Music Notation in DP 7 vs sibelius and finale

[bell222]

I was wondering is the notation DP 7 has to offer as usable as sibelius and finale or is it limited? Can I add all of the music expressions and stuff like that in DP like I could in the other software packages like sibelius and finale? Thanks. I'm writing a music book which is why I would need the sheet music notation and haven't really explored much of DP's notation abilities. Thanks.

[Kurt Cowling]

The short answer is "no". I have laid out a book published by Hal Leonard and used Sibelius. DP is ok for knocking out lead sheets and viewing what is in your tracks, but I would never use it to lay out a book.

[bell222]

hmmm. Thanks for the headsup about that. The good thing is that I'm doing Piano Book 1 so the music is very simple and I'm really experienced at Photoshop so I could probably get away with using it for the first book until I can get some revenue from it to afford $450 for Finale. I will definitely want to purchase it. I wonder if the Print Music which is the lite version would work for what I'm using it for. That's only $100 on Musicians Friend. What do you think?

[bell222]

I would only be going to level 4 in the book series so that complication of sheet music would be what most people use everyday in the real world. I saw the scaled down version of Finale called Print Music. Do you think that would suffice? I could afford that now if it would be.

[FMiguelez]

Almost any dedicated notation program will do much more than DP's humble QS.
It doesn't even have slurs!

Also, doing that in photoshop sounds like a nightmare.
I would suggest waiting until you can afford a decent notation app (even MakeMusic's cheaper options), or simply hire a music copyist for this particular job.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Print music will probably be fine for a simple project. Does Make Music have a demo version? I would think they did since they have one for Finale.

If you are outputting image files, then Word can also work and probably be a bit more efficient in terms of layout.

[stubbsonic]

I do use DP for notation, but end up writing things in like slurs, accents, staccato, etc.

Sibelius is better.

You might consider Muse Score as a possible alternative. It is free.

http://musescore.org

[bell222]

wow! is there a catch to it being free?

[bell222]

is it an open source program and legal to use for business and making money from using it to score?

[stubbsonic]

You can read up on it. It is free and quite good.

[Kurt Cowling]

There is also Sibelius First. For many people it's all they ever need from Sibelius. It's $119 US.

[bell222]

I tried that Musecore and it's great! Made sure it was totally legal and legit and glad it was. I never compose music that way but it's great when writing a music lesson book for sure. Thanks for introducing me to that. On my budget, it was perfect!!