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Scanning and music editing software for Mac

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Erzahler

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Scanning and music editing software for Mac

PostMon Jan 22, 2018 5:51 am

I need some advice on scanning and music editing software for Mac. I want to be able to arrange some piano pieces for organ. So all I want is to be able to scan and then edit fairly straight forward music from 2 staves to 3. I want to print and play the finished music and do not need to play back midi files. I know there is Sibelius that is fully featured but wonder if there is an all in one product that would do all I want otherwise what are appropriate seperate items that would do this. Thanks.
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larason2

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Re: Scanning and music editing software for Mac

PostTue Jan 23, 2018 10:31 pm

I have used Photoscore Ultimate with Sibelius 7 on the mac. Sibelius 8 is out, but I have not made the upgrade. Photoscore works well for relatively high resolution scans of print music, but once imported into Sibelius, I find you have to do quite a lot of editing to make it look good. Usually what I will do is import it into Sibelius, then copy and paste the parts I need into the appropriate staves in another Sibelius file that I created freshly. Photoscore does not work well for handwritten music, or even music in a Jazz musical typeface. Once you import music with multiple parts on a stave, Sibelius does a good job (usually) of separating the voices, then there is a simple menu command to separate them onto two new staves. This could be used to easily make a pedal part, for instance.

The past several months, however, I have been learning how to use Dorico. Dorico doesn't have a scanning and importing function, but I find that now that I have learned to use it, I can input music in multiple voices on the same stave quite quickly, probably faster even than Photoscore and Sibelius. It has a steep learning curve and a poor manual though. On the plus side, I find I don't have to do a lot of editing to make the score look good, which is a big time saver. If I was to accomplish the work you describe, this is undoubtably the way I would do it.

Another option may possibly be Finale, but I didn't like the interface and didn't spend much time with it.
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Antoni Scott

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Re: Scanning and music editing software for Mac

PostWed Jan 31, 2018 9:41 pm

Stay away from Sibelius with a ten foot pole. It is expensive and impossible to use. You can get help only if you pay for it. Its far too complicated. You're better off just hand writing the music notes.

I thought I might be able to use the program to compose music, especially writing it as I play real time. It does do this, but if you set the music to 4/4 time and you are a fraction of a 32nd note off, every note is off by 1/32. You can't even edit it post production to even out the timing.

I was hoping to have a program that would write music as I play, but the end results are quite different. If most Hauptwerk owners expect to compose organ music, be aware that the low notes do not appear in the Bass clef but in the Treble clef six, seven, eight, nine or ten lines below middle C in the Treble clef. It may be possible to edit this post production, but I coiuldn't get help from anyone unless your willing to pay. Your on your own.
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CarsonCooman

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Re: Scanning and music editing software for Mac

PostThu Feb 01, 2018 10:48 am

Antoni Scott wrote:Stay away from Sibelius with a ten foot pole. It is expensive and impossible to use. You can get help only if you pay for it. Its far too complicated. You're better off just hand writing the music notes. I thought I might be able to use the program to compose music, especially writing it as I play real time. It does do this, but if you set the music to 4/4 time and you are a fraction of a 32nd note off, every note is off by 1/32. You can't even edit it post production to even out the timing.


Just as another different perspective, I have used Sibelius to notate organ music (and other things) since January of 1999 (19 years) very successfully across many versions, producing hundreds of scores. I use the program literally every day.

None of the notation programs is ideally suited to turning real time "live" input notation. That is a complicated task, and in the case of every commercial program, simply playing in the music in real time will result in notation will require a great deal of editing to make it look like edited, finished, "composed" music.That's really just the state of the technology in general. The programs are designed as tools for the notation and layout of the music. It would be like expecting to write a novel only via dictation and voice recognition. You can do that, but you then have to edit the results in your word processor to get it correct and final. The same is true of using real time input into music notation, and it's more extreme because of the additional complexities of music notation.
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Erzahler

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Re: Scanning and music editing software for Mac

PostThu Feb 01, 2018 5:12 pm

Thanks everyone. I'm starting to use MuseScore.

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