Ben, I may look at this. I have Finale, which is a real pain to use. I don't use it every day, so it is difficult to remember its far-too-many details.

I have Finale 2011 latest update. When it gets old enough, I think I will junk it and look at Sibelius. Finale is annoying.

I agree. Lilypond should really become the norm for this sort of thing... But, if you need a normal program and a low budget, MS will get you through with a fairly good quality.

I actually use Finale all the time. I love Finale. I tried Sibelius. It was too user-friendly for me.

I am working on making my own transition to Lilypond, but if you're not up for that, I do recommend Finale.

While all three platforms will run all three programs, I find the PERSONALITY of each program to be thusly:
Finale will appeal to Windows people.
Sibelius will appeal to Mac people.
Lilypond will appeal to Linux people.

I tried Sibelius. It was too user-friendly for me.

Yes, this. Adam, are you sure we're not long lost brothers?

well, this has all been very helpful! Thank you!! :)

Ben, just to alert you. There are a few errors in the Revised Grail text for Psalm 34 in your communion PDF.

I tried Sibelius. It was too user-friendly for me.

How...Catholic of you.

I used Finale for years, and when my parish offered to buy me some new software, I jumped over to Sibelius. I've never looked back. Everything is very intuitive, and other than neumes I have yet to find anything that it can't do.

Finale seems to be the go-to product for educators, while Sibelius is the sine qua non for most professional composers.

Finale seems to be the go-to product for educators, while Sibelius is the sine qua non for most professional composers.

That really depends upon the particular composer and her or her composing genre.

Each has their strengths and weaknesses.

Exactly. Since I never scan scores into Finale, this apparent advantage of Sibelius over Finale has no bearing on my use.

On the other hand, I do like the ability of Finale to import/export Music XML files directly, which is something that (to the best of my knowledge) requires a third party add-on for Sibelius; of course, this may not be important to others, but for preparing output that can be sent to Braille music processing programs, it is a necessity.

My too sense.

I used Finale in the early 90s and then Robin Hodson became my good friend. He was there at Sib early on in the game. I converted without a fight and became an ambassador for Sib for a little while. I use Sib 6 at the moment. Still love it.

For chant, I developed my drag and drop method, which is totally artistic and has nothing to do with computer placed elements. You will find it on youtube. It requires InDesign. Thats it!

For composing, Sib is very fast and easy. However, I hear that the publishing industry uses Finale hands down. Don't know how true that is, but... anyone know?

I know when I put together the scores for the RECTO TONO PROPERS, KYRIALE, AND HYMNAL - Advent Year A, I used Finale and it took very little time.

Here's an article from the Finale Blog about how WLP used Finale to re-engrave the new missal.

musescore can.

Ben,
I can't seem to find anything. Can you point me toward these features?

Guilty as charged: music ed, winows user! I'm glad I purchased the full version of Finale when I did at the educational discount. Now I just upgrade every few years. I don't use it to it's full potential, but I'm quite happy with it. I'm not familiar with the lite versions of the program, but I'd I imagine they would work well for basic notation needs. I believe there is also a discount for churches, comparable to the educational discount.

As I recall, a program called Score was all the rage with the comp majors, but it's no longer available. Anyone know about that? Anyways, I'm glad I went with Finale.

Score is still available, and is still under active development in a Windows version (works on Mac too with something like VMWare Fusion). You can purchase the new Windows version or a combo of the DOS and Windows version from the developer, Leland Smith, by contacting him by phone. His contact info is available at www.scoremus.com.

It is my experience that no currently available commercial or freeware software compares to the quality of Score's output. There is a reason it's what Bärenreiter uses for their high-quality editions (of composers like Buxtehude, Alain, Vierne, Mendelssohn, etc...). It's also very well suited to notating psalmody--which is the primary thing I use it for, but also for music in weekly worship aides.

The interface is a bit different if you're accustomed to Finale or Sibelius, and works best using the keyboard primarily, versus being mouse driven. The new Windows version overcomes many long-standing issues with the DOS version (last updated in the late 90s). For my somewhat mathematical mind, the parametric approach to encoding notation makes a lot of sense.

I'd highly recommend to anyone interested in learning more about Score to visit the website at www.scoremus.com, click on Download Page, and download the current HLP file, which is the entire manual for the program. That was how I learned about it before purchasing it a few years ago. While not well labeled, there is also now a demo version available at the bottom of that page, ScoreView. It's intended to be a "viewer" for Score, but is in fact the full-featured program--minus saving.

A user of WinScore in England has setup an informational site at www.winscore.info with a good overview of the program.

Something else rather unique about Score is that you can pick up the phone, and talk right to the developer. That is not possible with the major commercial products. He's even added a handful of features that I've requested that have really helped my workflow.

I'm a 13 year, daily user of Finale, and still do use it for many things--especially large orchestral scores (full-size orchestras, 70+ musicians). Finale really shines over Sibelius in how it handles extraction of parts where musicians share systems in the full score (like Flute 1 & 2 and Oboe 1 & 2 on the same line). That's one of the top requests for a new version of Sibelius.

I'm very excited to see what comes out of Steinberg in regards to the new notation program they're working on after having snapped up the London-based development team of Sibelius after Avid laid them off.

I've attached a few examples of what can be done with Score, and one example of an orchestral score that is what I consider "not worth it" to do in Score.

Why not consider Lime? One reason to choose it is that the mainstream version of Lime costs only $65. Another good reason to use it is that sighted people who do not know about braille music or accessibility can create scores that can be automatically converted to braille with GOODFEEL, a braille music translation program by Dancing Dots.

As Chuck mentioned earlier, XML files can be imported into Lime but with some editing usually required. I believe that Sibelius has finally added the music XML export feature in it's latest version but if Lime is used in the first place braille music can be produced at the "push of a button," so to speak.

Those who would want to purchase the mainstream version of Lime should go to:
www.cerlsoundgroup.org

Teresa

Another down on Finale:

The default settings for almost everything related to choral/church music are terrible. Why, oh why, it can't figure out on its own how to space multiple verses of lyric text is beyond me.

Which brings me back around to "Sibelius was too user friendly."
For me- the nearly-good-enough nature of Sibelius (when I used it a few years ago) made it feel like there was not much point in making things perfect. The default was good enough- why bother?
But the defaults in Finale are just... well- stupid and ugly. It forces me to care about it enough that I end up taking the time to get i perfect (or near as possible).

But that's just me and my personality. YMMV.

But the defaults in Finale are just... well- stupid and ugly. It forces me to care about it enough that I end up taking the time to get i perfect (or near as possible).

And when you're done, clear out the lyrics and notes that have been entered, and save the result as a Finale Template ... so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, over and over and over and over.

Earl Gray, you mentioned Score, the oldest and still best of engraving programs. I use it, many of my generation of composers use it, and it still exists. It is an unfortunate name in this age of google searches, but the maker still is there and still sells it:

http://www.scoremus.com/ san andreas press

It runs only in a dos-emulation (no problem on windows, not sure about mac); it has only very primitive midi features, and no sound output. But the true award winning music engraving of the past 30 years or more (it was Fortran originally, I believe) has been done with Score. Btw, I refer to the tried and true "Score 4", not the reportedly somewhat problematic newer "WInScore".

I own Finale, but it is too much trouble, and I tried out Sibelius; as Adam said above, was too earnestly user friendly for me so I hated it.

William

I checked Score again regarding this discussion and others in this forum about chant engraving: as I had remembered, it has a complete set of neumes and noteheads for chant notation. And the spacing for which it is famous allows anything you want graphically to be done without too much trouble.

Also has occasionally useful oddities like percussion symbols and lute tablatures.

I don't have any incentive to push it, btw, I'm just a happy user.

Are you sure about that GMaj7 chord at the end of the third system? or should the last alto note be a G (instead of an F#)?

I am a LilyPond (http://lilypond.org/) diehard. I'm very new to the software, not having even used it for a month, but my good friend who is now on this forum with no posts introduced me a few weeks ago. He demonstrated that the customizability is 100% unlimited. As Adam Wood mentioned earlier (Adam Wood for the win again!), more people need to be using it.

If you are not good with the keyboard or learning code or similar, you might want to try the old versions of MuseScore (http://musescore.org/) which have a built-in LilyPond export, and then you can edit around in LilyPond. Alternatively, you can continue to use Finale and export your files to MusicXML and then using musicxml2ly which is included with LilyPond, import them to the software. Bear in mind that musicxml2ly is broken in the development versions and (as far as what I have tested) only works in 2.18.2 (someone correct me if there is a later version which works). However, LilyPond 2.19.54 (development) supports alternative fonts.

To answer your question, you should just be able to fiddle with voices. In MuseScore the voices are handled separately for each bar so you would just change the voices in the accompaniment. Also, you can delete rests from different voices in any bar not including voice 1, however the rests can be hidden in that voice.

I'm not sure how to do this in Lilypond but I believe that voices handled by a certain command which encompasses certain notes to change the voices in a "chordmode".

For ease of music reading, you may just want to separate the piano and choral part.

But anyways, TL;DR, use LilyPond. It is 100% customizable and the manuals are quite comprehensive. You can also subscribe to the mailing list if it is made easier.

I have used Finale for years - have hated it from the first time I laid eyes on it. My version is getting old and needs upgrading. However, I don't want to pay that much to buy a later version of software I don't even like. LilyPond sounds worth a look.