Week 4- Notation softwares? Oh boy...

As I am a working composer, I have always loved Sibelius and will probably never leave it considering it is an industry standard notation software. The features in Sibelius offers are incredible and I have gotten used to it over the years. in my opinion, it is visually appealing, simple to use, and you can use it for multiple styles of music such as classical, art music, jazz, film music ect. 

This week, we had a look at some free softwares that could be used in a music classroom. 

The first one we started off using was musescore. In the past, I let the (triggered) composer in me think it was the worst software anyone could use for composing. But since having a go at using musescore, I have realised a lot of things. One of them is how I misjudged it so much. 

After playing around with it, I realised that the shortcuts are very similar to Sibelius which I was very surprised by. The MIDI sounds were not the worst to be honest. As a matter of fact, their sounds are actually better than Sibelius sounds. How crazy! 

In terms of musescores use, I found it quite easy, the dynamics were easy to find, easy to input notes (a lot easier than Sibelius may I add), articulations were pretty normal too. I found something very interesting. When I clicked on a note I selected, depending on how hard or soft I press the note, it will either sound soft or loud. I found that very interesting. 

Similar to the soundtrap situation in week 1, I think it is great for students to access at home. PLUS, it is free! which is always a great thing. Sibelius licensing is very expensive. I would understand if schools had Sibelius on a few computers so if students are wanting to write more art music, they have the opportunity to do so. However, for students not wanting to pursue composition, musescore is fantastic. If a student is wanting to move to Sibelius, it will be an easy process for them as the shortcuts are very similar. I would personally not use musescore for my own compositional uses, but for learning basic composition skills, I think musescore is a win. 

The only negative things I have to say about musescore is how visually, it doesn't look very appealing. It looks a bit dull. Whereas with Sibelius, there are colours everywhere. With Sibelius, there are a lot of visual pictures which makes it easier for you to find whatever it is your looking for. With musescore, that is not the case unless you click on a lot of tabs to try and find what you want. Sibelius has this feature where if you can't find something specific, there is a search bar and it tells you how to find it. I think musescore needs to implement something very similar so students are able to find it quicker. Lastly, in the picture below, for some weird reason the f's were cut off. Could have been a glitch in the system with musescore. In saying that, musescore is a lot slower than Sibelius in terms of adding notes in, moving the score around and ect.

 

In summary, I quite like musescore a lot. And I will definitely be using it in my classrooms in the future!