Update on MuseScore 2.0 and accompanying MuseScore Songbook for Android:
I've been using MuseScore 2.0 for a month or 2 now and I'm very happy with it indeed. It seems to me that this open-source project is really matured beautifully with this version. It behaves very well on Windows XP, the user interface is both flexible and pretty easy for me to understand, and renders beautiful scores to PDF which I load into MobileSheets.
For me the BIG upside to the Musescore + Songbook combo is that, on the tablet, Songbook can transpose the piece into different keys on the fly, on the tablet. You load the MuseScore *.mscz files onto the tablet, and import them into Songbook's library. Songbook renders the Musescore 2 files beautifully, and transposing is a snap, accurate, and rendered very nicely. For the jam session / improvisational environment in which I often play, this is a big win.
Songbook lacks the library functions of Mobilesheets- collections, setlists, metadata; and lacks things like annotations, cropping, file+ page ordering flexibility etc etc etc. But the ability to transpose on the tablet is huge for me. In many cases I've put a song into Mobilesheets in 3 or 4 different keys and Songbook makes that unnecessary and provides unlimited transposition flexibility.
I also keep an old copy of PrintMusic around that has SmartScore, the TIFF music notation recognition ability built into it. My old version is very useful but somewhat error-prone. I'm sure today's version is much less error-prone + I'd like to upgrade for that better performance, but not so much as to put $85 into it, as least not yet. Maybe when I finally replace the XP machine.
I've been using MuseScore 2.0 for a month or 2 now and I'm very happy with it indeed. It seems to me that this open-source project is really matured beautifully with this version. It behaves very well on Windows XP, the user interface is both flexible and pretty easy for me to understand, and renders beautiful scores to PDF which I load into MobileSheets.
For me the BIG upside to the Musescore + Songbook combo is that, on the tablet, Songbook can transpose the piece into different keys on the fly, on the tablet. You load the MuseScore *.mscz files onto the tablet, and import them into Songbook's library. Songbook renders the Musescore 2 files beautifully, and transposing is a snap, accurate, and rendered very nicely. For the jam session / improvisational environment in which I often play, this is a big win.
Songbook lacks the library functions of Mobilesheets- collections, setlists, metadata; and lacks things like annotations, cropping, file+ page ordering flexibility etc etc etc. But the ability to transpose on the tablet is huge for me. In many cases I've put a song into Mobilesheets in 3 or 4 different keys and Songbook makes that unnecessary and provides unlimited transposition flexibility.
I also keep an old copy of PrintMusic around that has SmartScore, the TIFF music notation recognition ability built into it. My old version is very useful but somewhat error-prone. I'm sure today's version is much less error-prone + I'd like to upgrade for that better performance, but not so much as to put $85 into it, as least not yet. Maybe when I finally replace the XP machine.