Sheet Music, the Open Source Way

Earlier today, Nathan was digging through my drawer and found my old recorder flute.  I played a couple simple tunes for him and he LOVED it - he's never really seen me create music before.  Well, my silver Bach Stradivarius trumpet happened to be lying right under the bed.  So I pulled it out for the first time in ten years.  I oiled the valves and played a couple simple tunes on it.  Even with my rusty lips, the horn sounded pretty good, and Nathan was enchanted.  I'll admit: I was too.  There's a reason I played the trumpet for nine years, and holding that beautiful horn in my hands again, I remembered why.

I'm sure Nathan would love to hear my old jazz standards, show tunes, classical baroque, and Star Trek themes.  But what he really wants is his children's songs.  He literally jumped for joy when I played "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."  The problem: I don't have sheet music for any of those things.

The solution: sheet music software.  As a classical trumpet player, I have a lot of experience transposing pieces (Bb trumpets weren't popular until the 20th century).  Back in high school, I realized the value of using software: you get a clean copy that is easy to read, easy to transmit, and easy to reproduce.  (Well, back then, it was hard to transmit anything electronic over a modem, but it's still a benefit.)  But what about Linux?  I'd never tried to typeset printed music in Linux.

Until now.

Turns out there are multiple excellent solutions, and they're all free.  Scroll down for the rundown.

MuseScore

This is probably the winner.  Very simple, easy to use, and has all the basic features I need.  From the beginning, it shows how your music will look on a piece of paper, which is the whole point, after all.  It can import midi files, which is a big part of my workflow.  Another key feature is the ability to transpose.  In the screenshot you can see the same melody, written out for piano and trumpet.  Because the trumpet is in Bb, I needed MuseScore to transpose it for me.  It was happy to oblige.

Frescobaldi

Frescobaldi is a cover app for LilyPond.  That should have been the first warning sign; when something brags that it's a wrapper for something else, that means you're looking at an ape man.  It may not be quite as ugly as an ape, but it's sure as hell not civilized.  Turns out Frescobaldi wants you to input your music in code.  Like writing a web page in 1995.  Just an awful prospect.  No screenshot will be furnished, and none should be requested.  I struggled with it just long enough to figure out that it wouldn't import midi files without the help of a third program, and then I gave up.

Noteflight

Our last entrant is not Linux software at all; it's from the cloud.  Cloud computing has gotten a lot of buzz lately, most of it undeserved, but Noteflight could be a poster child.

The promise of cloud computer is essentially a return to "thin clients:" you don't need to pay lots of money for a fancy computer with lots of software, all you need is a simple thing that can connect to the internet.  All the things you do--word processing, presentations, photo editing--can now be done online.  It turns out that list includes sheet music, too.  It can import midi files and does a beautiful job printing to a sheet of paper.

Because it lives on the web, it's got cool features, like the ability to embed in another web page.  Check this out:

The Winner: Tie

I was very pleased with Noteflight, especially its web-oriented features.  In the age of Web 2.0, who wouldn't want to share their sheet music creations on Facebook?  On the other hand, MuseScore automatically put bar numbers at the beginning of each line.  With my experience playing symphonies, automatic bar numbers are a useful feature.  I couldn't find a way of doing it on Noteflight.

Both programs showed light bugs.  While I was entering lyrics in Noteflight, the page suddenly disappeared.  My work was still there, but it took me a few minutes to get it back.  MuseScore made it easy to add a title and composer, but forgot to print them.  These bugs are minor and easily fixable (I'm sure), but they prevent either program from gaining a clear advantage.

Ultimately, I'm used to running programs on my computer.  I've been using Google Docs for a couple years now, but I still find myself turning to OpenOffice or even Microsoft Office for anything beyond the basics.  The cloud seems very cool, but also a little strange.  Being tied to the internet may be a benefit or a drawback, I'm not sure yet.  I will be using both programs further.

Where to get them

Both programs are free and available for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Noteflight: http://www.noteflight.com

MuseScore: http://musescore.org