Do any of you have any faves in the way of cheap or free software for writing out music?

Long ago, I had a program that I thought was a free, very limited version of Sebelius. I just downloaded the free version of Finale Notepad.

Is there anything else out there that I should look at?

Finale is all I've ever used. It's really good, in my opinion, but spendy.

In Finale, is there a way to raise an entire piece an octave?

Yes. You can also transpose easily.

It sounds like you should stick with Finale, but just in case it's helpful:

I have never used it but a lot of people recommend MuseScore. One of the guys who teaches a ton of music theory courses on Udemy uses it and I think recommends that you learn how to use MuseScore before going very far into his course.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
Yes. You can also transpose easily.

I figured out how to change key. But when I went from CM to DM, it just raised everything one step. I'd really like to raise it an octave and one step.

Can you tell me how to do that?

Thanks bunches!

Sorry, I'm in Canada and not at the computer where my Finale lives. However, I seem to recall that to do what you want, you should first do the transposition, then the octave raise.

For the transposition, I believe there are at least two types - one transposes by literally moving everything up a step (like you encountered), where the other method transposes into the new scale.

There's a keystroke to raise it by an octave - select the notes you want to raise, then shift-up arrow to raise it an octave, and shift-down arrow to lower it an octave. However if memory serves, this can become a bit unwieldy because it will literally push the notes up and you'll have tons of those little lines (don't know what they're called) to show the new note in the new octave.

A much easier way is to select the measure(s) you want to raise, then go to the smart shape tool and select 8va. I seem to recall you can then click/drag the 8va across all the relevant measures, and some other things like that.

I guess it also depends on whether you're writing out the notation for someone to actually read and play from, or just to get a sense about how something would sound in a different key or a different octave. If it's just to hear, then you don't really need to bother about making it readable on the page.

I have used Musescore and Sibelius. I prefer Sibelius but it is not cheap, not by a long shot.

In Sibelius, to raise the whole piece an octave, you highlight the entire piece and press Shift-up arrow (or possibly CTRL-up arrow, I forget). I think that works in Musescore as well, so maybe it will work in Finale? As far as I know, Finale is also kind of expensive but once you buy it, it's yours, unlike Sibelius, which has gone to a subscription model, meaning you have to pay 100 bucks a year for it forever (if you are lucky enough to get the education discount like me - otherwise, I think it's 200 bucks a year(???)) Anyway, it's expensive. And support is awful - god help you if it randomly decides your license isn't valid (which it does sometimes for no reason).....the only way to get help is to bitch on some of the facebook user groups where one or two siblelius reps hang out....they seem to be able to take care of issues but trying to email their actual support address will get you nowhere. I don't think anyone actually ever replies.

Musescore is 100% free and they just revamped it - supposedly the new version is pretty amazing although I have not tried it yet. They hired a software developer who had a very successful youtube channel critiquing everything that was wrong with other notation programs and had him totally redesign their software and it is supposed to be awesome now. Heck, even before the redesign it was always pretty decent (especially for free!) -- I only paid for Sibelius because that is what our band music was distributed in and it was easier to work with the native files.

Be careful when you go to install it though - there's two different sites - they have a subscription site that is just for downloading and uploading music and then the actual music software which is free. A lot of people accidentally end up on the music site and think they have to pay and then get confused because there's no software to download. They really should rename one of their sites. This is the site to download the sofware: https://musescore.org/en

And if you have 20 minutes to spare and want to watch one of the funniest youtube videos I have ever seen, check this out - it's the aforementioned software developer's critique of Sibelius. Even if you've never used Sibelius and aren't familiar with it at all, I think anyone who knows anything about music notation or even user interface design in general will find it hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI (Start the video at the 6 minute mark if you want to get right to the good stuff, LOL!)