Piano Notation Software

JohnCW People often recommend MuseScore, which I believe comes free of charge. Not used it myself so I do not know if it is difficult to use.

keff People often recommend MuseScore, which I believe comes free of charge. Not used it myself so I do not know if it is difficult to use.

Musescore is great and easy to use, but it is not at all easy to learn! Truly a steep learning curve.
For me, it was very much worth it though.

Musescore is not easy to learn, but if you take the time you get a powerful notation software for free.

Dorico SE is also free, and easier to learn. It's enough for simple needs, but if you want more features you need to pay for Dorico pro.

Noteflight is easy to learn. It's web based: you have to be online to use it, which may not suit everyone.

If you have a tablet (Windows or iPad), you could try StaffPad, which converts handwritten music into typeset notation.

I use Notion and Notion mobile for my compositions and arrangements.

https://legacy.presonus.com/products/Notion

https://legacy.presonus.com/products/Notion-Mobile

To me it’s fairly simple. Everything is available with a click, and they cover some pretty detailed and complex elements of notation, including some fairly rare notation elements. Even the mobile version is pretty convincing sounding and has about 2 to 3 GB worth of samples, so you get ot hear a version of what you put in that sounds realistic enough to give you an idea of how it will sound. Interestingly, I find their piano samples to be their weakest, but on the desktop version you can use samples from a piano VST as long as it is VST-2. You can also use any orchestra samples you have as well.

The desktop version can be purchased for a one-time fee, but they also have a subscription so you can demo it to determine if it’s something you’d like to use. You can also demo it for free, but I think certain features are missing.

The mobile version can be used for free, and you can pay to unlock certain features and extra sound sets.

LilyPond can produce beautiful scores.
Natively, it's text-based which means not quick and easy. There are some GUI front-ends for it, but I haven't tried any.
It's free software.

I use MuseScore on the PC. It's much better like that, because you can put in the notes through the normal keyboard. Type a "c", you get the note C, and so on. You can put in all kinds of chords with ctrl-k, they will also be played back correctly. It's really quite good. Every now and then I have to check the manual.

Just tried MuseScore 4. I watched a 30 minute tutorial video on YouTube, then tried to recreate the score of the short piece I’ve been practicing from memory. It turned out to be a good exercise. And the software is not difficult to learn.

I am a big fan and user of MuseScore and have been using it for years. I may be an outlier here, but I actually did not find it difficult to learn how to use it and also find it relatively intuitive. Perhaps because I was using Finale before switching over and had had a learning curve there (?).

I only use it specifically for piano music notation and can write out scores much faster using the software than doing it by hand on manuscript paper (and of course the finished score looks a lot cleaner and even). I am now using version 3 (I started out with ver. 1 and upgraded as new versions came out). However I do not have the intention of upgrading to the new version 4 at any time soon. The latter is a huge leap in capabilities as MuseScore basically went from a music notation software to a music production software, which is something I have no interest in (it includes a virtual mixing console, several built-in sound libraries, etc.)

As a long time Musescore user, I've learned a few shortcuts to inputting notes than having to switch back & forth between selecting a note type, input the note, select a note type, input a note, etc. It's ok if you have a short piece but for longer pieces you can change the Input Mode to "Rhythm". Use numbers 1-7 to enter the notes as beats. All the notes would come out as B (including the rests). After that you select each note that is supposed to be a rest individually and [Ctrl][X] to delete the note. A rest with the same beat value would appear.
Next I'd plug in the MIDI keyboard. Change the Input Mode to [Repitch]. Starting from the first note play through the piece at a moderate pace and the correct notes would replace the Bs. If you don't have a MIDI keyboard you can go to [View] and activate the Piano Keyboard. Some people find that it's faster to enter notes using the pointer to select keys on the onscreen keyboard than entering each note with letters of the alphabet.

I bought Finale back in 2009 and never updated it because it does everything I need it to do. A friend of mine suggested Sibelius 6, around the same time, so I bought that as well. I like them both, although each is sometimes picky about the layout, measure spacing, but I've made templates, so no big deal.
I've also "written" scores in Sonar (formerly Cakewalk) just by bringing up the staff view and either playing notes, or entering them with mouse/keyboard. It's also easy to print or save as a pdf.
And finally, I have Musescore 3 and it works fine, especially for free. But Mainly I use Finale just because I'm comfortable with it.

PianoMonk I own Sibelius. I purchased it many years ago. Frankly, I find it faster to write out my compositions by hand. What I am hoping for is that music notation software evolves to the point where you can perform your piece via midi input audit will perfectly quantize and write what you have played. In this age of artificial intelligence, it should be easy to accomplish.

MusicMe What I am hoping for is that music notation software evolves to the point where you can perform your piece via midi input audit will perfectly quantize and write what you have played.

MuseScore 4 can open midi file and turn it into the score. But the score is a mess. Either it can’t seem to be able to detect time signature and tempo, or there is some feature I have not learned.

Reaper has ability to quantize. There is also plugin or extension to do auto tempo mapping, I think?

iternabe I did have some success turning some PDFs that show notes clearly to a MuseScore file that can be edited using the MuseScore online converter. Some editing is required afterwards.

Turning a MIDI input into notations is tricky because we don't play perfectly in a mechanical way. First we need to have the metronome on the source that is generating the MIDI file so that the notation program would use each tick for a beat and assign a quarter note accordingly. Otherwise the notation program is not smart enough to know if a beat is at 60 or 80 BPM sort of thing. Suppose we're using Pianoteq with a DP to generate the MIDI file, the metronome in Pianoteq needs to be on. And the person doing the input would have to play in a very mechanical way to align the notes with the beats precisely with no rubato, ritard, fermata, etc.

+1 for Dorico SE (free) — I use it on both Windows and iPad, no problem moving projects between the two, no problem with either platform working offline (e.g. on a plane). I sometimes struggle to figure out how to do something but always figure it out in the end :-) If you’re doing multi-instrument scores or certain other more sophisticated notation you may find SE limiting and need to move to Pro; I mostly author for piano with one staff (lead sheets) or occasionally two, works great!

iternabe MuseScore 4 can open midi file and turn it into the score. But the score is a mess. Either it can’t seem to be able to detect time signature and tempo, or there is some feature I have not learned.

When I listen back to a piece I have played in Pianoteq, using its midi file, it sounds exactly like I played it. But when I open that same midi file in MuseScore, it sounds very differently.
I hope that someday someone creates a score app that is compatible with Pianoteq - so it shows the exact notes that I played.