Hi Ken,
At the risk of giving a totally inappropriate answer - I use Noteworthy
Composer. It's a Windows package and it's not free *dodges tomatoes* but
it works reasonably well under Wine.
I use it because I first got into digital music production on Windows
several years before I got into Linux. I've now fully switched to Linux
but after searching extensively for an equivalent notation editor with
MIDI, but I haven't yet found anything I like, and habits are hard to
change.
Noteworthy is fast and simple, and doesn't do anything unless you tell
it to.
Just my opinion!
Cheers,
Jonathan
On 08/18/2009 06:55 PM, Ken Restivo wrote:
I'm looking for a simple, fast, easy notation
software. The goal is that I can very quickly input a melody line or riff, maybe overlay
chord symbols on it, when learning new songs or writing them, so that I don't forget
them.
Something where I could scribble down "Fake Book"-style charts. Of course
there's pencil and paper, but then I have to deal with a music stand and shuffling
leaves of paper around. Since I have the laptop sitting in front of me anyway, if I had
all my charts in there, I could just page through them, use find to search for them, etc.
Rosegarden and the lilypond stuff is probably way too much overkill. It's not
critical that it have MIDI in/out either, since the output device is going to be
eyes-brain-fingers anyway. denemo confused me way too much; couldn't figure out how to
do basic stuff in it at all.
I've played around with nted, and it seems the easiest and closest to what I want,
but even it tries to be too "smart" and sticks in things like dotted rests and
stuff where I don't want them, and I can't figure out how to move notes in time
once it decides to put them there-- frustrating.
Any other options?
Again, the typical usage is that a bandleader will sing or show me the melody and I need
to note it down very quickly.
-ken