Guitar Notation Programs

davekain · #1 12-07-2011, 09:42 AM

Hey Guys,

I have been wanting to put some lessons together and ultimately a couple of books on several topics. I need to find some way to put musical notation and text together on the same page. I haven't actually started looking at anything. I thought I'd ask for some advice here first.

I want to write text between examples and on the actual musical examples themselves. I have a Macbook pro. Any suggestions? Please feel free when writing to speak to me as if I am a moron because computers are not my thing and big words scare me

Dave

JohnW400 · #2 12-07-2011, 10:09 AM

Sibelius and Finale are good programs for that. You would have to get the full version of either. I know Sib runs *ok* on MAC.

You might want to go to each companies forum and see what kind of issues people are experiencing using either program with MAC. I'm a Sibelius user on a PC so I can't speak to possible issues with Finale or Sibelius on a MAC, however I have noticed MAC users frequently post issues on the Sibelius forum looking for solutions.

There is a chapter in the Sibelius manual that deals with exactly what you're looking to do. It is good to know that their manual was written using their software though.

You may need other software as well (besides a word processing program) possibly Adobe.

I have thought about doing a book or putting lessons together but it is time consuming and requires more computer finesse than I currently have.

The one drawback with Sibelius is that you cannot just print chord diagrams without attaching the grid to a staff. (At least not in any version up to 5.2). There may be a work around.

davekain · #3 12-07-2011, 10:16 AM

Thank you very much! All good advice and exactly what I was looking for.:-)

If anyone knows of any other programs though, please feel free to contribute.

reventlov · #4 12-26-2011, 04:33 AM

I run Sibelius on a Macbook Pro with no problems at all; having said that, there are much cheaper ways of achieving what you want to do.

My suggestion is to use Muse Score, which is a free programme, available here http://musescore.org/

If you write your musical examples on Muse Score then take a screen shot of the relevant passage using Grab (which you'll find in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder on your Mac), you can then drag and drop the screen shot into the word processor of your choice. I use Open Office for all my word processing as opposed to Microsoft Word, because they are virtually identical in their functions and Open Office is free (and available here Download OpenOffice.orgAqua for Mac OSX )

Unburst · #5 12-28-2011, 11:32 AM

I've been using Sibelius on a mac for years, there are a few bugs but nothing you can't work around.

You can make worksheets etc. with just Sibelius but if you are going to write a full blown book you may want to combine the text and musical examples in a page layout program like Quark or Apple's Pages.