In Search of Open Source Notation Software
I was recently in a music technology lab at a local university. This lab had fifteen computers with MIDI keyboards and Finale installed. About half of these computers had Sibelius installed as well. At least 75% of these computers were sending back “registration code expired” messages, even though the university technical staff assured us that the licenses were up to date.
While trying to solve these problems, I went online and started pricing these two programs (Finale and Sibelius). The retail price for Finale is currently $600, and Sibelius is priced at $329. Even though I own Finale, upgrading to Finale 2006 will soak me for $169.
The projects being done in this lab included simple note entry, formatting, saving, putting in instrument names and titles–the musical equivalent of writing a term paper in Microsoft Word.
Free open source solutions are now available for such a variety of daily tasks, and I am waiting anxiously for an open source music notation software. It is ridiculous to have to buy a program like Finale or Sibelius to do note entry. Consider all of the open source programs that now replace proprietary software:
Microsoft Word —-> Open Office or Google Docs and Spreadsheets
Microsoft Excel —-> Open Office or Google Docs and Spreadsheets
Adobe Photoshop –> Google Picassa
Adobe Audition—-> Audacity
Sony Acid———-> Audacity
Sony Soundforge—> Audacity
If one needs a more powerful product, one can always buy programs like Adobe Audition, Soundforge, Photoshop, MS Office, etc. But if one simply needs to perform basic tasks, there is an open source solution for many programs people normally use these days.
There is not, however, an acceptable robust music notation program. Hopefully one will be developed, and sooner rather than later.
There will always be a demand for professional applications like Finale and Sibelius. But to leave a school/lab/student/teacher no choice but to buy this licensed software for simple tasks is not a good thing. It is interesting to see that, while all of these computers in this particular lab had Finale and Sibelius on them, the only multi-track audio editor on them was the open source program Audacity.
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17 Responses to “In Search of Open Source Notation Software”
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I realize this doesn’t help much right now, but it appears that one is at least in the planning stages:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/siberlioz/
Jason, have you tried Denemo or LilyPond?
I’ve used LilyPond, although it’s been perhaps a year or more in the past, and I’ve found the output to be quite attractive. It bills itself as an “automated engraving” program, producing better results than the commercial alternatives with no tweaking. It has downloads for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
Because some people don’t like working with text files, Denemo claims to be a tool for quickly preparing notation for publishing with LilyPond. I’ve used it, as well, and it seemed to live up to its billing—it made entering notation fun. I’ve used it on GNU/Linux, but I just saw (and just downloaded) a Windows executable, and I know there’s an OS X executable, too.
I’ve run LilyPond on Windows, too, but I normally use MiKTeX for typesetting, and LilyPond uses tetex. That collision caused me to switch to GNU/Linux for LilyPond; I may check out whether I can run MiKTeX and Cygwin’s tetex without them colliding.
If all else fails, you can grab a copy of the Ubuntu LiveCD and boot most any Windows machine in GNU/Linux without modifying your Windows installation. Ubuntu appears to have packages for both Denemo and LilyPond. I don’t know whether they’re on the CD or whether you have to get them after you boot up, but installing software on Ubuntu has been pretty straightforward every time I’ve tried it.
If you try Denemo and LilyPond, I’d be curious in your results.
Jason, as long as you’re assembling open source tools that musicians may find useful, check out Scribus for page layout (brochures, flyers, handouts), GIMP and ImageMagick for manipulating images (e.g., pictures), and Inkscape and OpenOffice.org Draw for drawings. For example, if you’re making a program, you could use Inkscape or the GIMP to create cover art (depending upon the type of artwork), your favorite editor (Emacs, OpenOffice.org, or whatever) to create the text, and Scribus or, for simpler programs, OpenOffice.org to lay it all out.
That said, I use a customized version of the concprog LaTeX class to create some of the insides of concert programs for a local youth orchestra.
Thanks for the great information, Bill. There is more open source music notation software out there than I realized, and I will definitely check out your recommendations.
I don’t know if any of these are good (or exactly what you’re looking for), but a search for “music notation” on http://www.freshmeat.net reveals a few projects: http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=music+notation§ion=projects&Go.x=0&Go.y=0
I will check out those leads. It sounds like people are starting to come out with some open source music notation software, which is great.
http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/
Finale has a version Finale Notepad… doesn’t have quite the range of capabilities as the full-fledged Finale, but for basic homework assignments and whatnot it can be useful
http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/
Finale has a student version called Finale notepad. Doesn’t have all the capabilities as a full-fledged Finale ,but makes homework assignments and whatnot purty.
Thanks for pointing out Finale Notepad, Jory. It definitely is a good way for students to get involved with music notation software–I should have pointed that out in my post.
The retail price for both Finale and Sibelius is around the $600 mark. Both programs can be obtained at an academic discount of around $200 if you shop around.
The audience for music notation software isn’t really big enough to support major open source offerings. If you look at Finale and Sibelius, they aren’t exactly bringing in a great deal of money despite having the great majority of the market.
As publishers start relying more on technology provided by the major music notation software companies for distribution of their music, it’s going to become less and less feasible for them to jump to open source software.
Also keep in mind that the biggest segments of the notation software market are composers and educators/students – not engravers. Finale and Sibelius are successful because they include many advanced playback tools for composers and advanced educational tools (like SmartMusic) for teachers and students.
hi everyone,
if you haven’t heard of it already this seems a good product although development has been over a long period of time now
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/
[...] In Search of Open Source Notation Software Finale Notepad torpediert sich beim Starten bei mir selbst. Ts. Musescore ist frellig von der Bedienung her – und andere Alternativen sehe ich momentan nicht. Doof. (tags: Musik) [...]
I don’t know whether 1,5 years after this post was published is ’sooner of later’, but you should try out MuseScore, it’s a free and open source music notation for windows and linux which is currently at release 0.9.3.
Since it has a pretty advanced musicXML import/export on board, it’s quite easy to start using MuseScore with your current scores.
Sounds like a good option. I was only seeing a Windows version of SourceForge, though the documentation says that it’s cross-platform. I’ll dig around more and check it out.
Canorus
http://canorus.berlios.de/
is the successor to NoteEdit
http://noteedit.berlios.de/
Both open-source graphical music notation authoring/editing apps. NoteEdit was Linux only, but Canorus will be cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OSX/Mac). It looks promising, but is still in Beta stage. It is designed to work closely with Lilypond. I’d be curious to see how it and Denemo stack up…
Unfortunately, Finale NotePad is not available for Linux…and my guess is that it never will be…I doubt they will bother for a free piece of software.
Has anyone tried running Finale in Ubuntu or Ubuntu Studio as a Wine or Cossover application? I’m not convinced that it works, but certainly it installs okay. My Window-based sequencer runs quite happily as a Wine application also.