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Notation apps for jazz lead sheets and solo transcriptions?
As I’m about to try working with Notion and there hasn’t been a lot of discussion I can find. What I’m expecting to do is create Bb lead sheets where maybe I have one in C already - so single part with chord symbols, or transcription of solos which will be just a single part.
It appears that a few name options would be free for this type of use: Dorico, Notion, Sibelius, ?
Naturally I have questions and would like to hear your opinions…
Supports chord symbols?
Ease of use?
Pencil / handwriting support?
Comments
For a different approach, I use the Tunebook app. It uses ABC notation in a WYSIWYG form; you edit the ABC text in a window, view the results in another. It can produce a good-looking lead sheet without too much work. Note that it only implements the basic ABC notation, missing a lot of the extended features. But it's plenty for lead sheets.
I’ve used notion for lead sheets. There is a tutorial walking through one person’s method
By chord symbols , do mean names (like you’d see in the Real Book) or fretboard charts?
It has handwriting recognition but I have terrible penmanship and find the onscreen keyboard or fretboard faster than handwriting.
The static screenshot of the video is exactly what I’m after, chord names as in the Hal Leonard Real Books but better quality along the lines of the Sher New Real Books
I used the Caravan sheet in Real Book 2 last night due to having it as PDF - absolute sh**e compared to the New Real Book sheet I had been using in hard copy. (Kind of bittersweet still as I now have my late dad’s books, which due to timing of when he bought them were Bb for Tenor Sax, I play trumpet - and found his tenor is a Buescher 400 I knew the Alto was a Selmer now confirmed as an early batch “cigar cutter” but I digress…)
I’m going to follow up this alternative, I suspect it could be fast to work with…
My real book is from the days when it wasn’t legal and you had to know which music store had it and who to talk to.
I wonder if there is truth to the rumor I heard when I got mine (in the late 70s m) that it started as an outgrowth of students and teachers at Berkelee School of Music making collections of lead sheets for their ensembles (which explained a couple of Pat Metheny labeled Untitled..the story being that he had past lead sheets out while he was an instructor there and was writing the tunes that would be on Bright Size Life)
What I’ve seen matches up with this, I have a PDF of a Berklee book btw, a couple of the lads I played with as I teenager went there I believe early 90s.
Further… the leader of the best big band in the area certainly wrote out parts for many tunes - we played from some of his charts in the youth big band. In the 80s this must have been quite a labour!
To be honest I struggled with Notion, and for a while couldn’t use it as it just crashed every time with one particular version.
Not long ago I bought StaffPad and it’s really flexible and usable. Pencil input takes some practice, but after a while it becomes easier. It’s expensive, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to any of the other apps.
@MadGav : I just asked a friend who was at Berklee in the early 80s and he says that he heard the same thing there that I mentioned.
I don’t have a pencil, so total cost to get up and running with StaffPad is seriously putting me off! However, useful to know that it works well.
I use Notion for lead sheets and it's been quite good to me so far. There is a button specifically for adding the chord names (the button is labeled C7).
I use iwritemusic, its cheap and works fine for me. I never wrote a leadsheet but i think you can do that as well
Another vote for Notion.. once you get the lay of the land, it’s actually pretty easy + relatively quick to chart something out..