scorewriter Archives

12 Excellent Free and Open Source Scorewriters – Compose, arrange, print, and publish music

A scorewriter is software used with a computer for creating, editing and printing sheet music. We recommend free and open source software.

LilyPond is an automated engraving system. It formats music beautifully and automatically, and has a friendly syntax for its input files.

MuseScore is a graphical WYSIWYG music score typesetter. Notes are entered on an “virtual note sheet”. It’s free and open source software.

TuxGuitar is a multitrack tablature editor and player writen in Java for editing, listening, learning or even writing a complete song.

Canorus is a graphical music score editor written for the Qt toolkit. It is a sequel of the well-known music score editor NoteEdit.

Frescobaldi is a LilyPond sheet music text editor for KDE. It is a powerful program for creating and editing music notation.

Denemo is a graphical user interface musical notation editor. It’s a frontend to Lilypond, an automated engraving system.

Impro-Visor (Improvisation Advisor) is an educational, music notation program designed to help musicians compose and hear solos.

Gregorio is a free and open-source scorewriter software particularly useful for Gregorian chant in square notation.

Aria Maestosa is a free and open-source midi sequencer/editor. It lets you compose, edit and play midi files.

Mup is a very feature-laden application for producing printed music. This is free and open source software.

Rosegarden is a professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment.

music21 is a set of tools for helping scholars and other active listeners answer questions about music quickly and simply.