NOTATIO

Well said!

Personally a big fan of the FOSS, I still get a bit scared of using a tool that is not so known. The only reason I don't give it a proper try is the number of engravers available for F or S. I don't type my scores in to the computer, so having a limited community is the main reason.

But I hope it will change.

OCTO wrote:Well said!

Personally a big fan of the FOSS, I still get a bit scared of using a tool that is not so known. The only reason I don't give it a proper try is the number of engravers available for F or S. I don't type my scores in to the computer, so having a limited community is the main reason.

But I hope it will change.

Indeed. That's the one thing I forgot to mention: The choice of your digital engraver is far less important than the choice of your professional colleagues (who know how to get things done!).

It was so well said by DatOrganistTho that I immediately downloaded MuseScore and set to work notating a couple of measures from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 13. I was immediately impressed with how well thought-out the program is and how easy it is to use.

However, I did run into an immediate glitch with beamed cross-staffed small notes: a ledger line did not shift with the note in the cross-staffing process. I posted a bug report and was immediate helped on the forum by several very knowledgable members. It is apparently a known problem that has just been fixed in the beta version of a new version soon to be available. My impression was totally positive, and I will continue to explore and follow the development of MuseScore with interest.

If MuseScore had support for third party fonts, I would definitely check it out myself.

Knut wrote:If MuseScore had support for third party fonts, I would definitely check it out myself.

Knut, maybe worth to check, I believe that it supports SmuFL. I think I have read somewhere about it.

It does, but not externally. All music fonts need to be compiled into the program. The intent there by the developers is to ensure the ability to share without worrying about it having the fonts used.

I can definitely see the advantages for casual users, but this approach reminds me a bit of Apple's closed integration philosophy.

John Ruggero wrote:It was so well said by DatOrganistTho that I immediately downloaded MuseScore and set to work notating a couple of measures from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 13. I was immediately impressed with how well thought-out the program is and how easy it is to use.

However, I did run into an immediate glitch with beamed cross-staffed small notes: a ledger line did not shift with the note in the cross-staffing process. I posted a bug report and was immediate helped on the forum by several very knowledgable members. It is apparently a known problem that has just been fixed in the beta version of a new version soon to be available. My impression was totally positive, and I will continue to explore and follow the development of MuseScore with interest.

I appreciate your compliments. I feel much the same way about LilyPond (where active development and a very active user base is exceptional for solving problems.

You are very welcome, DatOrganistTho. Thanks for introducing me to this program.

It turns out that the "glitch" was really the result of my inexperience with the unique terminology of MuseScore. They call a notehead a "note" and anything with a stem a "chord". So had I used their normal function to make the "chord" smaller rather than the "note" as would happen 99.999% of the time, all would have been well. Yet they were very nice about it, didn't make excuses, and were still concerned about making sure that it was correct. Very impressive!