PSA for composers and musicians who don't have sheet music software

[solarbird]

Finale NotePad for Windows and OS X, sheet music software which you can use to compose and print basic sheet music, is currently downloadable for free. This has been the normal state since it was released. However, they're about to yank the 2008 version and replace it with a new (2009) version, which will not be free of charge, and all previous versions will be yanked from their website and unavailable for download. So if you want to play with a version that does not require payment, you should grab it soon.

Linux users could grab a variety of things, including Rosegarden, which also does a lot of other things, but which sadly does not have compiles for OSX and because of their current toolkits would be a nontrivial conversion effort.

Comments

[callibr8]

Thanks for the tip. Downloading now.

[maellenkleth]

thanks for the reminder; passed onward to where it will do most good. ^_^

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks! I had an old version for Windows, but haven't had occasion to print any music since switching to Mac. Never know when it might be useful, so...

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'll compare it to LilyPond, (http://lilypond.org/web/) which I've been using for quite a while. It's free, open source, and being actively developed by people who care deeply about music engraving.