What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Recommendations concerning notation and publishing software in a non-partisan environment.
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OCTO
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Location: Sweden

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by OCTO »

George M19 wrote: 04 Feb 2018, 22:05 A sample from musicnotes.com with a choir bracket. Definitely not a Finale choir bracket. Possibly SCORE?
Correct, not Finale at all in both examples.
Both are a badly designed, check some beam offsets, unacceptable.
I am not sure if it is SCORE. You can make a mess with SCORE of course, but the shape of slurs/ties is giving me a hint that it is not SCORE.
What else could be? No Sib, no MuseScore.
Freelance Composer. Self-Publisher.
Finale 27.3 • Sibelius 2023.5• MuseScore 4+ • Logic Pro X+ • Ableton Live 11+ • Digital Performer 10+ /// MacOS Monterey (secondary in use systems: Fedora 35, Windows 10)
Knut
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Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by Knut »

George M19 wrote: 03 Feb 2018, 17:14 Knut,

Are your sure about the brace? Finale has a scaling issue with with different stave heights. In the score above, the brace is scaled perfectly (compare 1st system with others) and doesn't get distorted like a Finale brace would. I guess it could be avoided if you entered the brace as an expression, but that seems impractical and the expression brace never looks exactly like the group brace designed from Document Options. Perhaps Finale handled this better in the past?
I think you're right about this observation.
OCTO wrote: 04 Feb 2018, 22:21
George M19 wrote: 04 Feb 2018, 22:05 A sample from musicnotes.com with a choir bracket. Definitely not a Finale choir bracket. Possibly SCORE?
Correct, not Finale at all in both examples.
Both are a badly designed, check some beam offsets, unacceptable.
I am not sure if it is SCORE. You can make a mess with SCORE of course, but the shape of slurs/ties is giving me a hint that it is not SCORE.
What else could be? No Sib, no MuseScore.
I agree. The fonts, if that is indeed what they are, are also very badly designed, including the brace. Score wouldn't use fonts of course, but the vector shapes wouldn't be this distorted.

I'm thinking, perhaps Graphire or Amadeus, but I don't know either one well enough to have an opinion. Just throwing the names out there.
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OCTO
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Location: Sweden

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by OCTO »

I believe that Graphire is pretty sophisticated software. Not sure about Amadeus.
These examples look like done manually, almost.
Freelance Composer. Self-Publisher.
Finale 27.3 • Sibelius 2023.5• MuseScore 4+ • Logic Pro X+ • Ableton Live 11+ • Digital Performer 10+ /// MacOS Monterey (secondary in use systems: Fedora 35, Windows 10)
George M19
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Joined: 02 Mar 2017, 03:39

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by George M19 »

From what I know of Graphire, it is possible to use custom fonts. But, you can't exactly design a brace like you can in Finale. You can adjust the line weight, width of the center (among a few other settings), similar to how Sibelius handles brace settings.

There's quite a bit of music published with this style (fonts, braces etc.), including the UCC denominational hymnal [The New Century Hymnal] which has a publish date of 1995. I guess it's a mystery ....

Funny, I ran into a video by odod on youtube showing how you can change the piano brace character in Sibelius. I don't use Sibelius often, but it seems very possible that this "style" can be achieved in Sibelius (which does have superior brace scaling over Finale).
Knut
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Joined: 05 Oct 2015, 18:07
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by Knut »

George M19 wrote: 05 Feb 2018, 19:12 Funny, I ran into a video by odod on youtube showing how you can change the piano brace character in Sibelius. I don't use Sibelius often, but it seems very possible that this "style" can be achieved in Sibelius (which does have superior brace scaling over Finale).
It won't be a problem to recreate this house style in Sibelius with the appropriate fonts. However, I disagree that Sibelius's brace scaling is superior to that of Finale. Sibelius uses one single brace character (which is pretty ugly in all the supplied fonts, but that's beside the point), and simply scales this down by point size to fit the grand staff, making it increasingly thin and narrow as the staff space decreases.

Finale's brace, OTOH, is constant in weight, and it will always look good (although not completely uniform) with the right settings, as long as the staff space doesn't get extremely narrow. Granted, it is useless for single staves or very tight staff spacing, in which case it has to be redesigned or substituted by a custom font character.

Dorico, OTOH, has taken the best approach in this regard by employing multiple font characters dependent on staff spacing. As a user, you won't have as much control over the brace design with this approach as you do in Finale, but that shouldn't be necessary if the font designer has done his job well.
dspreadbury
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Joined: 05 Oct 2015, 10:57

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by dspreadbury »

MusicNotes use their own proprietary engraving software that is not available to any external customers. I can't quite remember exactly how things shook out, but I believe it's the Sunhawk Solero system, which has been through some complicated ownership.
George M19
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Joined: 02 Mar 2017, 03:39

Re: What Software Does MusicNotes.com Use?

Post by George M19 »

Thanks all, for contributing! Much appreciated.
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