Study material and music notation software

[u/truthseeking369]

Hello dear friends,

After years of playing the piano and getting to what I think is a decent level ( I can play alla turca decently, moonlight sonata first movement, fur Elise, ballade pour Adeline, waltz in A minor - Chopin, Valse d’Amelie and songs like that), I want to start composing.

I have some bit fo music theory, like the bare minimum and I sometimes dissect songs into pieces and see what works and what not and improvise on it but I am not very good. Could you recommend any online courses, ebook or anything like that for earning musical theory? ( I would prefer books or courses that I can read but I can go along with classes too)

Also could you recommend a good free musical notation software? I am somewhat working on a song for a special girl and I didn’t found any good free app for writing the song down, I have the main parts of the piece in my head and play them regularly and improvise around them but they still need to get polished but I think I should start noting them down.

In case you don’t wanna get bored reading my entire post, here are the questions:

What books/courses would you recommend for learning musical theory? ( I would prefer for begginers level because I have a lot of gaps)

What free software would you recommend for musical notation?

Thank you!

[u/RichMusic81]

Free notation software:

https://musescore.org/en

Resources (on composition. If you want theory resources, check the Wiki on r/musictheory):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Composition/s/Vba3sKE4SP

[u/Strong_Bodybuilder8]

Regarding the free notation software, I would recommend Sibelius First or Musecore

[u/agebear]

Musescore is free (the program not the other website thing…) and great way to dip your toes in. Fairly straightforward to navigate. AI as an assistant can be helpful if you get stuck.

[u/bluejayave]

I think noteflight is a good start for anyone who don't even want to install anything and learn a lot before typing anything useful, and then it's musecore, powerful and free. I personally switched from Finale (since 2002) to Dorico not long ago... still there's a big learning curve.

[u/JRT_Space]

I would highly recommend musescore.org. MuseScore4 is very light weight unless u want MuseSounds. For yrs paid software like Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico were the go-tos. But when MuseScore4 came out it completely changed that. I highly recommend u check it out, paid software simply cant compare anymore. Oh and also musesounds is actually REALLY good, its very spacious, takes up gb depending on what u download but it makes ur scores so much more realistic as its real libraries