I've stubbornly stayed on Sibelius 6 for years, but it no longer works on OS X Catalina, so I was pondering biting the bullet and upgrading to 8. But after seeing this... Does anyone have any recommendations for a _real_ alternative they've used?* I took a look at MuseScore a couple of years ago and the impression I got was that it was fine for casual usage and for producing fairly simple scores, but lacked a lot of…
With exception to graphical score options, Dorico is by far the best out there now. Especially for orchestral/band scores where one stave normally has multiple parts (2 flutes, etc), Dorico can handle that natively now.
Dorico has great out-of-the-box defaults and the people behind it genuinely care about great engraving.
Perhaps Dorico has better graphical score engraving by now, but it didn't when it came out. I personally don't have much use for that, so I haven't followed.
I would hedge that's the majority of the world doesn't learn or doesn't care for Western notation to be fair.
And you'd be wrong. Western notation is used throughout the world, even more so than local notation systems. That's 100% true for classical, jazz, marching band, etc. musicians, but also for musicians in "pop" genres. Even folk/ethnic musicians around the world, with a few exceptions, are more common to use western notation than their historical notation (if available). If they gig and work with studios and orchestra…
My point is that the perceived "ubiquity" of notation is far exceeded by the plethora of ways music is recorded outside notation or recorded in a symbolic format that is nothing like western notation (from which is obviously the context of the OP).
I can think of sample-based music (MPC/Decks/Acousmatic tradition/Ikeda/Microsound/Chartier/Field-recordings), improvised music, as well as the most obvious modern development of MIDI data and the piano roll which is not an interchangeable format with a "score".
If we aren't exclusively talking about "notation" in a more general sense, we haven't even touched on the wealth of folk/traditional music out there with literally no recorded symbolic formats or concept of a written history such as australian aboriginal music.
Or the two of you are just talking about different things. It is totally possible for "Western notation is used throughout the world" and "the majority of the world does not learn Western notation" to be true at the same time. What relevance their comment has is beyond me- perhaps making a point about the relatively niche market of "people who want to write music"- but who knows.
> "the majority of the world does not learn Western notation" to be true at the same time. Well, that's true in the sense that non-musicians don't care for it, but that's also irrelevant (and something everybody already knows). If the parent was making that statement, I'm not sure why they felt it needed to be said :-)
Please see my response above and tell me my original comment is irrelevant.
And you'd be wrong. Western notation is used throughout the world, even more so than local notation systems. That's 100% true for classical, jazz, marching band, etc. musicians, but also for musicians in "pop" genres. Even folk/ethnic musicians around the world, with a few exceptions, are more common to use western notation than their historical notation (if available). If they gig and work with studios and orchestra…
Or the two of you are just talking about different things. It is totally possible for "Western notation is used throughout the world" and "the majority of the world does not learn Western notation" to be true at the same time. What relevance their comment has is beyond me- perhaps making a point about the relatively niche market of "people who want to write music"- but who knows.
You summed it up pretty well, writing scores is highly niche at this point.
I would hedge that's the majority of the world doesn't learn or doesn't care for Western notation to be fair.
And you'd be wrong. Western notation is used throughout the world, even more so than local notation systems. That's 100% true for classical, jazz, marching band, etc. musicians, but also for musicians in "pop" genres. Even folk/ethnic musicians around the world, with a few exceptions, are more common to use western notation than their historical notation (if available). If they gig and work with studios and orchestra…
lol as someone with a PhD in music and many years experience in industry and academia I can't rationalise such a reductive view of music as anything but lack of lateral thinking to imagine a world where western notation isn't king. I can think of heaps of examples where western notation absolutely isn't used- tabla bol, gamelan, zither/guqin/guzhen, indian classical music, just to name a few (and without being even slightly exhaustive). Western notation absolutely is used throughout the world but you can't say at all that it's used more than traditional notation systems because it's usually irrelevant for tuning systems- shruti in indian classical, for example- or rhythmic structures. I would be curious as to how exactly you can say with any certainty that it's more likely that people use western notation, seeing as it's categorically not true, even if we're not touching on the vast numbers of people who participate in oral traditions, either. I've also rarely worked session musicians who aren't orchestral who use anything other than charts and an enormous amount of the music we consume in the west is produced in a DAW or whatever without ever touching notation...
And you'd be wrong. Western notation is used throughout the world, even more so than local notation systems. That's 100% true for classical, jazz, marching band, etc. musicians, but also for musicians in "pop" genres. Even folk/ethnic musicians around the world, with a few exceptions, are more common to use western notation than their historical notation (if available). If they gig and work with studios and orchestra…
lol as someone with a PhD in music and many years experience in industry and academia I can't rationalise such a reductive view of music as anything but lack of lateral thinking to imagine a world where western notation isn't king. I can think of heaps of examples where western notation absolutely isn't used- tabla bol, gamelan, zither/guqin/guzhen, indian classical music, just to name a few (and without being even s…
There's a very good video on the way too narrow view many people in the west have of music.
I know the title will set people off in a place like this, but it's not a 2014 Tumblr-level "kill white people" style analysis. Totally worth the time.
This video is only a few years old but should already be considered a classic. Not long after, the video's creator was hired to lead design of MuseScore (another sheet music desktop app). I find the world of music notation software to be fascinating in its diversity of design philosophies. Something about music notation — its complexity, plus its worldwide ubiquity, plus the business reality that there's (relatively)…
> Yes, Sibelius and Finale are the longtime popular applications, but Dorico recently came on the scene with a genuinely new philosophy, and there are lots of less popular apps, mostly one-person-show kinds of things, with different approaches to how editing music should work.
Another musical notation program which has quite some fans in Germany is capella:
lol as someone with a PhD in music and many years experience in industry and academia I can't rationalise such a reductive view of music as anything but lack of lateral thinking to imagine a world where western notation isn't king. I can think of heaps of examples where western notation absolutely isn't used- tabla bol, gamelan, zither/guqin/guzhen, indian classical music, just to name a few (and without being even s…
There's a very good video on the way too narrow view many people in the west have of music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA I know the title will set people off in a place like this, but it's not a 2014 Tumblr-level "kill white people" style analysis. Totally worth the time.
Thanks for sharing this. I forgot about it but have watched it and it's quite a striking video for Adam Neely who usually covers jazz-bro harmonic complexity wank.
I've stubbornly stayed on Sibelius 6 for years, but it no longer works on OS X Catalina, so I was pondering biting the bullet and upgrading to 8. But after seeing this... Does anyone have any recommendations for a _real_ alternative they've used?* I took a look at MuseScore a couple of years ago and the impression I got was that it was fine for casual usage and for producing fairly simple scores, but lacked a lot of…
I used Sibelius for years and am happy to have switched to Dorico.
lol as someone with a PhD in music and many years experience in industry and academia I can't rationalise such a reductive view of music as anything but lack of lateral thinking to imagine a world where western notation isn't king. I can think of heaps of examples where western notation absolutely isn't used- tabla bol, gamelan, zither/guqin/guzhen, indian classical music, just to name a few (and without being even s…
There's a very good video on the way too narrow view many people in the west have of music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA I know the title will set people off in a place like this, but it's not a 2014 Tumblr-level "kill white people" style analysis. Totally worth the time.
That was a great video. Extremely well researched, very engaging, fantastic production quality and eye opening. Thank you for sharing.