How to Get Started Writing the Score… Tomorrow
I’ve been perusing various “engraving” programs, or sheet-music writing tools. The idea here is actually to get my songs for Tell Me a Beautiful Lie written out so that folks can sing them, or at least try to sing them before telling me that it’s too high/too low/too awkward.
The two main packages, from what I can tell, appear to be Sibelius and Finale, but they’re both horrendously expensive, and it’s not clear that I need all their features. Fortunately, both programs offer a wide assortment of less expensive versions of their main packages with various features unceremoniously hacked off. It doesn’t seem like a terribly good way to design a program - I’m not sure that there’s a real meaningful line between Finale PrintMusic and Finale SongWriter that says, “Yes! I need a program that allows me to write lyrics but NOT space the lyrics legibly under the notes!”
Hopefully, PrintMusic will do the trick for me. Either way, it’s going to be a painstakingly tedious process.
Hey Chris,
Stumbled on this through Facebook. This is a great site. Thanks for sharing your stuff. I’ve been using Finale since early in college. It has a steep learning curve, but once you’ve been working with it for a while it plateaus. It is quite an awkward program at times. Let me know if you have any frustrating Finale questions.
Adam Thomas