The most 'educational' of notation softwares ?

[dougsyo]

I'm still using a version of Cakewalk Score Writer that was bundled with some sound card in 1999. It's pretty good, it does one thing well. I have not stumbled across anything I like better, but then, Sibelius and Finale don't exactly drop in my lap...

I had score writer. It wouldn't work on XP and they hadn't yet sold it to Geniesoft (who has made it run on XP).

For free, try Finale Notepad. If you like it, Notepad Plus is $24.95 and the next higher one is $70 or so (PrintMusic if I remember right - but I just got a new laptop and it's not installed yet) ... no VSTI support, but you can set it to a loopback midi port (midiyoke, etc) to point to a host - even GPO (doesn't GPO come with a lightweight score writer program ? Overture perhaps?)

One I was NOT impressed with was Voyetra MusicWrite. Finale Notepad was a whole lot more intuitive.

Doug

[herodotus]

I think a good and totally free approach might be

1. Download the freeware midi player from noteworthy: http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/player/

This will notate and play standard midi files using your computers native soundset. This might not be fun to listen to, but it will highlight the notes on the screen as it is playing them, which is actually a very useful thing if used with discipline. You can slow down or stop the player when you want details, and really dense classical scores can become much easier to understand.


2. Download (also free) a ton of classical midi files here: http://www.classicalmusicmidipage.com/index.php

You now have, for no money at all, an educational resource that people in the past would have killed for.

Printed music was until recently (and sometimes still is) really, really expensive.

To have so many midi files, and an instant sheet music creation tool, for free, is one of those things that make you realize just how great it is to be a musician in the 21st century.

[kovacs]

Just FYI: I, ii, IV etc are merely indicators of function (ie, at what position according to the root note you play, and waht kind of chord). A ii in C majors means a d minor chord.

So, say, ii-V7-I means for example a dm-G7-C progression in C or a gm-C7-F (a standard for a lot of jazz music).

Chords themselves are always denoted by letters...

[Joseph Burrell]

disturb,

We've just released Overture 4 (the big brother to Geniesoft's ScoreWriter.) It is a full VST host (up to 256 VSTi's and 4 VST effects.) Its on sale now for the Windows platform in a download only format, with upgrades from ScoreWriter, Overture SE (which was included with GPO), and crossgrades from Finale/Sibelius/Encore.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=102070

There are some minor compositional tools to help those new to orchestration. When using it in conjunction with the instrument definition files we've created, it will warn you automatically about incorrect instrument ranges. In normal mode it will warn you about incorrect rhythms. There's a chord tool built in that will add intervals to a passage using keyboard shortcuts. Chord markings that play back, etc.

If you have some suggestions on what you'd like to see get added to the program as we move forward, please feel free to stop by our forum and let us know what you guys are interested in.

[gizmo]

Great thread. Just want to second the chordmaps site and nuffink's amazing FREE Chordspace, zowie. Also, just from personal experience, I learned the most when I got a cheap Yamaha personal keyboard and had to make a piece interesting without lots of tracks, effects, etc. This made me learn modes and key changes because they were suddenly really important tools! It cured me of dumbchorditis in a hurry cause I couldn't mask it anymore. Everybody learns in different ways, just my .002...