Notation Software for guitar

[Sean]

MusEdit - $84 with shipping. Allows 6 voices, tab/no tab, rh fingerings, barre indications, the whole works and it is very simple to use.

[Bobber]

I agree that Lilypond is fantastic. Another Open Source (and free as in bear) program which can be a front end to Lilypond is Note Edit.
http://noteedit.berlios.de/

All of this software works quite well on any version of Linux. Two that I would recommend for the non-technical are:

http://www.mepis.org
http://www.ubuntu.com
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[guitar.cantillation]

Hi,
up to now I used Capella 800 but I don´t further agree with if because of the unchangeable layout and other things:

Now I got a tip to use Capella 2004, Encore 4.5.5 or Sibelius.

Please, if possible, give me some advices. I want tol edit my own guitar (classical) editions and compositions, easy to print and publish as a pdf file?? But complex layout

Thanks, good vibrations,
g c

[Amadan]

I'm using Finale Notepad.
It's the freeware version of Finale 2007 and it seems pretty decent.

[es335]

I'm using capella 2004 and it's a powerful program with good editing and layout possibilities, very close to the professional top of the line products Sibelius and Finale.

Up to now, I encountered no problem, that could not be solved with capella 2004 even if it's a workaround. Sibelius is definitly the better choice but costs more three times!

Encore, I don't know! It's fairly expensive too, but the look is a bit like Harmony Assistant, which I would recommend as a real good bargain!

I stayed with capella as I had been using it for several years and became too familiar with its operation!

[musikai]

I use Sibelius G7 and am very happy with it. It's a cut down version of full Sibelius and designed for Guitar scores. If you're writing for guitar and not for whole orchestra it's absolutely sufficient. The main things that are missing are some fine tuning things - you can't shift single noteheads per pixel in relation to other voices - but if you carefully choose the voices (first=melody second=Bass etc.) you never have to because it's always perfectly written.
There's also no plug-in support like in main Sibelius.
Another thing is that you can't change the Instrument and its name at the beginning of the staff (the sound, clef, key you can always change). But you can delete the name and replace it with a text object. For most special situations you have a workaround. So if you imported a cello midi file and the out-of-range notes are colored red on screen (not on the print) you can always add another staff, copy all to it and delete the cello staff. So the instrument range is shown correctly.
Sibelius G7 is based on Sibelius 3 whose scores you can import.
Despite from the advanteges mentioned above I never encountered any problems and sometimes wonder why the G7 version is so often overlooked. 3 main reasons led to my choice:
- cheap prize
- very easy and really fast workflow
- beautiful printed scores (not as nice as Lilypond though)

[JoeO]

So far I have tried Final Notepad, and Tabledit, not having much luck with either one. Sean suggested MusEdit, and I have just downloaded the demo, and it seems to be what I am looking for, but only time will tell.

[musikai]

Musedit seems to be qiet powerfull. But how good do the printed scores look? The shown examples all have ugly jagged lines. Is the printed or pdf-converted output smooth?

[JoeO]

I knopw the Demo says you can't print, but I selected A night in Tunisia from there sample and printed it. It looks just fine those jagged lines on the beams are gone.

[Unburst]

Another vote for Sibelius G7, easy to use and has all the features you're likely ot need.

[skmcclure]

Finale Notepad is free and it might suffice. It has limitations but the price is right for a spin around the block.

[fingerpicker]

Yet another vote for G7.

[joyati]

I highly recommend NoteWorthy Composer. It is very easy to use and has a text function which makes it simple to insert right and left hand fingering, as well as string indications. As I remember it is also very inexpensive.

Jonathan

[Soundmac]

Maybe you can take a look at the Lime program, I have used it quite a bit (the Mac version obviously) and it fully meets my needs.

http://www.cerlsoundgroup.org/cgi-bin/Lime/Windows.html

http://www.cerlsoundgroup.org/cgi-bin/Lime/Mac.html

It's a $65 program but you can try it for free!
success!!

[Steve Kutzer]

Does anybody have any experience with FInale Songwriter? At $45, it seems to have the features that CG needs, but isn't so overblown with full orchestration.

The Finale product line is a little confusing. The full product ($600, ouch), Allegro ($199, still ouch) leaves out the "detailed engraving" of the full product, and then Songwriter. They have a feature comparison chart at https://www.finalemusic.com/Finale/W-Pr ... rison.aspx, but it's not clear to me if the full product has fretboard image entry and tablature.

And on the full product, does anyone have experience with the scanning feature. I must say that intrigues me. How "intelligent" is it? Does it get multiple voices right?

It would be neat if there were a MIDI classical guitar, but I've never heard of one. Can you put a pickup in your guitar and connect that to a midi port on your computer?