The Absolute Coolness of Modern Music Software

[Carol R. Beigel]

I found the software at www.sharewaremusicmachine.com
Click on Notation software.

My favorites are:

Guido - a small and easy program which lets you design blank music sheets
and print them

TIMidity++ v.2.10.2 - a work still in progress that is a MIDI to WAVE
converter and player that uses Gravis Ultrasound-compatible patch files to
generate digital audio data from General MIDI files.  This is freeware.

Amazing MIDI 1.60 - transcribes music, converting WAV files into MIDI files.
It can recognize single-instrument polyphonic music.  This demo lets you
save a 30-second MIDI file.  The full version only costs $29.

AKoff Music Composer 2.0 - is music recognition software which performs WAV
to MIDI conversion.  Also costs $29 if you buy it.  I thought is worked a
little better than the one above, but Amazing MIDI had better instructions
and you had more control over the samples.

SharpEye Music Reader 1.21 - converts a scanned image of printed music into
a  MIDI or NIFF file.  It does not support direct scanning but will accept a
BMP and TIFF file.  ( I have used the $89 Pianoscan version of MIDISCAN to
do the same thing)

MidiNotate 3.0.1 - downloads MIDI files from the Internet and converts them
to printable sheet music.  Also does karaoke (.kar) files.

Cakewalk ScoreWriter 1 Trial Version - I use the full version of this
program (the demo does not allow you to save the sheet music) and I think I
saw it recently for $39.

These programs will get you started.  They are shareware programs, and if
you decided to buy any of them, they cost less than $89.  Some of the others
I tried were:  Music Works Personal, Muse, MusicEase 8.0, ABC2Win, Music
Publisher 32 v.4.27a, Igor Engraver PR2, Dedifra, Mozart 4, which some of
you may find useful.

Just remember though, that none of this technology is perfect and still
needs editing.  I think the most usefull thing I will learn next is how to
edit Cakewalk Scorewriter files - then everything else is usable!

Carol Beigel
Greenbelt, Maryland