# Favorite Notation Software



## Schatzie

I'm new to film scoring and was considering shelling out the cash to buy Sibelius and Pro Tools. I was at NAMM this past weekend and was given a demonstration of Overture 5 and told it is able to replace Sibelius and Pro Tools for a fraction of the price. To me it sounds too good to be true, but I'd like some feedback on different notation softwares before I buy one. Is Overture 5 actually able to create a high-quality mockup of a score, or is it worth the money to buy Sibelius and use Pro Tools or Cubase to create the mockup? Thanks for all your help.


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## pmcrockett

I've not used Overture specifically, but at this point, no notation software can give you the flexibility of a DAW with regard to performance nuance. Dorico is trying to do that, but it's not there yet. You won't get professional-level audio output from a notation program.


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## MatFluor

pmcrockett said:


> I've not used Overture specifically, but at this point, no notation software can give you the flexibility of a DAW with regard to performance nuance. Dorico is trying to do that, but it's not there yet. You won't get professional-level audio output from a notation program.



I second that. I personally use PreSonus Notion, I can put whatever VST I want in there and with some work get all the markings to reflect there as well. But I always transfer the MIDI into my DAW (StudioOne) to produce it.

I separate the steps between "composing" and "producing". Mainly to stop switching context every second note. I do the same with writing text - I do not touch MS Office. Did you ever write something in e.g. Word and realized that you actually wrote only one paragraph and wasted two hours on formatting it, instead of writing more? That's why my workflow is separated 
Also, I can't make good Mock-ups with Notion, but I can hear a nice approximation. When the client says it's good, I can work in my DAW to refine, add CC and have more fine-grained control over all the aspects (including adding live instruments as needed).


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## kmlandre

+1 to what MatFlour said.

I love, love, love Notion as a composition tool for quickly generating ideas with a really good playback quality.

But manipulating performance in Notion can be a drag if you're not used to it and there are limitations to its flexibility. My hope is that it's fully integrated with StudioOne someday, which has a full range of MIDI manipulation tools..

But that's going to take some time, if and when it happens...

-- Kurt


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## wcreed51

Actually, Overture CAN give you the performance nuances of a DAW. It has full graphical editing of all MIDI parameters visually synced to the notation.

I think all notation packages have demo versions available, so good to spend some time with all of them.


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## Parsifal666

I have only used Finale for the past thirteen years, but I've been so frustrated with its limitations of late that I instead concentrated on my writing with MIDI.

That said, I started writing music with Finale, period, and so am somewhat indebted.

I'm curious as to the consensus here regarding their favorites, because Sibelius does have a lot of attractive features to it; this was an excellent idea for a thread imo.


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## dcoscina

Notion for composing and Sibelius for finished scores printing


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## Prockamanisc

The highest quality option would be Cubase and sample libraries. Probably the cheapest option for a reasonably high-quality mockup would be Sibelius and NotePerformer. Sibelius is dying, though. In my view (except for the addition of the touchscreen, which I don't use because I'm an Apple guy) they haven't had a real update to the program since 2011. Even though I've basically mastered Sibelius and I've been using it for 10+ years, I just received Dorico this week and I'm excited to jump ship.

Neither option is particularly cheap. Pro Tools, in my experience, is no good for scoring, but you'll need it someday if you're doing a lot of session work.


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## Parsifal666

I wish the notation in Cubase was WAAAAY better; it's practically useless for me (especially in comparison to Finale but not just). That way I'd only have to open and deal with one program for everything.

Shoot, I'd even blow out an extra hundred US for that. But it would have to be improved _phenomenally_.


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## d.healey

I used to use Sibelius but since Reaper added notation I use it instead - this is not for beautiful notation but for composition and performance. Once the new expression map type feature is completed it will be awesome


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## Paul T McGraw

At this point in time Finale and Sibelius dominate the notation software field. That could change, but there are reasons for the dominance of Finale and Sibelius. Learning a notation software package involves a big investment of your time, which to me is even more of an issue than the money, so be sure the software you pick has all of the features you will need. This is very important as not every product can do everything.

I believe it is most common for a notation oriented composer to use Finale or Sibelius to notate, and then use a DAW, such as Cubase for the mockup.

I believe that DAW oriented composer will of course compose in their DAW, and will then often pay a copyist to put their DAW composition into a notation package to create parts for live performance only if it is needed. This makes a lot of sense, since my understanding is that the customer will make the decision to use or not use the music based on a mockup, so notating everything, including unsold music, might be a waste of time.

Overture 5 might be able to do all that was claimed. It could be a good choice. I haven't seen and heard enough examples to make up my mind.

Pro Tools is very common for production work, but isn't often cited as the best choice for composing music for VSTs.

I am a hobbyist, with no professional aspirations, so a professional may have a very different opinion. Personally I love the Sibelius notation software with the NotePerformer soundset for playback. It is very light on resources and provides instant feedback that while not as good as a DAW, is amazingly good for a notation product and makes orchestration experiments fun and informative. I have tried using samples (like VSL instruments) with Sibelius and it can be done, but is very clumsy and still will not match the results you can get with a DAW and your favorite samples. I have been thinking about Overture 5 since I would love to use my sample libraries within a notation package, but haven't tried it yet, although it is on my "to do" list to give it a try.

For me "playback quality" is an important issue. Also for many years I did arrangements and original compositions for performance in church. So quality instrument parts was another big issue for me. Everything else was secondary to these two issues for me. Think hard about what you most need, and let that guide your choice.


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## Parsifal666

Using sample libraries with Finale can be an aggravation as well, but I personally don't have much of a problem with Garritan. It's more than adequate for very basic ideas in particular, and at times I wonder how much more I need for just that.


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## Luke W

I'm a professional engraver in Nashville and 25-year Finale user. In this town, everything is Finale or Sibelius. For publisher-ready engraving, no one here is attempting it with Overture or Notion that I'm aware of. And no one is trying to get anything more than a rough mockup sound from Finale or Sibelius. Guys who write in a notation program move to a DAW if they need it to sound good.

That being said, after seeing Daniel Spreadbury's Dorico demo a few months ago, I would say they are on their way to creating the first program that will do both things well. The skeleton has the right bones (how long till it's fleshed out is another question). One example: After you'd enter notes, you can tweak the midi performance without affecting the notation. So you can overlap the notes of the strings to trigger legato without the notation adding crazy tied sixteenths.

But the program is far, far from usable for either professional notation or a DAW. If Steinberg is willing to make a long-term investment in Dorico's development, they have a real shot at a legitimate double-barreled solution. But it will be years, not months.


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## Parsifal666

Luke W said:


> I'm a professional engraver in Nashville and 25-year Finale user. In this town, everything is Finale or Sibelius. For publisher-ready engraving, no one here is attempting it with Overture or Notion that I'm aware of. And no one is trying to get anything more than a rough mockup sound from Finale or Sibelius. Guys who write in a notation program move to a DAW if they need it to sound good.
> 
> That being said, after seeing Daniel Spreadbury's Dorico demo a few months ago, I would say they are on their way to creating the first program that will do both things well. The skeleton has the right bones (how long till it's fleshed out is another question). One example: After you'd enter notes, you can tweak the midi performance without affecting the notation. So you can overlap the notes of the strings to trigger legato without the notation adding crazy tied sixteenths.
> 
> But the program is far, far from usable for either professional notation or a DAW. If Steinberg is willing to make a long-term investment in Dorico's development, they have a real shot at a legitimate double-barreled solution. But it will be years, not months.



This sounds really promising. It's a bummer about the wait, though.


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## Rodney Money

I mostly live in the "live performance concert world" where all of my publishers have asked me to send only two types of files to them: Finale or Sibelius. Once people understand that notation software is for scores and DAWs are for sound I believe they will be much happier. But with that said, I believe it would actually be quite easy, lol yeah right, for a developer to develop a true DAW/ Notation Software. All you would have to do is work on the score, freeze it, then edit the midi, or work on the sound, freeze it, then quantize for the score view. Then have some humanization features for styles, ornamentation, varied tempo, and tuning, and a true legato feature that compensates for the lag. The real issue though would be the cost of the product if you added the professionalism of a notation program like Finale with the DAW capabilities of Cubase it could run you at least $1300. actually, that doesn't sound too bad. Some of y'all would pay that much for the "perfect" string library without batting an eye. I've pushed Finale to its peak before I switched to Cubase a year and a half ago. This was the best concerning sound quality I could do with Finale before switching to Cubase:


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## Parsifal666

Rodney Money said:


> The real issue though would be the cost of the product if you added the professionalism of a notation program like Finale with the DAW capabilities of Cubase it could run you at least $1300.



I'd do that, it'd give me ample reason to get rid of the synths I never use lol!


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## shnootre

Finale's midi capabilities are not quite as limited as many people think. The problem is that neither the manual nor Finale tech support gives good information on how to get the most out of the midi tool or human playback. It is possible, with lots of trial and error, to get Human Playback preferences to work well with a variety of libraries, but the learning process can be frustrating. Similarly, integrating a keyboard macro software (I use keyboard maestro) can really speed up midi editing processes. I've been working in Logic too lately, but I still find that entering articulation changes is easiest from within a notation program IF (and it's a really big IF) you can get those articulations to be properly understood by the software. There are all kinds of little glitches (for instance, I've discovered that when you set up human playback to work with Spitfire's UACC controller-based articulation switching, it works, but the change is sent a little too late (you can see this if you export into a DAW) - this can be manually corrected, but is very frustrating before you diagnose the problem. 

There are certain aspects to Finale that have, to date, prevented me from switching to other programs. Sibelius has some edges, but Finale is far superior when it comes to working with tuplets and inserting music. If you're the kind of composer who likes to play around with lots of different rhythms before settling on the right one (e.g. should these be 5 quarter notes, or a quintuplet, or a quarter note triple followed by two quarters...let's try them all!) Finale just can't be beat. 

For layout, though, Finale is really rough. A LOT of stuff that should be automated isn't. For instance - EVERY time you put an accent on a note that begins a slur, you have to manually raise the articulation to fix a collision.

Of course, as has been mentioned above, it's hard to replace 20+ years of experience, which is why some of us are pretty loathe to change to the johnny-come-lately. (though I dream of Dorico one day being able to do everything it promised it would)


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## wst3

Short answer - Finale, since 1996 or thereabouts. So yes, inertia is a contributing factor...

My primary tools started Sonar, Sound Forge, and Finale, but I am always looking around for better ways to do things, and several years ago I added Wavelab to the mix, a couple of years ago I switched "loyalties", and Wavelab has been the primary audio tool since.

Not so easy with the DAW and Notation! (can't remember, don't think it was terribly simple with audio either!)

I have Studio One and Notion, on the notion (oh come on, you thought I'd pass that up?) that they might work well together. They work better together than Finale and Sonar, but not (yet) significantly so.

Way back when I did spend time with Sibelius, and I've spent time with Overture and Notion and a couple others... I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember that the choice between Sibelius and Finale came down to a coin toss, or rather Sibelius was investing most of their energy on playback and what I needed was an easy to use notation editor. Not that Finale turned out to be easy!

On the other hand, one of my favorite melodies came about from an accident - I was trying to play a piece into Finale, and it came out in 6/8 time, and that just worked!


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## snedz2

shnootre said:


> For layout, though, Finale is really rough. A LOT of stuff that should be automated isn't. For instance - EVERY time you put an accent on a note that begins a slur, you have to manually raise the articulation to fix a collision.



Hi shnootre,

Try selecting the "inside slurs" option in the Articulation Designer, it will sort your collisions out.


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## pmcrockett

wcreed51 said:


> Actually, Overture CAN give you the performance nuances of a DAW. It has full graphical editing of all MIDI parameters visually synced to the notation.
> 
> I think all notation packages have demo versions available, so good to spend some time with all of them.


Interesting -- this does make it potentially viable as a Sibelius/Pro Tools replacement. Do you have enough experience with Overture to comment on how well it handles keyswitches, one-per-track articulations, and large templates?


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## dcoscina

Rodney Money said:


> I mostly live in the "live performance concert world" where all of my publishers have asked me to send only two types of files to them: Finale or Sibelius. Once people understand that notation software is for scores and DAWs are for sound I believe they will be much happier. But with that said, I believe it would actually be quite easy, lol yeah right, for a developer to develop a true DAW/ Notation Software. All you would have to do is work on the score, freeze it, then edit the midi, or work on the sound, freeze it, then quantize for the score view. Then have some humanization features for styles, ornamentation, varied tempo, and tuning, and a true legato feature that compensates for the lag. The real issue though would be the cost of the product if you added the professionalism of a notation program like Finale with the DAW capabilities of Cubase it could run you at least $1300. actually, that doesn't sound too bad. Some of y'all would pay that much for the "perfect" string library without batting an eye. I've pushed Finale to its peak before I switched to Cubase a year and a half ago. This was the best concerning sound quality I could do with Finale before switching to Cubase:



I wish more developers would work on perfecting the playback like notion does- make it transparent so the composer can just concentrate on the music not the technology


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## fratveno

shnootre said:


> There are all kinds of little glitches (for instance, I've discovered that when you set up human playback to work with Spitfire's UACC controller-based articulation switching, it works, but the change is sent a little too late (you can see this if you export into a DAW) - this can be manually corrected, but is very frustrating before you diagnose the problem.



Did you report this problem to Makemusic? The timing of controller data (in general) has been off since version 2014, and I've tried unsuccessully to convince them that this is a bug rather than user error. I assume you mean this can be corrected in the DAW, but if you managed to correct it in Finale, it would be interesting to know how you managed


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## mac88104

The new notation editor of reaper is very practical to use :







It still lacks functions but developers work at the speed of light and listen to users.


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## Michael Antrum

I am a bit of a Notion fan.

First of all, it is much less expensive than Dorico/Finale/Sibelius and it also has an iPad version, that when I use the Apple pencil, allows me to write the score directly directly on the iPad display, which it then recognises and enters onto the staves.

I can sit down with an iPad and Apple pencil, sketch out a score, save it to the cloud, and then open it on my desktop machine for final polishing. I simply love this.

I understand that it is not as comprehensive as the bigger programs, but if you are new to scoring it will more than likely do everything you need for some time to come. I am finding that I am doing much more composing, as I can write anywhere - bars, coffee shops, hotels etc. as I am travelling around. It's not much less convenient than pen and paper !

Also the licensing policy is very generous for putting on desktop at home, work and laptop, and it is cross platform. It seems from my account that I can have the software activated on 5 machines, which is more than generous. (only using 3).

So for the money I think it's great value, and the interface is very easy to get to grips with. It's not perfect, but then neither are the others. Presonus seem to be a pretty proactive in updating their software products, unlike some who seem to let their software stagnate.

(Note the iPad App is extra - about a £ 10 I think, and the handwriting module is another £ 5 or so - still amazing value).

Hope this helps.


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## pinki

Yes I'm a bit of a Notion fan too!
For workflow here is my secret weapon: I use Miroslav with Notion (Notion has a Miroslav soundset) to compose in, and then transfer to DP to produce. It's a phenomenal combination and the total price for Notion and Miroslav was less than $100 after cross grades and picking up Miroslav in a sale! It's amazing what can be achieved compositionally with this combination.
If the need is for engraving then no, not Notion, that's Finale/Sibelius/Dorico land.
But to sketch (and yes mikeybabes the ipad app is FAB!) and concentrate on ideas it's Notion Notion Notion!!


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## peter5992

Schatzie said:


> I'm new to film scoring and was considering shelling out the cash to buy Sibelius and Pro Tools. I was at NAMM this past weekend and was given a demonstration of Overture 5 and told it is able to replace Sibelius and Pro Tools for a fraction of the price. To me it sounds too good to be true, but I'd like some feedback on different notation softwares before I buy one. Is Overture 5 actually able to create a high-quality mockup of a score, or is it worth the money to buy Sibelius and use Pro Tools or Cubase to create the mockup? Thanks for all your help.



Sibelius and Finale are the current market leaders; if you work as a professional film orchestrator you'll have either (or both). Dorico is a new kid on the block, from which I have personally high expectations, given the stellar team behind it (headed by Daniel Spreadbury and with many of the people who used to work at Avid Sibelius, including Paul Walmsley and others). But it still has a long way to go - for film orchestration eg it misses large time signatures, no video / timecode (which may or may not be important for orchestration); no good support for percussion instruments; playback is in really early stage of development (but with great hopes for the future). 

I currently have Sibelius, which I love, and Dorico (which I'm getting familiar with - workflow is really different from Sibelius). I have no experience with Finale, or Overture. I also have Notion but can't say I find it very intuitive (had it since version 3). I'm pretty sceptical about any claims by Overture that it will replace Sibelius and Pro Tools. By the way, there are stories out there that "Sibelius is dead" in terms of development - that is BS, I had lunch with the two main product managers (Sam Butler and Joe Pearson), very nice guys, I can assure you that Sibelius is far from dead. 

Note that Sibelius and Finale (and Dorico) are primarily notation / engraving programs - used to create professionally looking scores and parts, based on midi. Some folks use it for original composition and then create midi mockups, exporting midi from Sibelius / Finale. If you're getting into film scoring, unless you have a pretty solid classical music background, you might prefer starting out with a sequencing program.

My sequencing program is Reaper, which I love; very powerful, flexible, fun and helpful user forum, custom user skins with anything from huge analogue consoles (White Tie's Imperial Theme) to Pro Tools lookalikes. I also have Pro Tools (10, 11 and 12) which I use primarily for audio post and to create sessions with rendered music to easily hand them off to mixers. Pro Tools does have midi features but I've never really tried them (from what I heard, it's pretty clunky to use).


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## Paul T McGraw

peter5992 said:


> Sibelius and Finale are the current market leaders; if you work as a professional film orchestrator you'll have either (or both). Dorico is a new kid on the block, from which I have personally high expectations, given the stellar team behind it (headed by Daniel Spreadbury and with many of the people who used to work at Avid Sibelius, including Paul Walmsley and others). But it still has a long way to go - for film orchestration eg it misses large time signatures, no video / timecode (which may or may not be important for orchestration); no good support for percussion instruments; playback is in really early stage of development (but with great hopes for the future).
> 
> I currently have Sibelius, which I love, and Dorico (which I'm getting familiar with - workflow is really different from Sibelius). I have no experience with Finale, or Overture. I also have Notion but can't say I find it very intuitive (had it since version 3). I'm pretty sceptical about any claims by Overture that it will replace Sibelius and Pro Tools. By the way, there are stories out there that "Sibelius is dead" in terms of development - that is BS, I had lunch with the two main product managers (Sam Butler and Joe Pearson), very nice guys, I can assure you that Sibelius is far from dead.
> 
> Note that Sibelius and Finale (and Dorico) are primarily notation / engraving programs - used to create professionally looking scores and parts, based on midi. Some folks use it for original composition and then create midi mockups, exporting midi from Sibelius / Finale. If you're getting into film scoring, unless you have a pretty solid classical music background, you might prefer starting out with a sequencing program.
> 
> My sequencing program is Reaper, which I love; very powerful, flexible, fun and helpful user forum, custom user skins with anything from huge analogue consoles (White Tie's Imperial Theme) to Pro Tools lookalikes. I also have Pro Tools (10, 11 and 12) which I use primarily for audio post and to create sessions with rendered music to easily hand them off to mixers. Pro Tools does have midi features but I've never really tried them (from what I heard, it's pretty clunky to use).



Thank you @peter5992 for your detailed post. As a long time Sibelius user, I believe the program has all of the features I could ever want in notation software. In my view, and this is just my opinion, the biggest improvements the Sibelius team could make are better, deeper, more detailed tutorials combined with on screen tool tips, and better support for VST's to further improve playback.

Since you had a chance to actually discuss future plans with the development team, can you give us any hints as to future improvements planned?


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## peter5992

Paul T McGraw said:


> Thank you @peter5992 for your detailed post. As a long time Sibelius user, I believe the program has all of the features I could ever want in notation software. In my view, and this is just my opinion, the biggest improvements the Sibelius team could make are better, deeper, more detailed tutorials combined with on screen tool tips, and better support for VST's to further improve playback.
> 
> Since you had a chance to actually discuss future plans with the development team, can you give us any hints as to future improvements planned?



LOL - you are putting me on the spot. This was the first time I ever got to meet Sam, who is the most senior developer in charge - I had met Joe earlier. They did not swear me to secrecy, and I didn't sign any Non-Disclosure Agreement, but still, some of what we talked about was not for public consumption. Traditionally even when Daniel Spreadbury was still at Sibelius they were careful not to create false expectations or rumors. 

You know how rumors can start to lead a life of their own? Especially these days ... 

That said, I don't think you should expect any revolutionary developments in terms of playback any time soon -- I have pretty strong feelings about the integration of notation and DAW programs, which goes back years ... my ideal world is one where you can work in a notation environment, while being able to tweak the midi playback in some detail as well. Dorico may offer that, on the horizon. But as far as Sibelius is concerned, the "sound world" system since Sibelius 5 (2007) isn't going to be abandoned any time soon from what I can tell. Sam's and Joe's take is that it is up to third party developers to create their own soundsets to integrate their VSTs with Sibelius. 

Aside from that, they are busy working on improvements regarding xml import, fixing bugs (yes they are aware of the Ideascale), and they have something on the horizon in terms of improvement of the video playback inside of Sibelius. Well and then there is other more commercial stuff, and that's probably more than I should have shared already.  

Here's a picture of the three of us (from left to right: Joe, me - wearing Reaper T shirt, Sam).


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## Hans Josef

Hi,
it is interesting to hear what Sam said: "Sam's and Joe's take is that it is up to third party developers to create their own soundsets to integrate their VSTs with Sibelius."
But it is up to the Sibelius developer that their sound system works! 
Sadly it works not so great. And this is also true for Finale. 
But the customers believe the sample library developer can't get it work in the right way....

Good to hear that the people at Sibelius will work on the sound set issues!


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## thov72

I think the guy at Ouverture should hand out a few copies to vi-c members .... there is so much speculation to what it can do and what it can´t ....


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## wcreed51

There's a demo available...


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## peter5992

Hans Josef said:


> Hi,
> it is interesting to hear what Sam said: "Sam's and Joe's take is that it is up to third party developers to create their own soundsets to integrate their VSTs with Sibelius."
> But it is up to the Sibelius developer that their sound system works!
> Sadly it works not so great. And this is also true for Finale.
> But the customers believe the sample library developer can't get it work in the right way....
> 
> Good to hear that the people at Sibelius will work on the sound set issues!



Hi Hans:

I mentioned you as one of the people who managed to put together a sound set that works with your sample library (Xsample Chamber Ensemble). I purchased it back in 2008 (2009?) and it worked well with Sibelius back then - and last year I got the upgrade as well. 

I haven't used your library in several years but I really liked it when it first came out. You should get in touch with Sam and Joe if you feel there's something wrong with their sound system! (frankly I agree that they should have something different offering more flexibility but who am I).


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## Hans Josef

peter5992 said:


> Hi Hans:
> 
> I mentioned you as one of the people who managed to put together a sound set that works with your sample library (Xsample Chamber Ensemble). I purchased it back in 2008 (2009?) and it worked well with Sibelius back then - and last year I got the upgrade as well.



Hi Peter,
it is curious for us at Xsample, some customers say it works very well and some say it works not. It seems that something changed since the first release of the Sibelius sound world. Sadly it seems to be an secret. Perharps the original developer of the sound set system isn't working any more for Sibelius. The same is for Finale. Robert Piechaud, the father of Finale's Human Playback isn't working any more for Make Music. 
Perharps they are searching for a new developer. Hopefully this will be a person which is musician and programmer. In my opinion you can hear it in Finale that the programmer is also a musician. The drawback is that you have to accept this personal musical interpretation. Because it is programmed with much "blackbox" things which can't be modified by users. 
My personal opinion on this is, that a lot of things are working very great with Finale and also Sibelius. But you have to accept some issues which don't work. 

Conclusion: It is a lot of fun to work with notation programs which have a playback system.


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## shnootre

fratveno said:


> Did you report this problem to Makemusic? The timing of controller data (in general) has been off since version 2014, and I've tried unsuccessully to convince them that this is a bug rather than user error. I assume you mean this can be corrected in the DAW, but if you managed to correct it in Finale, it would be interesting to know how you managed



Ooh just seeing this. Honestly, I never did report to Makemusic. I fear that when they hear "UACC" their ears will turn off, as they go out of their way not to support the use of 3rd party libraries. But I will let them know. And yes, it CAN be corrected in the DAW. The only way to correct in Finale is to do it manually with the midi tool. I set up a macro with an app called Keyboard Maestro so I can select any amount of music and with one click, essentially, assign a value for controller 32. But that's a far cry from human playback working properly!


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## peter5992

Hans Josef said:


> Hi Peter,
> it is curious for us at Xsample, some customers say it works very well and some say it works not. It seems that something changed since the first release of the Sibelius sound world. Sadly it seems to be an secret. Perharps the original developer of the sound set system isn't working any more for Sibelius. The same is for Finale. Robert Piechaud, the father of Finale's Human Playback isn't working any more for Make Music.
> Perharps they are searching for a new developer. Hopefully this will be a person which is musician and programmer. In my opinion you can hear it in Finale that the programmer is also a musician. The drawback is that you have to accept this personal musical interpretation. Because it is programmed with much "blackbox" things which can't be modified by users.
> My personal opinion on this is, that a lot of things are working very great with Finale and also Sibelius. But you have to accept some issues which don't work.
> 
> Conclusion: It is a lot of fun to work with notation programs which have a playback system.



True ... my take on why there may not be that much attention to playback and playback configurations and sound IDs and what have you, is that the market for people who are really interested in this, is probably pretty small. 

Traditionally, programs like Sibelius and Finale were designed to be engraving tools - not music production programs like DAWs.

No matter how much time and energy you throw at creating soundsets in Sibelius, in the end of the day, given the limited tools to tweak playback and fiddle with midi notes, it's never going to be a good midi mockup by nowadays standards. At least in the world of film music, unless you are John Williams, to get cues approved you need to get them in pretty good shape in terms of playback, before you even get to the scoring stage. 

Dorico may have a promising future in terms of playback ... but it's still early days.


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## Matt Riley

I'm using Finale 25 rewired to Logic X and really loving the workflow. Both apps MusicXML import and export with helps a lot.


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## Flaneurette

MagicScore Maestro. By far the best for me. https://www.musicaleditor.com/music-notation-software.html

Not sure why it's not very well known, it's very good.

In this demo, they notate non-standard notation "Threnody for Victims of Hiroshima" by Krzysztof Penderecki.


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## Maximvs

Flaneurette said:


> MagicScore Maestro. By far the best for me. https://www.musicaleditor.com/music-notation-software.html
> 
> Not sure why it's not very well known, it's very good.
> 
> In this demo, they notate non-standard notation "Threnody for Victims of Hiroshima" by Krzysztof Penderecki.




Thanks a lot for pointing this out!

Is it possible to use VI instruments and sample libraries for realistic playback with this software?


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## Flaneurette

Hi Massimo,

Not that I know of. You can select your own soundfonts though. It comes with a soundfont pack that sounds surprisingly good for playing MIDI. For the price it's a really useful tool. One can workout some very complex ideas with it. I've used Finale for, oh, two decades, and I find this little program of more use to me. They have a demo.


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## Maximvs

Flaneurette said:


> Hi Massimo,
> 
> Not that I know of. You can select your own soundfonts though. It comes with a soundfont pack that sounds surprisingly good for playing MIDI. For the price it's a really useful tool. One can workout some very complex ideas with it. I've used Finale for, oh, two decades, and I find this little program of more use to me. They have a demo.



Thanks a lot Flaneurette for your kind reply!

I have to say that the Krzysztof Penderecki score demonstration on the video you kindly gave link to is impressive... I have been using Sibelius for a long time and creating something like that will require a lot of sweat and tears to produce, if possible at all actually, and with MusicScore Maestro is a breeze... Maybe in the future they will implement VST but for the price is a great tool indeed... will test it out when I have some time at hand...

Cheers, Max


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## dcoscina

Looks cool but only PC so it doesn't have any future in my studio as I'm entirely Mac based. But very cool software.


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## robgb

I tend to use whatever notation comes with the DAW when I bother with notation at all. But then I don't read or write with any real proficiency, and work entirely on instinct, so this comment is probably moot.


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