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Hi,
I'd like to write some music theory stuffs for my student on my mac.
Could you please advise software to write on? Can it be written on Microsoft office?
PS. It'd be great if it is free.

"MuseScore" is a free "scoring program". It will let you write scores -- multiple staffs, chord symbols, etc.

It is not easy to use.

I use "Sibelius First", another program -- not free. It is, also, not easy to use.

You’ll want something that will allow Roman numeral input. I use Sibelius. Too bad Dorico won’t let you input Roman numerals as it’s easier to use.

My son uses Sibelius as well. It works great-but it is not free as stated above.

I've noticed there are notation limitations in Musescore. For example, an arpeggiated chord can't span more than one staff, etc.

Does it have to be Sibelius Ultimate to write music theory like a book?
I read information in Sibelius Website and found that an ultimate version can copy a section to Microsoft Word in high resolution pixels.
I’m also wondering if I can write the theory like a book on the program itself.

Although I do have a copy of Microsoft Office 2007, I actually these days use LibreOffice https://www.libreoffice.org/ as its free (in both senses of the word); stores data in an "open" format and does actually interact with users who have Microsoft Office very well. But it interface is different and therefore is a separate learning experience if you already are a Microsoft Office user. You asked for free, so I am just mentioning the free alternative.

I presume the idea of the book is to have text with elements of music notation embedded within it. For the music notation I would look at Musescore. Version 3 has just come out and has some major improvements in layout over Musescore 2. It too is free. It has a facility to export the score as an image (it uses a separate image for each page). You would then need to crop these images to pick up the selections you want to see in your document.

I use GIMP https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ - available as a native install on Mac. It is possibly overkill for this, and some people dislike the user interface - but the ability to simply crop a picture and save it is so easy that I don't bother with other programs that do this. NOTE. I believe Microsoft Word will store the entire image uncropped with you insert and crop it inside a document. For that reason - to keep the final file size down, I create the images separately. Its more work, but the result is tidier.

Check out musical fonts, colour my piano the blog explains it quite well https://colorinmypiano.com/2012/04/23/music-fonts/ also check out her PNG method of dragging/dropping https://colorinmypiano.com/printables/ - I've used the music fonts and Sibelius in the past.

If you are a professional, you get professional tools. You can't write music properly with crippled software, and that's all you get when you don't buy full programs.

Gary … I write music with a mixture of Staffpad, Noteflight, flat.io, Microsoft Office and Sibelius. All but the first and last I listed are free - they serve different purposes. I just think it's best to try it for yourself and ditch/dump if it doesn't work for you.

I use Lilypond. It's completely free, extremely flexible, and produces beautiful output (or, rather, can produce beautiful output if you take the time to tweak everything accordingly). However, it has a huge learning curve and documentation can sometimes be sparse. I have found it very worthwhile to learn, but the learning curve would put off a lot of potential users.

For all it's warts, I find Lilypond much easier to use than Sibelius, Finale, or MuseScore. I always feel that those software packages are working against me rather than with me. I don't want all that graphical mumbo jumbo that just gets in my way - I like editing my music in a basic text editor and then compiling it to a PDF.

Thanks a lot!

Thanks Rebecca

Thanks Rogers

I use MuseScore. It allows Roman numerals for chords. It has ample documentation and is definitely not "crippled" software. Of course it's not exactly easy, because musical notation itself isn't trivial.

If you are a professional you use the best tool. Most of the time is a professional software, sometime is a free software.

In STEM disciplines the standard for typesetting is LaTeX and it has never took over, despite the attempts, by any professional software.

I agree with Dr. Rogers, Lillypond is spectacular. It is a bit stiff to learn as it is not WYSIWYG. It is indeed very similar to LaTex. It might not be anyone soup, but if you write a lot could be worth learning and there is a huge community out there.
Using the Frescobaldi development environment makes it a bit more friendly.

It produces amazing PDF and, via Frescobaldi, it can be integrated with MIDI.

Musescore is a nice piece of software and the PDF are not that bad but not as good as lilypond.

I use both and they are both free. The first one is at professional level, the second one it is vastly sufficient for my needs.

fofig, thank you for mentioning Frescobaldi. I tried it out just now, and it seems to significantly improve my Lilypond workflow.

Have you ever tried MusiXTeX? If so, how would you compare it to Lilypond?

Dr. Rogers, while I am fluent in latex, I have found lilypond easier and the reason, as you said, is the existence of Frescobaldi.

Frescobaldi speeds up the process, offers several templates and integration with midi. For this reason I did not explore other latex-like solutions.