Sometimes music notation software is perfect for the job, but other times, it’s the related technology that’s better suited to the task. Fortunately, we cover both sides of the equation on Scoring Notes — and it’s the latter part that Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss on this podcast episode.
When creating scores and parts, music notation software is clearly the choice. But what about front matter — the pages of text and sometimes other markings and symbols that preface the music? For that, better options may exist. We look at the pros and cons of making that material directly in music notation software, and suggest apps for when it’s helpful to split the job.
We talk about some of our favorite apps specifically for working with PDFs and the surprising number of ways that you can edit a file using those apps — and may need to do so — without actually having access to the music notation files or the software.
What about when you need to make music notation outside of notation software? For that, there is a whole suite of fonts designed to create music notation within non-music apps. They’re called MusFonts, and Dan Kreider created them to fill this niche.
For many users, creating audio is an essential component of music notation software, and we outline ways to complement the built-in process of making MIDI mockups with other software without getting too complicated.
Finally, we give a shout-out to our favorite piece of related technology.
More from Scoring Notes:
- Export PDF to true black in Finale, and a macro for all parts
- Fix printing problems with Sibelius, PDFs, and Acrobat
- Quickly scale many PDFs with PDF-BatchScale
- Make booklets and 2-ups with PDF-BatchBooklet
- PDF-MusicBinder and PDF-BatchStitch utilities for music printing
- File renaming and PDF batch utilities
- MusGlyphs, an advanced music text font
- MusGlyphs updated to 2.1; text version added
- MusAnalysis, an advanced font for musical analysis
- MusFrets, a font for chord diagrams
- Introducing Ambitus, a new font for pitch incipits, scales, and range diagrams
- Preparing teaching materials in music notation software
- “Playing” with notation software, part 1 of 2
- “Playing” with notation software, part 2 of 2
Apps and fonts we talk about:
Dave
Exactly the information I went looking for today (I’m working on a songbook that combines a bunch of shorter works). Thanks!
Philip Rothman
Great!
Mike Philcox
Thank you for a great summary of several related technologies. I was interested to hear on a previous blog post that one of you (David) was excited to receive a Stream Deck Plus for Christmas. This device might also have qualified as related technology and I’m wondering how likely we are to hear anything in future blogs concerning the usefulness of this device with notation software and the possibility of related profiles for it.
Philip Rothman
Oh yes, we will have more to say about the Stream Deck sooner or later :-)
Carole Prietto
I use PDF Batch Stitch regularly. Great tool!
Philip Rothman
Excellent!