[Dixielandjazz] Music software

[Allan Brown]

Dear Bob,

A very affordable music program/ software is Harmony Assistant by a French company called Myriad. I've not much experience with Finale or Sibelius, but Harmony Assistant does just about everything you need and more. It takes a while to get used to it - as it would any new software - but there is good on-line support and a related forum (in English) in which any queries or problems are answered.

The facility to scan in sheet music and make it active, is an additional product by the same company, although you would need Harmony Assistant to run alongside it. I've not used this product but only because I forgot it existed, I'll definitely get round to purchasing it. (Although similar text based products have, in my limited experience, not been that great.)

Harmony Assistant is a lot cheaper than other music notation programs, but they offer an even cheaper version called Melody Assistant, which does most of the things Harmony Assistant can do, but just lacks the final layout capability, but that does make a difference. If you were to go down this route I'd definitely recommend Harmony over Melody Assistant.

I think you can download trial versions of both products if you want to play around with it before purchasing. 

Personally I find BIAB the fastest way of inputting music. I then export from BIAB into Harmony Assistant and work on it in there. I've only scratched the surface of the program, you can do an awful lot with it. (It has a database of chord diagrams and TAB conversions for hundreds of instruments, you can input lyrics, dynamics, export to midi etc.)

This is the company Myriad's website:

http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/harmony.htm

...and this is the specific sheet music scanning program.

http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/omer.htm

I'm no expert, but if you need any further help do drop me an email and I'll see what I can do.

All the best,

Allan Brown


On 17 Feb 2011, at 19:04, Bob Romans wrote:

> There are numerous programs for scanning a sheet of music that makes it possible to transpose it, etc.
> I BIABox the best? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
> 
> Warm regards,
> Bob Romans,
> 209-747-1148
> 1617 Lakeshore Dr.,
> Lodi, California,95242,
> www.cellblock7.biz
> "Puritanism - The haunting fear
> that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:
> 
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
> 
> 
> 
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com