Musescore + Garage band

• Apr 10, 2020 - 13:36

Hi all,

first of all thanks so much for all the time you guys to help others!

I would appreciate advice on my situation:

Here's what I am looking to do:

1) Write the music sheet for piano
2) Have it played out by the computer, in very high quality

I am looking for the right softwares to do that.

My current 2 options are :

1) Use Logic Pro to do both
2) Use Musescore, import it into garageband via midi, and then play it.

What is the better option ?
Is Logic pro better or worse than musescore purely from a sheet music writing point of view ?
Is garage band's "Steinway Grand Piano" exactly the same sound as Logic's ? Or will Logic's sound better ?

Thanks !

Comments

• Apr 10, 2020 - 14:10

Is Logic pro better or worse than musescore purely from a sheet music writing point of view ?
As you as kere herre: MuseScore of course is the better score writer! ;-)
But serious: Logic Pro is not a score writer at all, but a DAW, that may have some score writing capabilities. So my 1st reply still stands

Is garage band's "Steinway Grand Piano" exactly the same sound as Logic's ? Or will Logic's sound better ?
You'd need to ask this elsewhere I believe

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• Apr 10, 2020 - 15:52

Logic pro is an amazing software. It is a DAW, and it IS a software for notation (indeed, was initially named Notator Logic, and going back some more years Notator and nothing more (aimed at Atari hardware, see http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/28563/Atari-Mega-ST-2/ and http://notator.org/ if you like). The program has changed a lot since the Atari years, and it has literally grown into a MONSTER. Its power is huge, and you can get great results with every function it can provide, BUT it is extremely complex to operate and can't be compared with MuseScore's ease of use at all.

Are you ready to spend months, if not years, to learn using its full power? Are you ready to spend the consistent amount of money it costs? Are you ready to spend even more time and money to learn how to manage its open, expandable structure? Well, go for it, provided that you are as smart (and rich) as needed, you will get gorgeous results indeed.

As regards piano sounds, you shouldn't ask if Logic can provide what you need -- Logic is capable of hosting VST plugins, and there are tons of highly realistic sounding sampled piano around you can choose from, each one better than the others (just as an example: https://www.synthogy.com/ ). They have two features in common that you could not like so much, though: their cost starts from a few hundreds dollars and goes up, and they are highly demanding on the hardware resource side.

MuseScore can't be compared. It's not better, nor worse. It's just something different.

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• Apr 10, 2020 - 15:01

Since computer playback is the end goal, it sounds like one question is which has the better midi editing abilities; functional,ease of use, visual, events list, automation, lack of bugginess or too much complexity etc. How easy is it to get select batches of items to drift around on the grid? How well does the engine facilitate this?

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• Apr 10, 2020 - 16:35

I have no recent experience with Logic Pro, although I am mong those here who started off using Notation on the Atari (before the Logic days even). It was a good notation program in its day, but it was definitely crippled when it because part of Logic, and I see no evidence that its notation capabilities have evolved much since. The screenshots I see show very primitive layout, bad spacing, etc. The fact that it never ever gets mentioned among people doing music engraving I think it telling - it just isn't designed for that.

So without being able to tell you too much about specifics, I'd just say that output is nowhere near the sort of quality you'd want for publishing sheet music. Good enough to read for your own purposes, sure, although chances are also good it doesn't support all the complex notations that MuseScore does. Just as I'm sure people would say MuseScore's playback quality is good enough for personal use but nowhere near where you'd want if you doing professional movie scoring or whatever.

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• Apr 10, 2020 - 16:49

MuseScore playback quality is as high as needed to get a preview and realize if some note has been typed wrong, out of place (typically, when one forgets some accidental, or puts some wrong note in a chord). It is a valuable function, and I use it on a regular bases.

Another use is providing an aid for those who are learning how to read music notation. A student can type the needed notes, try his own solution, then compare it with the one provided by the software.

Other uses are possible, but in no way MuseScore can provide results good for any different purposes. Be aware that this is just a personal opinion, though.

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