IMSLP Forums

Heyo!

Does anyone have a recommendation on the best typesetting program to use? I am looking for something with plenty of keyboard shortcuts, but with the capabilities of using modern notations (spoken-notes, glissandos, etc). Sibelius, Finale, Lilypond...?

Finale and Sibelius are both great but both have their quirks. Test drive a demo of each to form your own opinion.

From experience, Sibelius has more shortcuts, but Finale's shortcuts are better.

They are just more logical (to me) and easier to use.


Score is also very good.
http://www.scoremus.com/

It pretty much does absolutely anything, but it is the opposite of user friendly.

For example: http://www.scoremus.com/gifexm.html

I really like Lilypond, which can do almost anything, but is a total pain to learn. If you have quite a bit of experience, you can actually typeset quite a bit quicker than with Finale or Sibelius.

Bad part: The only way to listen to what you wrote is with a pretty low-quality midi, and it won't play the notes as you put them in. It's really better for typesetting than composing. Oh, and since the whole thing is text based, no keyboard shortcuts (or does that mean that everything is a keyboard shortcut?).

Although Lilypond requires a steep learning curve, I really like it as the engraving is comparable to traditional music engraving.

That sounds like what I'm going for (Lilypond). The majority of typesetting I will be doing will be arranging original musical theatre scores. I don't mind a learning curve; any of these programs will take getting used to, but I want to be able to type quickly eventually. (I'm a ninja with Noteworthy Composer, but the program is just too limited to be useful with my current projects).

(I'm a ninja with Noteworthy Composer, but the program is just too limited to be useful with my current projects).

Ditto! Easiest program to use and do things quickly, shame it is limited.

You can also try Encore. The engraving is quite nice and it uses a Windows Graphical Interface like Finale.