I would be remiss if I didn’t start by saying
that if someone were to offer me Sibelius,
I would totally drop Musescore
and run back to the program I love.

Alas, this 600 dollar music program is beyond my reach, and so I use my next choice:  Musescore.

I have Noteflight and use it periodically, but I find that unless I buy the membership the program is too simple for my needs.

I need to be able to make whatever adjustment I want.

I really do find Noteflight to be a very good musical program, especially when I need to compose on the run and I have an internet connection, but unless I can afford the extras, I am stuck with little control over my score.

Musescore leans toward Finale and Sibelius.

I want to state that the only time I ever used Finale was a maybe a freebee like 8 years ago? I was writing by hand and I decided to just stick to that.

Quite a few years ago, a friend of mine had Sibelius 2 and we corroborated on some music. I was very impressed and fell in love ~ not with my friend, but with her music notation program.

I may try Finale someday and maybe change my mind ~ but the 139.00 price tag, which is hundreds below Sibelius, is still out of my budget range.

Now it would seem that I am downplaying the value of Musescore.  I assure you, I am not.

There is a learning curve though, and I am not a ‘curve’ kinda girl.
I resist change and find learning new techy stuff overwhelming and frustrating sometimes.  Mostly because I KNOW that the program is usually only as smart and the person using it, and I don’t like admitting that I am not always as bright as tin foil.

On youtube there are some sparse tutorials for Musescore, but the Formatting video was extremely helpful.  Musescore does not have floating systems, you cannot drag them and adjust them the way you like ~ such as Sibelius allows.

I was able to get the program to bend to my will after a frustrating 20 minutes of trying to stretch my last stanza. It would make an extra page with the last measure and, of course, I didn’t want that.

I decided to ‘trick’ the program.  I inserted an extra empty measure, copied and pasted the last measure into it. I then created a new horizontal break, which separated the empty measure and left it hanging.  Normally the measure is deleted and all is well – not this last time.  Every time I deleted this extra measure, my stanza would shrink on the previous page!  I could not stretch it, because I would be left with the last measure on the next page problem again.

So, instead of deleting that last measure after separating it from the pack, I first changed the bar at the end of the previous measure to reflect that I was at the end of the musical composition.  This forced the software to ignore the extra separated measure at the end, and I was able to delete it without any repercussion.

Yay!  I felt very empowered!  Especially since I figured this out all by myself!  🙂

I hope that by writing this post I can refer back to it, in case I forget what I did to fix the problem.  I also figured out how to get my ‘note = tempo’ to look like the note I wanted to represent.  I downloaded a music note font and used the letter ‘q’ and it turned into the cutest little quarter note.  🙂

The hymn that ‘bent to my will’ today was:
Hymn # 98  I_Need_Thee_Every_Hour_Simplified_Organ

I  simplified it and adapted it for the organ ~ Enjoy.  🙂

I just replaced the last copy with one that had ALL the verses…Sorry.   (06/28/14)

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