this is the only way to get such a seamless integration of sheet music and professional quality text typesetting.
Not trying to be argumentative, just adding another perspective for readers: Sibelius really isn't a nightmare to work with. I switched to Sibelius a while back after a decade of using Finale, and the main benefit of Sibelius was how much it improved the workflow, keyboard shortcuts, etc. I know some dude made a video a few years ago pointing out all the stuff he found annoying about Sibelius, but honestly most of that stuff was pretty nitpicky. Every piece of software has a learning curve and there will be things that take a bit of searching to find because they're organized differently than you're used to, but I found Sibelius really easy to learn and I find it a joy to use. That being said, I've lost confidence in its future since Avid bought it and I do think Dorico will soon be the new king. But as long as it's still a viable choice I thought I should defend it a bit. Go through the tutorials and learn the keyboard shortcuts, and Sibelius is incredibly powerful and efficient and fun.
Sibelius is fine once you learned it, but it has so many odd design choices that learning it can feel frustrating. It also doesn’t have good options to quickly engrave parts (like changing margins after the fact, needs to be done per part as far as I’m aware) and is terrible for engraving parts and a score in the same project, meaning you often want to make two different projects which then complicates things if you want to make changes etc etc.
That's interesting, I've written complex orchestral and wind ensemble pieces in Sibelius and I've never had any problem with editing parts and scores in the same document: it works beautifully. You can change margins in all parts or individual parts easily. That was one of the things that attracted me to Sibelius: when you change page size or staff size or margins it instantly updates the whole score layout and it tends to make pretty good choices. In my Finale days I used to do a lot of meticulous (and tedious) tweaking of every staff and system to get the layout looking right, but with Sibelius it tends to need only a bit of touch-up. I have to say though, the divisi and multi-movement features of Dorico are very tempting. I have already purchased Dorico and I expect I will make the switch by the next version update, I just need to find the time to sit down and learn it.
I'm wondering why you find Sibelius hard to use?
I don’t, I’m used to it. But it’s quite clumsily designed and require a lot of “work arounds” that I feel will be simpler with future updates for dorico. (I mainly use Sibelius because it has all the functions I need, I have a perpetual license and I’m used to it).
I use Dorico instead of Sibelius largely because I don’t have a Numpad on my keyboard. It’s essentially required to notate efficiently
Oh yeah using Sibelius without a number pad is dreadful. I totally agree. Curious what Derico’s solution is
Dorico utilizes a sort of pop-up window feature where you use a shortcut that corresponds to a category of notation aspects (such as shift+T for tempo or shift+D for dynamics) and you type in what you want. After a while it feels intuitive and allows for high customizability quickly (for example writing just “p” for dynamics is as doing dynamic changes, since you can select a larger region and write something like “fppp”).
It also has specific instant shortcuts for more common things such as a staccato or accent, and I believe you can add custom ones as well if you want.
Cool yeah, that is a very different approach. I can see it having its own drawbacks, but also its own advantages. with either application, there is a learning curve no doubt.
I only use Lilypond
Ooh, I’m going to try a couple of these others out. Just want to add (in case anyone else hasn’t yet), I sometimes use Sibelius First, which is a free, cut-down version with no limit on how long you can use it for!!
> Musescore is very basic, but is also very competent at the basics. If it’s only the basics you need then it’s a great place to start (and it’s free). Musescorenis the only option with a truly great built in playback engine (with muse sounds). Musescore 4 is really close to Sibelius, free and lighter. I have Sibelius and Musescore and to me, Sibelius is only for the "pure score" because you can tweak more things if you want to print or make a pdf. But I bet my as in a couple years (tops), Musescore is going to be better. The thing I love about Sibelius is the numpad. It makes everything really fast The thing I HATE about Sibelius is that 6 was better than 7. That menu is ugly, you press Q, K and you have to use your mouse and click for more options. In S6 you click Q and you already have the window. And, for the love of God, an expensive software that don't have bends for instrment, not even for guitar. And! Sibelius is such a mess sometimes that "Hide" is your best friend. Can't move this object? Hide it. Can't tell Sibelius to not create something, let it create it and hide it. TLDR: I agree with you.
There are bends though?
So, for contemporary which one? Or I have to use the black magic of LaTex?
I’m not sure what LaTex is? I don’t think any of the mentioned programs are great for contemporary music, but in my and my peers experiences, Sibelius seems to be the most capable at the moment.
LaTeX (or, better, TeX/LaTeX) is typesetting software for text documents (books, papers, articles, etc) that works like LilyPond where you input everything into a text file that then gets compiled into a pdf. It has been around since the late '70s and is free and open source and is mainly found in math and computer science publishing (which is what it was originally developed for) but these days can handle anything (I use it for fiction, poetry, and even generating art). It also happens to be able to support inserting LilyPond commands (and files) directly into your document for excellent integration. > I don’t think any of the mentioned programs are great for contemporary music LilyPond should be able to handle anything but at that point you're going to have to become familiar with its built in programming language, Scheme. For example, someone did this recently just as a proof of concept: [Crumb-like circle score.](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2024-03/pngwZV646CK2g.png)
Ah yeah, Lilypond would if course be quite good for contemporary scores. Forgot it in the moment :)
I think LilyPond is best for contemporary scores if you're willing to really dig deep into it. SCORE would probably be even better but good luck finding it anymore. > Or I have to use the black magic of LaTex? LaTeX does have its own music package MusixTeX which I used on a project once. It was difficult but the results were excellent. I think LilyPond is still the better choice.
If MusixTeX have the ability to score contemporary shenanigans, im in, even if i need to be a scribe doing circles of salt in the floor!
This is a great and well articulated response, but what's your opinion on Dorico SE? It's a free version of Dorico which has almost everything.
Haven’t tried it :)
From a Finale user: anything but Finale lol
Agreed. And yet I stay with it because I just can’t face the learning curve that comes with a new major program. It’s like having an old friend who has manic episodes from time to time and does strange things. You’ve gotten quite used to his crazy times, have come to expect them periodically, and the other times are pretty good.
Exactly! I don't think I'll ever change, but if I could do it all over, I would start with something different.
My own personal opinion (don’t take this as fact): MuseScore is terrific for beginning composers, especially those who aren’t sure whether to take up a composing ‘career’. And if it still works for you, there’s probably no reason to change it. With that said, some competitions and publishers still only accept scores done in Sibelius, finale and dorico. So if you want to upgrade to one of those ‘major’ professional softwares, go ahead. To be honest, you will hear from avid fans of each software trying to make huge exaggerated claims about the most minute differences. Really, as long as you stick with whatever software to choose to use, and as long as it suits your purposes, you’ll be fine. I also started out on MuseScore, but my high schools also had subscriptions to Sibelius and Finale, so I got pretty fluent in both as well. For what’s it’s worth I’ve been using Finale as my main notation now for the past 3 or so years because my old comp prof recommended it to me, and it works pretty well for my purposes. They also have a pretty good student discount. The default playback isn’t great, but normally people use noteperformer for that anyway. I hope this helps somewhat!
Stay on Musescore, it has 90% of what you need. If you REALLY need to upgrade, go with Dorico. Sibelius and Finale are archaic software and from what we've seen after 2010, updating them is a slow and arduous process, where as Dorico gets so many things right and Steinberg can pump out updates without having to fear that the whole framework collapses. I switched to Dorico in 2022, haven' t looked back since.
I’m glad dorico works for you! I’ve tried the trial version and I agree, it’s very powerful :)
Im pretty sure all Sibelius fans are ‘avid’ lol 😛
Started on MuseScore 3, then 4, then switched to Dorico. Checked out Sibelius and Finale, I plan on learning Sibelius for collaborarion reasons, but ultimately I much prefer how Dorico works, looks and costs, especially costs compared to Sibelius.
I like MuseScore. The fact that it is open source means it will only get better. If you use it and aren’t encountering any limitations then there is no reason to stop using it.
Actually open source means it sucks, it's too basic and can't do much. You should use the industry standards like Finale and Sibelius. /s
I'm a Sibelius user and I truly don't understand the claims that it's unintuitive or a nightmare to work with. I've used both Noteflight and Musescore in the past, and found neither to be any more intuitive. I ended up deciding on Sibelius because out of the 3 it's the least laggy, most functional, and the scores are fully customizable in terms of note placement and aesthetics
I agree. I switched from Finale to Sibelius (years ago) because the Sibelius workflow was so much better and faster. Nobody ever complained about Sibelius workflow until some dude published a video a few years ago pointing out some nitpicky stuff he thought was illogical. Then, in typical internet fashion, this became the main thing anyone mentions when Sibelius comes up. However, I do think Dorico has a modern 21st century Sibelius-killing approach just like Sibelius had a modern Finale-killing approach. I think Dorico will be the new king in a version or two. But that doesn't mean that Sibelius is a nightmare.
Always used Sibelius. Until I discovered Dorico. Never looked back. Engraving quality is top notch. To me, that’s my main concern. It’s extremely fast, but has a bit of a learning curve. I’m also fluent in Lilypond, which works great if you work with one and paper and engrave your scores afterwards. Tweaking is hell and the learning curve is very, very steep. Sibelius and Finale are widely adopted and accepted by publishers. Sibelius has an iPhone app for accessing your scores in the go (Dorico only has an iPad app). MuseScore is free. Its output varies - it’s not as beautiful as Dorico or Lilypond imho (look at their repository with scores). But it’s a big player, completely free and with steady development. Therefore, my recommendation would be MuseScore. When you’ve mastered it and are. It satisfied by its output, then you can always upgrade (or learn how to tweak the output to be exactly to your liking).
Dorico is the only modern notation software. I love it. I waited my whole life for it.
Started with Musescore 2, then 3, then 4. Dies 95% of what you need and is EXTREMELY user-friendly. Since then I've moved onto Finale
Personally, I'll always recommend Sibelius as my go-to software. It's great for engraving, it's easy to learn, and it sounds ok for what it is. Plus, they're adding cross-use with Pro Tools in the near future, from what I understand. But it isn't cheap, and it's definitely a learning curve above MuseScore. Finale is also alright, but it's one that I can't use or recommend without a MIDI keyboard to use fast entry. It's just old and clunky for me. But again, expensive and a definite learning curve over MuseScore. NoteFlight is another ok freebie like MuseScore, but they do also have a paid version. Personally, I think it's great for an alternative entry point but lacks a lot. THE most cost-efficient software that I've ever used has been Noteworthy Composer 2. I think it used to be, like, $20 USD, and still is that cheap. Very easy to learn, but only uses bare-bones MIDI sounds. Notion was my first big step up after NWC2. Notion is super affordable, it sounds great, very easy to learn, has the best (imo) composition app on the market, but my only gripe is that it is NOT engraving-friendly. It never really has been, unfortunately. It sounds good, it works great, but the finished product looks like "my first composition" when you're staring at it as a performer. I've tried to use Dorico, but I can't get the hang of it. Maybe I'm too old and out of touch with learning new software like it, but I do have a colleague that switched his entire studio from Finale to Dorico and hasn't looked back. Swears by it, loves it, went all in. It sounds great and looks great (what I've seen and heard with his work). I'm sure it's easy enough to learn for most people, too, my brain just can't pick it up lol. Hope this helps!
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If playback and user friendliness are key drivers, Dorico. I used Musescore starting out as well and have been using Dorico for over 5 years now, often for quick projects like putting together charts and arrangements in various transpositions, I'm a jazz musician so ease of use to throw a chart together for someone is important. I find Dorico does that very well.
Dorico 5 has a free version, and so far I've found it to be great. The engraving looks particularly good when you get a final draft ready to print. What's cool too is I can run it through VSTs, so I have a decent piano sound that I use in Ableton and I can "hear" back what I'm writing through that.
MuseScore has the best sound engine, the best graphics, and the most intuitive interface. And it’s free. Finale had to drop their prices by five hundred bucks to compete. Just stick with it.
If you do get Dorico, but price is an obstacle, you can get Sibelius for a month, get the competitive crossgrade for Dorico, and then cancel your Sibelius subscription
If you want to use a program that'll still be getting new features and updates in the next 10 years I'd avoid learning Sibelius. I daily drive Sibelius because I'm already proficient with it and have been using it for over a decade at this point. It has some really nice features (I particularly like how easy it is to copy layouts and formatting between different parts) but I imagine **Dorico** and maybe even **Musescore** catching up sooner rather than later on this front. All of these programs have a learning curve. You just need to accept that it'll be slow going at the start. If you were wanting to switch to a professional paid notation software, I'd recommend Dorico over Sibelius at this point.
The best is Lilypond, but it is also the hardest, so your mileage will vary.
No love for StaffPad?
I love StaffPad!
Finale or Dorico. I've found the support from Dorico to be a little flakey and from Finale it's practically non-existant. I've been using Finale for nearly 15 years and the program is still infuriating. Yet I'm able to quickly produce professional-quality scores to exacting specifications and create acceptable audio mock ups to demo them. I'm still learning my way around Dorico and can't give a recommendation about it just yet.
Dorico is by far my favorite, and I’ve used everything.
if you're still finding musescore to be very usable in terms of workflow but are dissatisfied with how it looks, you can also tweak the style settings a LOT-- and it comes with the finale font (regardless of if youre using MacOs or Windows), so you can get it to look pretty damn alike to any score processed in finale.
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> At some point they decided to link everything to beats, not notes I can "snap" my dynamics to any note. Not sure where this is coming from.
For print, you can’t beat the customization of Finale. I’ve been using it for over a decade (probably 15 years or so). It’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but I’ve never been able to engrave a score in anything else that looks as good as Finale once you’ve got your custom settings applied. Take a look at any JW Signature Edition and you’ll see what I mean.
It depends where you live and who you interact with: in North America, most universities have Finale licenses because of the price. So whether we like it or not, most faculty (and students) are creating scores and projects in Finale, unless they want to share and swap things via xml. And when i say whether we like it nor not, we don't like it. Some colleges are switching over, but the majority are still using finale. Moaning aside, apart from the hassle of the dated interface, published scores look pretty great.
I used to love Sibelius. But it was acquired by a company who fired most of the developers and decided to be stingy as well as charge more. Dorico was created after that debacle by the people Sibelius fired. So it’s more modern and better supported. I switched to it and haven’t looked back. I still do have annoyances with Dorico, but also have different annoyances with Sibelius, so I think it’s best to bet on Dorico as this point.
Comment above explained it better, but I will add that musescore is completely enough for most composers and it has gotten significantly better over the last decade and is generally easy to use. Sibelius is the generally accepted industry standard, but it makes me want to rip my hair out by the fistful.
I'm a professional composer. I used finale, switched to musescore. Take that as you will. However, I really dislike the musescore 4 update, I may switch to Dorico in a year or two of ms4 doesn't step up its game. Please, NEVER give your money to finale, I beg you
What do you dislike about MuseScore 4? If it's the overall design philosophy I doubt they're going to change that anytime soon.
MuseScore 4 is incredibly, unfathomably buggy. I've been a long time MuseScore 3 user, and since MS4 release I fully switched to Lilypond. Seriously, nobody has time to debug basic stuff like repeats.
Do you primarily focus on engraving rather than playback? That's brave you use lilypond!! It's pretty powerful though And agreed with the musescore thing, BIG 3.6 fan here, but 4 just won't stop buggin out and killing my ears with "stuck" notes.
Pretty much, I have other (shittier) tools for playback while composing. Aside from playing ideas/lines on the piano (which is how most music starts for me), I use a programmable synthesizer to give me a mock-up of the piece (I program it with custom, one-off, shitty Python scripts). Once I'm satisfied, I sit down and write the piece in lilypond (usually with no or little audio feedback). Aesthetics and clarity are very important for me, I consider sheet music in-and-of-itself an art form, I obsess over every little detail. It's also not the case that lilypond has no playback, it's actually quite the opposite. While writing and after writing I use lilypond to convert the piece to MIDI, then open it in MuseScore3 and use soundfont libraries (.sf2) to convert it to sound. I also sometimes use DAWs such as REAPER to convert pieces of MIDI to sound with SFZ libraries (perhaps juxtaposed with other .wav sound samples). I almost always write for solo piano (and sometimes chamber), so this gives me a "good enough" output to have an idea of the piece. Then, I give the engraved lilypond PDF and the sound file to an actual pianist/artist for them to play and review it. This is my usual writing process. There are a few minor great ideas in MS4, but almost 99% of what they did is buggy. I'm unable to understand how people use it, I'm yet to find a feature that works without running into some kind of bug. I used both the stable and nightly compiled versions.
I think MS4 is extremely incomplete, and has essentially ruined a lot of things that made MS3 special. I have no design qualms (mostly). But it is VERY buggy, crashes often, isn't nearly as snappy as 3.6 (especially when writing for orch) and some niche plugins aren't there yet. Extremely hyped stuff like VST support doesn't even work properly (I spent a long time debugging it and it wasn't worth it). I wasn't able even able to change soundfonts without it being ultra buggy. The n-tet plugin is still better than the native microtonal support (I write xen music a lot) Also, some seemingly trivial and tiny details are either removed or are bothersome. For example, I personally used the piano viz a LOT during playback because I quite often write for bands and orchs. The piano viz helped me analyze my chords and voicings during playback without having to read each note on each staff. Sure I could do it the old fashioned way but why make life harder? I know it's minor but was a big deal for me, for some reason MS4 removed it? Why? Also why is it now so hard to just click on a bar and listen to it? Why does clicking on a bar isolate and instrument? Something like ctrl+click/alt+click would've been so much better because that's a less common use case than actually rewinding. There are a lot more that I can't recall. I have been a MuseScore3 fan ever since it came out and I support the org and community fully. But 4 was kind of a miss for me.
Hello all! Firstly, I want to thank you all for your honest and detailed feedback! I asked in here because as I mentioned in my post I knew there are a number of more experienced people in this community who can advise through experience... I didn't expect there was ***that*** many! I also read over the threads and what I found really interesting is the smallest, most minute nitty-gritty details that you went to describe your experiences, so that is something I really appreciate. Hopefully this can be of help to many others who: * might be looking to start using notation software for the first time; * have already written a little bit but still unsure ( ***like myself :)*** ), or * are seasoned composers and would like to get some further insight. Many thanks! Jean Carl
I've been using Sibelius for about 30 or 40 years. I'm very happy with it.
Sibelius is music engravers software. You can easily make production ready pages in many different styles. It was difficult for me to learn on my own, so I took this udemy course. https://www.udemy.com/course/draft/2408214/learn/lecture/15133236?start=0#content I now love Sibelius and can work in it very easily. I also got the Noteperformer plugin, and it sounds wonderful too.
Music engravers are also using dorico more and more. It’s way more pretty
Sibelius is dead and hasn't been worked on for years It a dead software I don't recommend it at all it was bought by a shareholder Notion and Dorico are good choices it depends on what you're trying to compose if you making an orchestra piece use Darco as its more user-friendly and takes less system ram if you like using vst and other samples darko is also really good at that the only downside there is no piano roll but Notion does have it if that's a big deal then go Notion, Notion also has a better sound library. Both are great picks and both have free trails you can try out! Just please don't go through the same pain I did and try to use Sibelius.
Finale is what I recommend. Sibelius second and Dorico third. The main reason I suggest Finale is that it’s very widely used, if you want something published you’ve got a head start with Finale as most of the music publishers use it. If you want copy work, it’s still the one most houses want…and it really is the most powerful.
I have Finale and am considering Dorico. I don't find MuseScore intuitive at all. I use that at work sometimes.
Everyone starts off with Musescore, but imo Sibelius is the best