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Silver Snowflake
July 23rd, 2011, 12:05 am
Hello Everyone! ^.^
so i've actually transcribed a lot of anime music, but i've never actually thought about sharing it with everyone else, because i thought it was a hassle to transcribe it down. But since i've always used others sheets, i thought that it was time to give back :)
so i was just wondering, what program should i use to create the anime sheet music and how long does it take to finish writing down a complete song? (around 2 mins)
Thanks :)

brncao
July 23rd, 2011, 10:25 pm
Finale and Sibelius are top two notation programs. I prefer Finale and it's common around here. Lilypond is an open-source notation software if you prefer that, but the learning curve might take a while. How long does it take to finish arranging a song? Everyone is different. Whether you rush through it or make it look professional is up to you. Some people (like I am) are very picky with how their scores look. Some aren't. Some people know how to use shortcut keys, others use a mouse only. Transcribing might take longer for harder complex songs. YMMV.

Taemond
July 24th, 2011, 12:05 pm
If you don't want to fork out the money for Sibelius or Finale, or spend the the time learning Lilypond there's always MuseScore. I use MuseScore myself simply because its free, but with being free you do get a basic interface and trickier rhythms outside of common and composite time are hard to input. The program does crash sometimes due to bugs, but it is free.

As for time, as brncao said, YMMV. It just depends how competent you are with the programs. You'll start off slow but with practice you can generally start to get stuff down really quickly, especially if you memorize the keyboard shortcuts for your chosen program.

Silver Snowflake
July 25th, 2011, 05:04 pm
Thank You for your help! I think i'll look into Lilypond first.

Emeraldshine
July 25th, 2011, 06:01 pm
Note that Lilypond is purely a notation program, and it really does have a much higher learning curve than anything else mentioned. It produces beautiful scores, but is very impractical for actual transcription; pencil and paper would be a better option than that. But if you have the piece already transcribed, and don't mind having to wade through pages of documentation at times, Lilypond is an excellent tool.

A couple of options that haven't been mentioned:
Noteflight (http://www.noteflight.com/) is good for very simple transcriptions, but I don't know how practical it would be for major projects.
If you can track down a copy of Finale Notepad 2008, then that works pretty well...as long as you don't need key or time signature changes.

M
July 27th, 2011, 01:46 am
You may wish to review this thread.

Here's another vote for Lilypond having a steep learning curve. It does it's job, but its more of an engraver than a scratchpad. For writing, I'd suggest you use Sibelius or another scorewriter.