What notation editor do you use and why?

[diedeno]

Musescore 4
-does not support Jack anymore
-does not have sfz support anymore
-vst's do not work in Linux
and so on
https://musescore.org/en/node/334701
But is looks fantastic and is probably as good as the commercial dorico or sibelius -- which are not available for Linux anyway.
A new orchestral library "Muse Sounds" will be availlable for Linux.

[Linuxmusician01]

Musescore 4
-does not support Jack anymore
-does not have sfz support anymore
-vst's do not work in Linux
and so on
https://musescore.org/en/node/334701
But is looks fantastic and is probably as good as the commercial dorico or sibelius -- which are not available for Linux anyway.
A new orchestral library "Muse Sounds" will be availlable for Linux.

Sometimes an update ain't no upgrade.

[merlyn]

Thanks for the heads up, diedno.

Curse you, Muse Group! Curse you, Tantacrul! It's just so depressingly predictable that commercial interests (the Muse Group) blast in and wreck not one, but two bits of free software. The Muse Group have rocks in their head as they bought Ultimate Guitar and honestly I have never found a TAB on that that was 100% right.

[alex stone]

Musescore 4
-does not support Jack anymore
-does not have sfz support anymore
-vst's do not work in Linux
and so on
https://musescore.org/en/node/334701
But is looks fantastic and is probably as good as the commercial dorico or sibelius -- which are not available for Linux anyway.
A new orchestral library "Muse Sounds" will be availlable for Linux.

Sometimes an update ain't no upgrade.

Ain't that the truth.

[nils]

https://en.meming.world/images/en/6/6e/ ... ikachu.jpg

[alex stone]

https://en.meming.world/images/en/6/6e/ ... ikachu.jpg

Nils, on a sort of related note, I've been experimenting with Laborejo. As one would expect, it produces an elegant lilypond output.

I'd include it in a discussion about engravers/notation apps.

[nils]

Nils, on a sort of related note, I've been experimenting with Laborejo. As one would expect, it produces an elegant lilypond output.

I'd include it in a discussion about engravers/notation apps.

I am still working on Laborejo, but I have given up on actively getting anyone to use it. Not because I tried and failed but because I don't want to anymore. It's just a small hobby project now, "recreational programming" for my own fun.
Laborejo is still not a Lilypond-frontend though, eventhough you can use it to quickly export simple arrangements.

For serious notation, printed or pdf for me the only way has been, and still is, to write Lilypond textfiles.

[alex stone]

Nils, on a sort of related note, I've been experimenting with Laborejo. As one would expect, it produces an elegant lilypond output.

I'd include it in a discussion about engravers/notation apps.

I am still working on Laborejo, but I have given up on actively getting anyone to use it. Not because I tried and failed but because I don't want to anymore. It's just a small hobby project now, "recreational programming" for my own fun.
Laborejo is still not a Lilypond-frontend though, even though you can use it to quickly export simple arrangements.

For serious notation, printed or pdf for me the only way has been, and still is, to write Lilypond textfiles.

Understood. It's easy to use as it is already.. And in the "suite" of apps you built, Tembro and Fluaho, hosted in Agorejo, are useful for quickly recording ideas.

[j_e_f_f_g]

I use Musescore. Musescore works with JACK. Painlessly for me, but I'm sure jeff could make a mess of it

Apparently, you're much more likely to make a mess of setting up MuseScore 4.0 with JACK than I am.

[alex stone]

I use Musescore. Musescore works with JACK. Painlessly for me, but I'm sure jeff could make a mess of it

Apparently, you're much more likely to make a mess of setting up MuseScore 4.0 with JACK than I am.

Which is somewhat ironic, given jack is not in the current Alpha for Musescore4's new audio engine, and may not be added.

[j_e_f_f_g]

Which is somewhat ironic

Indeed. Irony was the form of humor I was employing here. Although with Merlin, it could just as easily be farce.

[GMaq]

If you have a system with PulseAudio bridges working properly with JACK you could still route MuseScore 4 through an operating JACK setup though.. Maybe PipeWire too? (dunno, don't care to know yet)

But jeez, removing both VST and SFZ support... are they on a throwback Thursday kick or what..? In what universe is SFZ in addition to Soundfont2 not a progressive step forward..? Especially to a big multiplatform Score Editor that wants to run with the big boys

When they start pulling support for features from the Linux builds only then you know the slope is about to get slippery..

[Largos]

What notation editor do you use and why?

I'm thinking of writing some melodies down. But that's very hard in just a simple text file (or word processor for that matter). I lean towards trying Lilypond because you can quickly make a simple text based file to convert to PDF later and it works in LaTeX too.

On the other hand Musescore's GUI looks very clear, polished and non-intimidating.

I'm not a notation person but this looks like a decent way of using lilypond https://www.frescobaldi.org/

[Kott]

But jeez, removing both VST and SFZ support...

VST is disabled in the current alpha AppImage builds.
So you can try to re-build it with vst support. I did that and MS4 tries to load VST3 plugins, but too many crashes.

[j_e_f_f_g]

If they're dropping notable support from the Linux version, they may indeed be contemplating focusing on the Windows and Mac versions only. But what concerns me more is a growing trend of developers delivering their binaries in the form of AppImage, Snap, or Flatpack. I said it before, but people just don't seem to be able to recognize the significance of these trends, so I'll say it again: If music devs don't step up and rally around some "standard base music OS" as a target for their executables, then we're going to end up with only AppImage, Snap, or Flatpack choices. Packagers (including the endusers who do stuff like AUR) aren't going to avert this trend. Only devs can do it (at this point. Before long, it will be too late even for them).