Musical Typesetting Program

[Chris Berardi]

I am working on a musical typesetting program, similar to Lilypond and ABC. I wanted to know if you were to use such a program, what kind of features and abilities would you expect or want from it?

[Chris Berardi]

No one?

[Amandalyn]

I've been looking for a program that will make simple lead sheets. IE:song structure ( measures, beats) with a way to add lyrics text.
It would be nice to include a chord dictionary in the software program that can be accessed.
Importing features would be good. Also to be able to import or convert to PDF.

[Mandophyte]

Amandalyn,

Until Chris's work matures you might like to try ABC, see my signaure.

[Dennis Ladd]

I like to use programs that can also generate tabs underneath each staff line. The ideal: To be able to have a line of melody with lyrics above the guitar back-up in standard notation above the guitar back-up in tab.

And make it easy! (And that's gotta be hard.)

[Bill Van Liere]

I use a program called MusEdit which generates tab/notation together. Also does lyrics, chord diagrams etc. www.musedit.com Created by Doug Rodgers, good guy, very helpful. Not expensive and easy to use. I got mine at Elderly.

[Amandalyn]

I use a program called MusEdit which generates tab/notation together. Also does lyrics, chord diagrams etc. www.musedit.com Created by Doug Rodgers, good guy, very helpful. Not expensive and easy to use. I got mine at Elderly.

Thanks- this program has the 'chord chart' feature I was looking for. Also seems to offer alot of options.
Teri

[Robb Todd]

This is a little off topic but does anyone know of a progam that will show the notation on screen as you play?
I am learning and whilst doing exercises it would be good to see the notes on a scale in front of me. Or is that ambitious?

[Chris Berardi]

Thanks for the replies!

[Chris Berardi]

Also to be able to import or convert to PDF.

Exporting to PDF is trivial once the output is in PostScript. However, to import a PDF and extract the music from it is well outside the scope of this project (and definitely non-trivial) -- it is in fact, in my mind, bordering on the realms of fields such as voice recognition.

[Chris Berardi]

This is a little off topic but does anyone know of a progam that will show the notation on screen as you play?
I am learning and whilst doing exercises it would be good to see the notes on a scale in front of me. Or is that ambitious?

If you have a MIDI interface, there are several programs that will do this -- such as Rosegarden that will notate as you play.