A friend (non-professional) is interested in notation software (PC only). I'm not familiar with what's available and what might be appropriate for her so I said I'd check it out. This would be to simply record her songs for personal use and also have the score for reference. Ideally this would have relatively easy learning curve and not cost a lot. Any suggestions??

Thanks!

drbam

http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/default.aspx

Never used this one, but it's free! We've used Finale Allegro on the Mac - nice app.

mud

Thanks so much! This is exactly what I was looking for.

drbam

Here are other options:

MidiNotate Player (free)

NoteWorthy Composer (shareware)

And the best of all, but probably too complicated for your friend, is the awesome program, LilyPond.

Sibelius

Overkill for what you want, but Sibelius is awesome.

Another Finale fan here...when we hire 'let er rip' guys, they just seem to know what to do...when we hire classical folks from the orchestra, they are almost helpless unless they have charts.

Thanks again everyone! I think the sheer number of choices here may push her over the edge!

drbam

Both Finale and Sibelius have 'dumbed down' versions that go for about $100. The Finale NotePad will probably show it's limitations sooner than you'd like but it is nice to have a functional freebie around.

I keep and use both but Sibelius is my prefered notation tool and stays updated. My Finale is 2 years old.

For basic notation - leadsheets and chord charts - there is probably no need for fully professional versions of either one of these.